I remember the song we were singing, the crowd of us, how it began again and then stopped short when the others saw the look on my face.

The telegram contained but four words: "Come home at once." It was signed with the name of my father's lawyer.
I presume I shall never forget even the smallest incident of that night journey in the train and the home-coming.

The lawyer's meeting me at the station in the early morning; his taking care that I should not see the newspapers, and his breaking the news to me.

Not of the illness or death which I had feared and dreaded, but of something worse--disgrace.

My father was an embezzler, a thief.