For it was the heart of the house, right here, so close at hand that even a stranger could catch a glimpse of it by chance.  A great, wide-throated fireplace held a splendid fire of burning logs, the light from it illumining the whole room, otherwise dark in the October twilight.  Before it on the hearth-rug were silhouetted, in distinct lines against its rich background, two figures.  One was that of a woman in warm middle life, sitting in a big chair, her face full of both brightness and peace; at her feet knelt a young girl, her arm upon her mother’s knees, her face uplifted.  The two faces were smiling into each other.

Somebody—­it looked to be a tall young man against the fire-glow—­came and abruptly closed the door from within, and the picture was gone.  The fitful music ceased again; the house was quiet.

Thereupon Richard Kendrick grew impatient.  Fully ten minutes must have elapsed since his youthful conductor had disappeared.  He looked about him for some means of summoning attention, but discovered none.

Suddenly a latchkey rattled uselessly in the lock of the front door; then came lusty knocks upon its stout panels, accompanied by the whirring of a bell somewhere in the distance.

A maidservant came hurriedly into the hall through a door near Richard, and at the same moment a boy of ten or eleven came tearing down the front stairs.  As the lad shouted through the door, Richard recognized his late conductor.

“You can’t get in, Daddy; the lock’s gone queer.  Come around to the back.  I’ll see to him, Mary,” the boy called to the maid, who, nodding, disappeared.

At this moment the door opposite Richard opened again, and the mother of the household came out, her comely waist closely clasped by the arm of the young girl.  The two were followed by the tall young man.

Richard stood up, and was, of course, instantly upon the road to the delivery of his message.

Ted, ushering in his father, and spying the waiting messenger, cried repentantly, “Oh, I forgot!” and the tall young man responded gravely, “You usually do, don’t you, Cub?” This elder son of the house, waving the small boy aside, attended to taking Richard to the library, and to summoning Judge Calvin Gray.

In five minutes the business had been dispatched, Judge Gray had made friendly inquiry into the condition of his old friend’s health, and Richard was ready to take his departure.  Curiously enough he did not now want to go.  As he stood for a moment near the open library door, while Judge Gray returned to his desk for a newspaper clipping, the caller was listening to the eager greetings taking place in the hall just out of his sight.  The father of the family appeared to have returned from an absence of some length, and the entire household had come rushing to meet and welcome him.  Richard listened for the contralto notes he had heard above, and presently detected them declaring with vivid emphasis:  “Mother has been a dear, splendid martyr.  Nobody would have guessed she was lonely, but—­we knew!”