“Cease to be!”

Joe did not go in to shake hands with Judge
Pike.

He turned the next corner a moment later, and went down the quiet street which led to the house which had been his home.  He did not glance at that somewhat grim edifice, but passed it, his eyes averted, and stopped in front of the long, ramshackle cottage next door.  The windows were boarded; the picket-fence dropped even to the ground in some sections; the chimneys sagged and curved; the roof of the long porch sprinkled shingles over the unkempt yard with every wind, and seemed about to fall.  The place was desolate with long emptiness and decay:  it looked like a Haunted House; and nailed to the padlocked gate was a sign, half obliterated with the winters it had fronted, “For Sale or Rent.”

Joe gat him meditatively back to Main Street and to the Tocsin building.  This time he did not hesitate, but mounted the stairs and knocked upon the door of the assistant editor.

“Oh,” said Eugene.  “You’ve turned up, you?”

Mr. Bantry of the Tocsin was not at all the Eugene rescued from the “Straw-Cellar.”  The present gentleman was more the electric Freshman than the frightened adventurer whom Joe had encountered in New York.  It was to be seen immediately that the assistant editor had nothing undaintily business-like about him, nor was there the litter on his desk which one might have expected.  He had the air of a gentleman dilettante who amused himself slightly by spending an hour or two in the room now and then.  It was the evolution to the perfect of his Freshman manner, and his lively apparel, though somewhat chastened by an older taste, might have been foretold from that which had smitten Canaan seven years before.  He sat not at the orderly and handsome desk, but lay stretched upon a divan of green leather, smoking a cigar of purest ray and reading sleepily a small verse-looking book in morocco.  His occupation, his general air, the furniture of the room, and his title (doubtless equipped with a corresponding salary) might have inspired in an observant cynic the idea that here lay a pet of Fortune, whose position had been the fruit of nepotism, or, mayhap, a successful wooing of some daughter, wife, or widow.  Eugene looked competent for that.

“I’ve come back to stay, ’Gene,” said Joe.

Bantry had dropped his book and raised himself on an elbow.  “Exceedingly interesting,” he said.  “I suppose you’ll try to find something to do.  I don’t think you could get a place here; Judge Pike owns the Tocsin, and I greatly fear he has a prejudice against you.”

“I expect he has,” Joe chuckled, somewhat sadly.  “But I don’t want newspaper work.  I’m going to practice law.”

“By Jove! you have courage, my festive prodigal.  VRAIMENT!”

Joe cocked his head to one side with his old look of the friendly puppy.  “You always did like to talk that noveletty way, ’Gene, didn’t you?” he said, impersonally.