The subtle irony conveyed in the doctor's last words had not been lost on their hearer.
"Aye! 'The Man with the Muckrake,'" he soliloquized. "That was just it. Also, it was characteristic of Charley that he should have interpreted the impression in such fashion, too."
It was Sunday, and the sound of the church bells tolling for evening service, interspersed with the merry voices of children in their play, fell unheeded on the ears of the man who, with mind sunk in far-away thought, still remained in the same attitude, with his arms resting on the window ledge, gazing out over the unbroken vista of rolling prairie.
That stern, bandaged face, framed in the open casement, its brooding eyes fixed, seemingly, on the beyond, with the whole setting bathed in the blood-red flame of the sunset's afterglow, might have impressed one as vividly suggestive of that striking example of the late Sir John Tenniel's art, in his depiction of that scene enacted in far-off Khartoum twenty-three years before--of _one_--who, wounded and desperate, gazed day by day from a window in the citadel out across the sun-scorched desert towards Metemmah, his despairing eyes forever vainly seeking that help which came not.
The evening shadows began to fall, but still Ellis remained in that deep reverie while, as if in a dream, visions of his past life rose up in his mind with strange reality.
As if it were only yesterday he recalled that last stormy scene which clinched his determination to leave home. The scornful, accusing face of his step-mother, and his father's angry, worried countenance, as he (Ellis) gazed steadily and defiantly back at the woman whose continual petty spite had contrived to make his life at home unbearable.
Both of them were still alive and well, old Major Carlton had mentioned in his last letter. No--they never spoke of him. He was an outcast from his family of his own accord. Yes, that might be, but never a prodigal, or a remittance man, despite his birth and early breeding.
No, he could never be classed with such as they, thank God. Ever since he had shaken the dust of England off his feet he had earned his living honestly with the toil of his brain and body, as a man amongst men. He had done nothing to shame his manhood, and his life was his own to live out as he saw fit; so, come what might, unless by their express behest, his people should never behold his face again, whether in life or death.