The largest group listened to the loud singing and tambourine-playing of the Salvation Army, and Amos, hearing their music, moved idly toward them. The company was made up of two men and three women to whom religion was not a dull habit, but a burning passion, and on whose faces were recorded struggles as fierce as his own. Their leader was a short man with immensely broad shoulders and a countenance which expressed an almost savage earnestness. He had mounted a box in order to be seen and he was speaking rapidly, reminding his audience that they were sinners who needed a Saviour. He gesticulated with disproportionately large hands, hardened by work in the steel mill. He did not hold work to be a curse but a means of salvation.
Amos gazed without seeing and heard without understanding. Presently he moved on down the street, looking absently at jewels and boxes of candy and delicate slippers. In the window of the department store he saw a sign, "New Titles in the Thinker's Library." Alas, the store was closed!
When he reached the Kloster it was almost midnight, but Grandfather was awake and spoke feebly as soon as the door opened.
The vague question was startling. For an instant Amos could not remember the object of his journey.
"Oh, yes," he cried catching his breath, "I saw her; she's all right; she works hard."
"No," said Amos. He stood with bent head, looking at the floor. He felt a sharp envy of Ellen. After a while a slight movement startled him. He saw Grandfather standing in the doorway. He had wrapped the sheet about him and might have passed for the importunate ghost of the King of Denmark. It seemed to Amos that Grandfather had been looking at him for a long time.
"Did you try to persuade her to come home?"
Grandfather went slowly back into his room and lay down. After a while he uttered a sigh which seemed unending.
Stephen's forty-second birthday fell upon the day on which he made the final arrangements for Hilda's residence at the King Sanatorium. He had not seen her because she was obsessed by fear of him, and he sat in the office until the superintendent returned with Mayne and Dr. Good. Even Dr. King, sanguine as his temperament was, was in this case not hopeful.