And, finally, there was duty.  Agatha was his wife.  He would bring her back with him to the West.  He felt that he could stand it.  He was a man, now, in the world of men.  He ran things, instead of being run, and Agatha would quickly find it out.  Nevertheless, he wanted Agatha to come to him for his own sake.  So it was that he had put on his frontier rig.  He would be the prodigal father, returning as penniless as when he left, and it would be up to her whether or not she killed the fatted calf.  Empty of hand, and looking it, he would come back wondering if he could get his old job in the general store.  Whatever followed would be Agatha’s affair.

By the time he said good-bye to his staff and emerged on the sidewalk, five more of his delivery wagons were backed up and loading.

He ran his eye proudly over them, took a last fond glance at the black-and-gold letters, and signalled the electric car at the corner.

II

He ran up to East Falls from New York.  In the Pullman smoker he became acquainted with several business men.  The conversation, turning on the West, was quickly led by him.  As president of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, he was an authority.  His words carried weight, and he knew what he was talking about, whether it was Asiatic trade, the Panama Canal, or the Japanese coolie question.  It was very exhilarating, this stimulus of respectful attention accorded him by these prosperous Eastern men, and before he knew it he was at East Falls.

He was the only person who alighted, and the station was deserted.  Nobody was there expecting anybody.  The long twilight of a January evening was beginning, and the bite of the keen air made him suddenly conscious that his clothing was saturated with tobacco smoke.  He shuddered involuntarily.  Agatha did not tolerate tobacco.  He half-moved to toss the fresh-lighted cigar away, then it was borne in upon him that this was the old East Falls atmosphere overpowering him, and he resolved to combat it, thrusting the cigar between his teeth and gripping it with the firmness of a dozen years of Western resolution.

A few steps brought him into the little main street.  The chilly, stilted aspect of it shocked him.  Everything seemed frosty and pinched, just as the cutting air did after the warm balminess of California.  Only several persons, strangers to his recollection, were abroad, and they favoured him with incurious glances.  They were wrapped in an uncongenial and frosty imperviousness.  His first impression was surprise at his surprise.  Through the wide perspective of twelve years of Western life, he had consistently and steadily discounted the size and importance of East Falls; but this was worse than all discounting.  Things were more meagre than he had dreamed.  The general store took his breath away.  Countless myriads of times he had contrasted it with his own spacious emporium, but now he saw that in justice he had overdone it.  He felt certain that it could not accommodate two of his delicatessen counters, and he knew that he could lose all of it in one of his storerooms.