George seized René by the arm, lifted him through the door on to the step, closed the door, shot the bolts and the chain. In his astonishment René found himself nearly back at 166 before he could realize the outrage that had been done to his feelings. He had wanted to tell George that the atmosphere of the house was just horrible, and George had never thought of that. 166 was in darkness too. How grim these little houses were in the darkness! How they invited violence and the wickedness of the night! How derelict they seemed! How fit for the harboring of wandering, evil men! Now he thought of his father as evil, a shadow come to obliterate the brightness that had grown and filled the house since George's departure. He let himself in, saw that all the lights were out downstairs, the large coals taken from the dining-room fire, the windows and doors fastened. Then he crept upstairs on tiptoe in his stockinged feet and groped fearfully toward his mother's door, half dreading some awful discovery. He could hear no sound. As he passed George's room there came out of it his father's rich, familiar snore. V SETTLING DOWN O the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of mine old acquaintances are dead! PROFESSOR SMALLMAN had been lent by his university to deliver a series of lectures in America, and some weeks of the term would pass before his return. René, therefore, had no escape from his father. Breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper, he was there all the time on his best behavior, though with a naughty malice stirring in him and peeping out of his eyes. He ate--how he ate! Hardly a meal left remnants enough to provide for the next, and butcher's meat, which before had only been got every third day, was now brought to the house every morning. In an access of filial devotion, René had undertaken to relieve his mother of household accounts, always a plague to her, and the little blood-stained butcher's bills alarmed him by their number and the amount of money they represented. He hardly spoke to his father, avoided him, shut himself up in his bedroom, and there realized horribly that he was also avoiding his mother, that she made no protest, not even by glance or gesture, and that they were making him feel the intruder. The change in his mother was amazing. She was three times as active, and was often for hours together without her crochet-work. She, who was accustomed for days never to leave the house, now went out every afternoon with her husband to walk in Potter's Park, or in the evening to visit the streets where they had lived, and to seek out old acquaintances. When her son was present she was discreet, and prattled reminiscently of people he had never known, or remembered only as names and remote presences. But often when he was in his room, he would hear them below talking excitedly, and his mother laughing or protesting. And he came to think of them as "they,"