As the bare-footed beggar passed away into the traffic, far from the circle of the curious, before they could impede him, he was able to discern that his thin hands had been lacerated by the reins during the struggle he had waged with the horse. The blood was flowing freely from his torn fingers, but at the sight of it a flush of gladness overspread his cheeks. “I thank thee, Mighty One,” he said, “that thou hast given the strength to my right hand.” It was with bruised and numbed feet that the returned wayfarer came at last to the threshold of the little room. The aged man, his father, gave a cry of joy when he beheld the apparition that had entered, for, dim as his eyes were, he knew it for the form of one. The old and the young man embraced one another. “I have been desolate, Achilles,” said the old man with the plaintiveness of age; “I have been desolate. But I knew, O Achilles, that thou wouldst return.” A brave fire was burning upon the hearth, the candles, also, were bright of lustre in the little room. The young man stretched his wounded hands to the warmth, and then, with a kind of composed passion, he spread them out before his father. “Dost thou see, my father?” he said. “Earth, my mother, has given the strength to my right hand. I think now, my father, I shall be among the English authors.” As he spoke the secret and beautiful smile crept across his wan lips. “Thou wilt write in the Book, O Achilles?” said the old man, pointing to the table where the mighty tome lay open. “First, I must write my little treatise upon human life, my father,” said the returned wayfarer in the simple accents of his childhood. “And, perchance, my father, when that is written, if the strength is still given to my right hand, I may, or I may not, write in the Book.” “I myself have not yet written in it, O Achilles,” said the aged man, his father, with a look of despair. “And I begin to fear that it may not be given to me to write therein. I am old, Achilles; I am old.” The young man appeared hardly to heed the words of his aged father. “I will eat,” he said, “and then until midnight is told upon the clocks I will repose, and then I will write my little treatise upon human life.” Half-naked and unkempt and bare-footed as he was, the returned wayfarer ate and drank; and he then fell asleep in a chair at the side of the bright hearth with his feet stretched out before the embers. While the returned wayfarer slept profoundly, the aged man, his father, heaped up the fire with coals. Then he went forth into the shop, and took from its recesses the materials for writing. As the old man was conveying these articles, with every precaution that he might not disturb the sleeper, to the table of the little room, he heard a stealthy knocking, with which he had grown familiar, upon the outer shutters of the shop.