POLLY uttered a sharp cry and stared at the intruder blankly. He was tall and military looking and had a smooth, well-shaven face. But his clothes were in rags and his features, worn by illness and coarsened by dissipation were of a type to cause a young girl like her to recoil.

“Who is this man?” she cried at last, “and what is he doing here?”

“It is the new hermit! The man who has taken up with Hadley’s old quarters,” exclaimed one of the neighbors from the group about Polly. “I saw him yesterday in the graveyard.”

“Yes, and there is his dog, Piper. He follows every old tramp who comes into town. Don’t you remember how he tagged at the heels of that old beggar with a long beard, who went through here a month ago?”

“This fellow looks as if he were strong enough to work,” whispered one of the women.

“I shan’t give any of my stale victuals to a man with an arm strong enough to fell an ox,” murmured another.

Here Clarke, who had only waited for an opportunity to speak, now advanced to the man standing in the doorway. As he did so he noticed that the wayfarer’s attention was not fixed upon the persons before him, but upon the walls and passages of the house they were in.

“Have you come here begging?” he inquired. “If so you have made a mistake; this is a disused house which we have been opening for the first time in years.”

“I know its every room and its every corner,” answered the haggard-looking tramp imperturbably. “I could tell you what lies under the stairs in the cellar, and point out to you the books which have been stacked away in the garret: That is, if no other hand has disturbed them since I placed them there fifteen years ago.”

A cry of astonishment, of despair almost, answered these words. It came from the blanching lips of Polly. Clarke trembled as he heard it, but otherwise gave no sign of concern. On the contrary he eyed the intruder authoritatively.

“Tell me your name!” he demanded. “Are you——”

“I will not say who I am, here, with the sunlight streaming on my back and no friendly eye to recognize my features. I will only speak from under the portrait of Ephraim Earle; I want a witness to the truth of my statements and in that canvas I look for it.”

And neither heeding Clarke’s detaining hand, nor the almost frantic appeal which spoke in the eyes of the young girl whose question he had at last answered, he stalked into the parlor and paused directly beneath the portrait he had named.

“Cannot you see who I am?” he asked, rearing his tall head beside the keen-faced visage that looked down from the wall.

“The same man grown older,” exclaimed one.

“Ephraim Earle himself!” echoed another.

“Come back from the dead!”

“The moment the house was opened!”

“Are you Ephraim Earle?” demanded Clarke, trembling for Polly in whose breast a real and unmistakable terror was rapidly taking the place of an imaginary one.

“Since I must say so, yes!” was the firm reply. “Where is my daughter? She should be on hand here to greet me.”

“I have no words of welcome. I never thought of my father being like this. Take me away, Clarke, take me away!” So spoke the terrified little one, clinging to one of her best-known neighbors for support.

“I will take you away,” Clarke assured her. “There is no need of your greeting this man till he has proved his claim to you. A girl’s heart cannot be expected to embrace such a fact in a moment.”

“Oh, it’s Ephraim Earle fast enough,” insisted one old woman. “I remember him well. Don’t you remember me, old neighbor?”

“Don’t I?” was the half hearty, half jeering answer. “And I wish I had a pair of your green and white worsted socks now.”

“It’s he, it’s he!” vociferated the delighted woman. “When he was a young man I sold him many a pair of my knitting. To be sure I use blue now instead of green, but they were all green in his day, bless him!” As this prayer was not repeated by her companions in the room, upon whom his reckless if not sinister appearance had made anything but a happy impression, he came slowly from under the picture and stood for a moment before the dazed and shrinking Polly.

“You are not glad to see me,” he remarked, “and I must say I do not wonder. I have lived a hard life since I left you a crying child in your mother’s room upstairs, but I am your father, for all that, and you owe me respect if not obedience. Look up, Maida, and let me see what kind of a woman you have grown to be.”

At this name, which had been a pet one with her parents and with them alone, the neighbors stared and Polly shrank, feeling the iron of certainty pierce deep into her soul. She met his eyes, however, with courage and answered his demand by a very natural reproach.

“If you are my father, and alas! I see no reason to doubt it, I should think you would feel some shame in alluding to a growth which you have done nothing to advance.”

“I know,” he admitted, “that you have something with which to reproach me; the secret of those days is not for ears like yours. I left you, but—never ask me why, Maida. And now, go out into the sun. I should not like to have my first act toward you a cruel one.”

Dazed, almost fainting, doubting whether or no she was the victim of some horrible nightmare, she let herself be led away to where the sun shone down on the lilacs of the overgrown garden. But no sooner did she realize that the man of her dread had been left in the house with her neighbors than she urged Clarke to return at once to where he was.

“Let him be watched,” she cried; “follow him as he goes about the house. It is his; I feel that it is his, but do not let us succumb to his demands without a struggle. He has such a wicked face, and his tones are so harsh and unfatherly.”

Clarke, who had come to a similar conclusion, though by other means than herself, hastened to obey her. He found the self-styled Earle in the midst of the group of neighbors, chattering freely and answering questions with more or less free and easy banter. Though privation spoke in every outline of his face and form, and poverty in every rag of his dress, his bearing gave evidences of refinement, and no one, not even Clarke himself, doubted that if he were put to the test he would show himself to be at least the wreck of the once brilliant scholar and man of resources. He was drawing the whole crowd after him through the house and was hazarding guesses right and left to prove the excellence of his memory.

“Let us see,” he cried, as they one and all paused at the top of the staircase, before entering the rooms on the upper floor. “I used to keep my books here—such ones as I had not discarded and stacked away in the topmost story. And I used to pride myself on knowing where every volume was kept. Consult the shelves for me now and see if on the third one from the bottom and nearer to the left than to the right there is not a volume of Bacon’s Essays. There is? Good! I knew it would be there if some one had not moved it. And the ten volumes of Shakespeare—are they not on the lower shelf somewhere near the middle? I thought so. A capital old edition it is, too; printed by T. Bensley for Wynne & Scholey, Paternoster Row. And Gibbon’s Rise and Fall, with a volume of Euripides for a companion? Yes? And on the topmost shelf of all, far out of the reach of any hand but mine, a choice edition of Hawthorne—my favorite author. Do you see them all? I am glad of that; I loved my books, and often when very far away from them used to recall the hour when I had them under my eye and within reach of my hand.”

“I wonder if he used to recall the child he left, tossed helpless upon the mercies of the town?” murmured one of the neighbors.

“Is my desk here, and has it been touched?” he now asked, proceeding hastily into the workroom. “Ah, it all looks very natural,” he remarked; “very natural! I can scarcely believe that I have been gone more than a day. Oh, there’s the model of the torpedo I was planning! Let me see,” and he lifted up the half-completed model, with what Clarke could not but call a very natural emotion, looking it over part by part and finally putting it down with a sigh. “Good for those days,” he commented, “but would not answer now. Too complicated by far; explosive agencies should be more simple in their construction.” And so on for half an hour; then he descended and walked away of his own accord to the front door.

“I have seen the old place!” he blandly observed, “and that is all I expected. If my daughter sees fit to acknowledge me, she will seek me in the wild spot in which I have made for myself a home. Here I shall not come again. I have not returned to the place of my birth to be a bugbear to my only child.”

“But,” cried some one in protest, “you are poor and you are hungry.”

“I am what fate and my own folly have made me,” he declared. “I ask for no sympathy, nor do I feel disposed to urge my natural rights.”

“If you are Polly Earle’s father, you will be fed and you will be clothed,” put in Clarke hotly. “There is a meal for you now at the tavern, if you will go there and take it.”

But the proud man, pointing to his dog drew himself up and turned scornfully away. “He can procure me as much as that,” said he. “When my daughter has affection and a child’s consideration to show me, then let her come to Hadley’s cave. Food! Clothing! I have had an apology for both for fourteen years, but love—never; and all I want just now is love!”

Polly, who was not many steps off, heard these words and, moved by fear or disgust, dropped her hands which she had instinctively raised at his approach. He saw and smiled grimly, then with a bow that belied his aspect and recalled the old days when a bow passed for something more than a perfunctory greeting, he moved sternly down the walk and out through the stiff old gate into the dusty highroad.

Half a dozen or more of the most eager witnesses of this extraordinary scene followed him down the hill and into town, anxious no doubt to set the town ablaze with news of Ephraim Earle’s return and of his identity with the newly arrived hermit at Hadley’s cave.