“Then here is my plan,” Mrs. Barry said. “Meet us in Atlanta the day after to-morrow, and we shall be ready to sail. I'll let you know what hotel we go to. The news will come back from there, but we sha'n't be here during the reception of it. Now, I'm glad, for your sake as well as ours, that it is all going to turn out well. I want to see you happy. You have suffered enough, and so has she. As for me, I never was so happy in my life. I want to go to Paris for a while. My husband is buried there, you know.” CHAPTER XXVI |ON the morning of the fourth day after the meeting of Dora and Kenneth Galt, old Stafford was stirred to its outskirts by the return of the most popular young man who had ever lived in the town. Fred Walton got in an hour or so before noon. He had sent a telegram to his father announcing his coming, but had failed to mention the hour of his arrival, and so there was no special conveyance at the station to meet him, though old Simon, in his Sunday frock-suit and a fresh collar, with a five-cent shoe-shine and a ten-cent shave at the barber-shop adjoining the bank, sat in the counting-room waiting, not sure whether his son would get in during the morning or by the afternoon train. He was not long kept in doubt, for the electric trolley-car that whizzed up from the station was fairly packed with individuals of both sexes and all classes, who, it seemed, had ridden up chiefly that they might be among the first to pay tribute to their old favorite and hear him talk. It was all joyous and reassuring enough to Fred at first, and might have continued so had the car not stopped at a crossing half-way between the station and the square, and taken on Wynn Dearing, who, having returned home, had been visiting a patient near by. The eyes of the two met. Fred colored high; but with a hard, grave countenance Dearing simply turned to the conductor, paid his fare, and sat down near a window, through which he stared stonily all the way to the square. The heart of the returning exile sank into a veritable slough of despair. His admirers, packed about him, were stilled for a moment by the “cut” he had received, and then, not being able to interpret it, they valiantly passed it over, and showed by their excessive cordiality that if one of his old companions had been coarse enough to snub him on that day of all days, they remained true.