He felt, at times, a pity for his father’s wife. She knew! And a man of less imagination could not have failed to picture the new relations of Roger Craighill and his wife with the common knowledge of that night hanging over them. There were people who might feel his loss out of their world; there were Wingfield and Walsh, and there was Paddock--he believed they would be sorry and miss him, but one man more or less in the grand sum of things is nothing. He had failed in good as in evil intentions--failed even Jean who had asked him to care for her grandfather and save him from any such catastrophe as that which must now have brought misery upon her, for the old man’s death had undoubtedly interrupted her work, and she must hate him for his worthlessness. He accepted his fate sullenly; his life was ill-starred, its ordering futile. He recalled Joe from his contemplation of the squirrels and they went to a hotel that Joe had known in other days, and lodged for the night. Wayne had let his beard grow, and his clothes were the worse for rain and dust. But the differences between them were reconciled by these changes, and they looked like two mechanics in search of employment. The thousand dollars with which Wayne had left home had melted slowly. The bulk of the small bills was an embarrassment and he divided them with Joe. The idea of losing himself in the world, of wandering free in the spring weather, took hold of his fancy. He had watched tramps from car windows with indifference or contempt, but he had read of men of wisdom who forsook the life to which they were born for the open road. Perhaps in the general sifting processes of nature and life this had been his predestined fate! He did not care one way or another. He was willing that henceforth Fate should shake the dice and he would abide by the decision. The lords of destiny might pass any judgment they liked upon him: he was Wayne Craighill, and he would make no defense to any indictments they might lodge against him in their high tribunal. He bought a pipe as better suited to his new rôle as a man of the road and they set out for a walk in the streets of Harrisburg. Laughter flashed out from open windows; boys and girls went sweet-hearting through the quiet streets; gay speech, floating out from verandas and doorsteps, contributed to the sense of spring. A girl’s voice, singing to the strumming of a banjo, gave him a twinge of heartache. He was an alien in a strange land and the openness and simplicity and sweetness of the town life drove in upon him the realization of his own detachment from the world of order and peace. They went down to the river and listened to the subdued murmur of the Susquehanna moving seaward under the stars. Wayne suddenly remembered Joe, sprawled on the grass beside him.