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 Flats, in a Dago's boarding-house, her son had passed a night.

"Where did that coat come from?"

"It belonged to Jim Baxter, who was killed at the grade-crossing last week. I borrowed it from McTavish."

"So you've been seeing him."

"Yes, he told you I wouldn't come home, didn't he?"

"Yes," she said, with a sudden flash of anger. "Yes . . . he told me. I wish you wouldn't see so much of him, Philip. He's a wicked man."

He made no response to this sudden, feeble sally of the old authority. He had, she discovered with awe, that old trick of his father's—of not answering in an argument unless he had something to say. It was an unfair method, because it always kept the argument upon the level of reason, excluding all the force of the emotions.

"And I'm not coming home any more to sleep, Ma. That's all finished."

He must have seen the look of fear in her eyes. It was that look he had seen there whenever, for a moment, she seemed to lose control of that solid world she had built up.

"But, Philip . . . it's your house . . . your own home. You've never had any other." He said nothing, and she asked, "Where are you going to sleep?"

Slowly, and then carefully, so that it would hurt her as little as possible, he told her about the stable at Shane's Castle, and his plan of painting. She listened, half believing that she could not be in her right mind, that what she heard was only part of a nightmare. She kept interrupting him, saying, "But, Philip,