Great Short Short Stories: Quick Reads by Great Writers: Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, Daniel Defoe, Thomas Hardy, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, ... more (Dover Thrift Editions: Short Stories)

Father grinned and winked at his visitor. Joe Kane decided that the man who confronted him was mildly insane but harmless.

I do not mean to give the impression that father spoke so elaborately of the matter. He was as I have said an uncommunicative man. “They want some place to go. I tell you they want some place to go,” he said over and over. That was as far as he got. My own imagination has filled in the blanks.

People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging.

In the long nights when there was little to do father had time to think. That was his undoing.