RUFE MELTON came home to find life not the same. Matters had evolved while he was away about his country’s business, matters that didn’t please him now. He had rushed to Pidge. As the steamer approached New York, a novel and unforeseen eagerness awoke within to get to her, but she hadn’t put off her Arctics. Besides, off duty from her editorial job, there was an infant in her arms for the most part--a seven-months-old male infant with combed hair, that had looked into his face and begun to yell. Rufe took this as a personal affront. He had supposed it hers at first. “Sometimes, I forget that it isn’t,” she had said. Harrow Street furnished the statement and proof, however, that it was Fanny Gallup’s, who was dead. “But why don’t you adopt the other two?” he asked. “Miss Claes has found homes for Albert’s children,” Pidge said. Rufe stood it for two days. “This can’t go on, Pan. I’ve got to get to work--no nerves to work in this racket, since I was gassed----” “Of course not.” Under his surface anger, she saw the old look of hurt wonder that harrowed her so. “Come back--any time, Rufe--come whenever you can. Always a place here, you know.” XXXVII JOHN HIGGINS’ CODE WHEN Dicky Cobden reached New York, he found that Pidge had been called to Los Angeles, because her father was ill. It was an evening in mid-January, 1919, and he went at once to his mother’s house in Fiftieth Street. The strain of waiting for his home-coming had been almost too much there. Grandfather had flickered out; his bed and chairs gaped and would not be comforted. Dicky went into the living arms, however, and found rest and gave it. His mother and aunt and sister livened up like plants, newly-watered. He was queerly astonished to learn that Pidge recently had called upon his people--“just a social call,” his mother said. Outwardly things looked as hopeless as possible at _The Public Square_. From his latest retirement to his rooms for a change of luck, John Higgins had been taken to the hospital, instead of returning to his desk. It was a gray-faced old man that Dicky found in the early morning of his first full day at home, in a room that smelled of drugs. The face didn’t look at him squarely. The light hurt John Higgins’ eyes and made the features writhe. Dicky wanted to move around to the other side of the bed, so the face would be shaded, but his old friend was gripping him with both hands. “We have been looking for you a long time, Dicky,” he kept saying. It wasn’t the unshaven white stubble that changed the face so much as the quiver of the upper lip, when John Higgins spoke. “What’s the matter, John?” “Indigestion--all kinds of indigestion. Damn ’em, Dicky, they’ve made me eat my own words----” “Who?” “The most pestiferous public nuisance ever organized--Department of Justice.” Dicky did not need to be warned against the _bête noir_. Its shadow was upon John Higgins’ face.