Madison walked along the length of the cottage, past the door, and, as he reached the lighted window, drew well away from the wall—­and stared inside.  Surprise and incredulity swept across his features, and then his face beamed and his gray eyes lighted with the fire of an artist who sees the elusive imagery of the Great Picture at last transferred to canvas, vivid, actual, transcending his wildest hopes.  He was gazing upon the sweetest and most venerable face he had ever seen.

Here and there within upon the floor were strewn old-fashioned, round rag mats that would enrapture a connoisseur, and the floor where it showed between the mats was scrubbed to a glistening white.  The furnishings were few and homemade, but full of simple artistry—­a chair or two, and a table, upon which burned a lamp.  In a fireplace, made of stones cemented together, the natural effect unspoiled by any attempt to hew the stones into uniformity, a log fire glowed, sputtered, and now and then leaped cheerily into flame.

Between the table and the fire, half turned toward Madison, sat the Patriarch.  He was reading, his head bent forward, his book held very close to his eyes.  Hair, a wealth of it, soft, silky and snow-white, reached just below his coat collar—­a silvery beard fell far below his book.  But it was the face itself, no single distinguishing feature, neither the blue eyes, the sensitive lips, nor the broad, fine forehead, that held Madison’s gaze—­it seemed to combine something that he had never seen in a face before, and to look upon it was to be drawn instantly to the man—­there was purity of thought and act stamped upon it with a seal ineffaceable, and there was gentleness there, and sympathy, and trust, and a simple, unassuming dignity and self-possession—­and, too, there was a shadow there, a little of sadness, a little of weariness, a background, a relief, as it were, a touch such as a genius might conceive to lift the picture with his brush into wondrous, lingering, haunting consonance.

Madison’s eyes, slowly, as though loath to leave the Patriarch’s face, travelled over the gray homespun suit that clothed the man, the white wristbands of the home-washed shirt, unstarched, but spotlessly clean—­and his fancy of flowing, Grecian robes with rope girdles seemed to hold him up to mockery as a crude and paltry bungler before the perfect, unostentatious harmony of reality.

“There’s nothing to it!” whispered Madison softly to himself.  “Nothing to it!  There isn’t a thing left to do—­not even a chance of making a bluff at earning the money—­it’s just like stealing it.  Why, say, it would get me if I weren’t behind the scenes—­honest now, it would!”

Madison drew back from the window and walked toward the door of the cottage.

“It should take me about fifteen minutes to establish myself on the basis of a long-lost son with the Patriarch clinging confidingly around my neck,” he observed.  “If it takes me any longer than that I’d feel depressed every time I met myself in the looking-glass.”