The hero--and he was a hero to every one who knew of his coolness and pluck, in spite of his recognized weakness--had returned to his father's house on Kennedy Square on crutches, there to consult some specialists, the leg still troubling him.

As the cripple's bedroom was at the top of the first flight of stairs, the steps of which--it being summer--were covered with China matting, he was obliged to drag himself up its incline whenever he was in want of something he must fetch himself.

One of these necessities was a certain squat bottle like those which had graced the old sideboards.

Half a dozen times a day would he adjust his crutches, their steel points preventing his slipping, and mount the stairs to his room, one step at a time.
Some months after, when the matting was taken up, the mother took her youngest boy--he was then fifteen--to the steps: "Do you see the dents of your brother's crutches ?--count them.

Every one was a nail in his coffin." They were--for the invalid died that winter.
These marked changes in public opinion, imperceptible as they had been at first, were gradually paving the way, it may be said, for the dawn of that new order of things which only the wiser and more farsighted men--men like Richard Horn--were able to discern.