Strange portent of this had crossed the sea to haunt him.

As soon as he was sure of what had happened in Middleville, of the attitude people would have toward a crippled soldier, and of what he could do with the month or year that might be left him to live, then he would know his own mind.

All he sensed now was that there had been some monstrous inexplicable alteration in hope, love, life.

His ordeal of physical strife, loneliness, longing was now over, for he was back home.

But he divined that his greater ordeal lay before him, here in this little house, and out there in Middleville.