The cub had been industrious.  He had scurried around and nosed out Martin’s family history, and procured a photograph of Higginbotham’s Cash Store with Bernard Higginbotham himself standing out in front.  That gentleman was depicted as an intelligent, dignified businessman who had no patience with his brother-in-law’s socialistic views, and no patience with the brother-in-law, either, whom he was quoted as characterizing as a lazy good-for-nothing who wouldn’t take a job when it was offered to him and who would go to jail yet.  Hermann Von Schmidt, Marian’s husband, had likewise been interviewed.  He had called Martin the black sheep of the family and repudiated him.  “He tried to sponge off of me, but I put a stop to that good and quick,” Von Schmidt had said to the reporter.  “He knows better than to come bumming around here.  A man who won’t work is no good, take that from me.”

This time Martin was genuinely angry.  Brissenden looked upon the affair as a good joke, but he could not console Martin, who knew that it would be no easy task to explain to Ruth.  As for her father, he knew that he must be overjoyed with what had happened and that he would make the most of it to break off the engagement.  How much he would make of it he was soon to realize.  The afternoon mail brought a letter from Ruth.  Martin opened it with a premonition of disaster, and read it standing at the open door when he had received it from the postman.  As he read, mechanically his hand sought his pocket for the tobacco and brown paper of his old cigarette days.  He was not aware that the pocket was empty or that he had even reached for the materials with which to roll a cigarette.

It was not a passionate letter.  There were no touches of anger in it.  But all the way through, from the first sentence to the last, was sounded the note of hurt and disappointment.  She had expected better of him.  She had thought he had got over his youthful wildness, that her love for him had been sufficiently worth while to enable him to live seriously and decently.  And now her father and mother had taken a firm stand and commanded that the engagement be broken.  That they were justified in this she could not but admit.  Their relation could never be a happy one.  It had been unfortunate from the first.  But one regret she voiced in the whole letter, and it was a bitter one to Martin.  “If only you had settled down to some position and attempted to make something of yourself,” she wrote.  “But it was not to be.  Your past life had been too wild and irregular.  I can understand that you are not to be blamed.  You could act only according to your nature and your early training.  So I do not blame you, Martin.  Please remember that.  It was simply a mistake.  As father and mother have contended, we were not made for each other, and we should both be happy because it was discovered not too late.” . .  “There is no use trying to see me,” she said toward the last.  “It would be an unhappy meeting for both of us, as well as for my mother.  I feel, as it is, that I have caused her great pain and worry.  I shall have to do much living to atone for it.”