Oh, the dear old home! and how fair and yet how sad it seemed to my anguished gaze! It should have been in ruins surely--broken and cast down in the dust like its master's peace and honor.

Its master, did I say?
Who was its master?
Involuntarily I glanced at Ferrari, who stood beside me.

Not he--not he; by Heaven he should never be master! But where was MY authority?
I came to the place as a stranger and an alien.

The starving beggar who knows not where to lay his head has no emptier or more desolate heart than I had as I looked wistfully on the home which was mine before I died! I noticed some slight changes here and there; for instance, my deep easy-chair that had always occupied one particular corner of the veranda was gone; a little tame bird that I had loved, whose cage used to hang up among the white roses on the wall, was also gone.

My old butler, the servant who admitted Ferrari and myself within the gates, had an expression of weariness and injury on his aged features which he had not worn in my time, and which I was sorry to see.