After Tom went away and left him alone with his wife, who was not the most agreeable of companions, he failed rapidly, both in body and mind, and those who saw him walking about the house, with his white hair and bent form, would have said he was seventy rather than fifty years old.

Every day, when the weather permitted, he visited Maude's grave, where he sometime stayed for hours looking down upon the mound talking to the insensible clay beneath.
'I am coming soon, Maude, very soon, to be here beside you,' he would say.

'Everybody has gone, even to Tom, and your mother is sometimes hard upon me because of what I did.

And I am tired, and cold, and old, and the world is dark and dreary, and I am coming very soon.' Then he would walk slowly back, taking the post office on his way, to inquire for letters from the folks, as he designated the absent ones.
These letters were a great comfort to him, especially those from Jerrie, who wrote him very often and told him all they were doing and seeing, and tried to make him understand how much she loved and sympathised with him.

Not a hint had been given him of the baby; and when, in June, he received a letter from her containing a photograph of the little boy named for him, he seemed childish in his joy, and started with the picture at once for Maude's grave.