Once a year, on her birthday, she prepares a feast against the home-coming of her brother, who swore that day, so long ago, that he would return. Then at last there is a knock on the door, and he is outside. The gaunt, unkempt man she takes to her heart resembles the impetuous youth of twenty-one only in her imagination, but in so imagining she is happy, and fate decrees that she shall never learn the truth; how an old tramp took advantage of her delusion and then, repenting, would have broken her heart by going away.