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 "Sam's. He told me a month ago he was looking around for an opening."

Mr. Quinby gave a short, hard laugh, stood up, and left the room. Another moment and the front door closed. The boy knew that he was gone.

"Bert!" his mother said. "What will you do next?"

He flushed hotly. "Why does pop always think I do things just to hurt him?"

"Why do you always hurt him?" she asked.

The question stung him. He took refuge in his old sanctuary—his room—and there gave himself up to bitter reflections. No matter what he did, it seemed, he did wrong. Here he was with his big chance, but what difference did that make? Was he supposed to be able to think of everything? After Sam left, if the new clerk didn't do everything just sc, the blame would be his. He'd hear about it, all right; oh, yes, he'd hear about it. He threw up his hands with an impatient motion that, had he known it, was an exact copy of his father's.

"I suppose the only thing for me to do," he scowled, "is to back out. Then everybody will be happy." In spite of his depression, the idea gave him the painful-pleasurable emotion of a martyr.

He came down the stairs on tiptoe, let himself out of the house, and went over to Washington Avenue. A glance through the window showed

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 him that Sam was alone. He went into the store.

"Well, you did spill the beans, didn't you?" Sam demanded in disgust. "Why did you tell your father? I didn't want him to know this until I was ready to quit. Now I'll be out a couple of weeks' wages. I ought to collect that from our profits."

Up to this point Sam had dominated the enterprise. But Bert had met trouble that day and was in no mood for genial compromises. His reply, short and peppery, gave testimony that the Shoppers' Service was going to be no strictly oneman affair.

"Show it to me in our agreement," he said.

"Sam became blandly argumentative. This thing has come up later. You shouldn't expect me to lose. . . ."

"You're putting up five-eighths the money and getting two-thirds of the profits. That ought to be enough."

Sam gave him a startled glance and said no more.

Bert walked restlessly back and forth in front of the show cases that held the shirts and underwear. He had already dismissed from his mind the spat with Sam. . . his father's anger was of far more moment.

"Did my father pitch into you?" he demanded suddenly.

"He asked me if I was dissatisfied here," the

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 clerk answered. "I told him no, but that I wanted to improve my position. He went right out. He didn't say much."

That fact had begun to worry Bert. He was used to lengthy scoldings, and the way his father was acting moved him to anxiety. His father had left the table and had walked out of the house, and had then asked Sam a question and had walked out of the store. A storm of words ran itself out, vented its anger and announced its position, and was done. Silence might mean anything.

"There isn't any chance of any mistake in the business, is there?" he asked abruptly. He didn't say whose business he meant, but Sam understood.

"In financial matters," the clerk said wisely, "you check up everything. Figures do not lie. I've gone over the number of subscribers we will get, and the stuff we are sure to sell in the store. We'll surely clear three hundred dollars a month."

Bert divided the sum in his mind. One hundred to him—two hundred to Sam. The thing was a gold mine. And then he sighed. If he expected to have any peace at home he'd have to step out and let the chance go by.

Mr. Quinby returned to the store. There was that in his bearing that said that he had fought out a question with himself and had come to a

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Rh The production of sagas thus extends through two centuries, and it hardly needs to be stated that with the progress of time there took place corresponding changes in the style of the saga and in the manner of utilizing the materials. For no matter how deeply the verbal tradition might have impressed itself on the popular memory, the written form could not help gradually improving with the growing experience and continued practice in writing. And so we find when we compare one of the oldest documents with a saga from the golden period of Icelandic literature, that there has been great progress made in the use of the language and in the grouping and arrangement of the materials. The literature begins with annals or chronicles similar to the contemporary historical records of other countries, but it does not take long before it has developed sufficient skill to produce genuine works of art. Certain peculiarities were, however, preserved through all the periods of the development of the saga, excepting, of course, the mythic-heroic stories and the mediæval romances, where the saga spirit is almost wholly wanting. Among these peculiarities are the following: a vividness and directness in the telling although the events described generally belong to a distant past; a perfectly objective and unimpassioned manner, leaving the author, who as a rule is not even mentioned, wholly in the background, and letting the events speak for themselves; a minute presentation of chronological and genealogical data, a matter of great moment to the Icelanders, who were well informed in regard to the blood ties existing between the various families; and finally a frequent quotation of authorities and of all other evidences that might tend to strengthen the trustworthiness of the narrative.

We just mentioned the father of Icelandic history, Are Thorgilsson, like Sæmund surnamed froði, on account of his great learning. The Younger Edda indicates him as the person, who with Thorodd Runemaster, adapted the Roman (Anglo-Saxon) alphabet to the wants and comprehension of


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 decision. He hung up his hat in the rear, remained there a while, and finally came out.

"That sale on boys' sport stockings starts to-morrow," he said to Sam. "Did you get them out and sort them by sizes?"

"Yes, sir."

"We'd better dress a window with those stockings to-night. There's a box of a dozen collars to be delivered before you go home." The voice was impersonal. And in the past he had always spoken to the clerk with the warmth of a co-worker.

Sam went forward to clear out one of the two windows. Bert took a step toward his father and stopped, for his father's eyes were regarding him fixedly.

"I . . . I never thought about Sam leaving here. I guess we had better drop this Shoppers' Service."

But his father, in a way that was new to him, would have none of this surrender. "Bert, you'd always blame me if you didn't go through with this; you'd always figure that you would have made a success of it if I had not stood in your way. You didn't come and ask my advice; you came and told me what you intended to do."

"But I can't take Sam; the store needs him."

"I don't want Sam, now. He isn't interested in my business to the exclusion of everything else. He wants to try something else. He says so. I've

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 already told him he could finish here Saturday week."

Bert did not argue. . . there was a finality about his father that forbade. At any rate, he told himself, he had tried to back out. He had the virtuous feeling that, after all, he had been practically forced into the venture that was to bring him a golden profit of one hundred dollars every month.

He was not sorry.

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EET me in the ice cream parlor," Sam had whispered as Bert had passed out of the store. Time, moving forward with its exact and inexorable measure, may sometimes seem to race; but as the boy sat in the sweet shop with his eyes fastened impatiently on a wall clock, the minutes seemed to limp and to drag as though they had sore feet. At a quarter past nine Sam came in.

"We'll have to meet here every night," he said. "Your father buys my time and I can't do my own work when I'm paid to do his. What are you going to have?"

"Lemon soda," said Bert.

"That's fifteen cents. Fifteen cents a night is ninety cents a week . . . we can walk around and talk on Sundays. Haven't they any five-cent drinks? Fifteen cents is too much. A man who throws away his money soon throws away his business."

It developed that he could buy an unpalatable, chemical orange phosphate fof ten cents. With the unwholesome drink before him he leaned across the table.

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 "Let's get this thing started," he said. "First, we must find a store that we can afford to rent. Second, we must get tables, and chairs, and some pictures for the walls, and paper table cloths and napkins. I know a place in the city where you can buy second-hand furniture. If they have a catalogue we can select from that. Then we want a small ice-box for ice cream. We've got to have plates, and cups and saucers, and knives, forks and spoons. It's going to be a job getting all this stuff together."

Bert was appalled.

"There you go," Sam said impatiently, "getting cold feet. Running a business isn't a picnic. Look what Woolworth went through before his five-and-ten-cent stores were a success. We've simply got to buckle down and get things done. I'll write to these furniture people to-night. You scout around and see if you can find a vacant store. It's got to be on Washington Avenue. I heard to-day that the italian who runs the bootblack and hat cleaning place is going to get out. It is a small store, but it would be big enough for us. Look that up to-morrow."

"Suppose we can't find a store?" Bert asked anxiously.

Sam's voice had the earnest tone of a prophet who has seei a vision. "Never admit defeat. To think of failure is to fail."

Bert felt that the clerk was quoting from the

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 book. It sounded good, but he didn't see how it solved the problem of finding a place in which to establish and rear a young and promising industry.

As he opened the door of his home, a murmur of voices ceased in the dining room. He knew, instinctively, that his father and mother had been talking about him. When he entered the dining room his father was reading a newspaper—a stern man who did not invite conversation. Bert lingered a while, uncomfortable and constrained, and went off to bed. After a few minutes his mother followed him upstairs.

"Bert, are you sure this thing you have planned to do is a wise move?"

"Pop's been talking to you," he challenged.

"Well, it does seem a little improbable."

"Pop always claimed that Sam had a good business head. Didn't he? If he had a good head yesterday he ought to have a good head to-day."

"But this is different. Walking straight in the path that somebody else has cleared is one thing; clearing your own, solving all your own troubles, is another. What your father really meant was that Sam showed great promise."

"Funny he never said it that way, though, until now."

Mrs. Quinby sighed. "There's no use arguing with you, Bert. You always did give more heed to what somebody outside told you." She was si-

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 lent a moment. "Be careful," she said, and started downstairs.

"Mom!" He called her back. "Is pop very mad?"

"Yes," she said, and was gone.

"Wait until he sees me getting my twenty-five dollars every week," Bert reflected optimistically, and dropped into slumber.

In the morning, thoroughly alive to the responsibility and importance of his errand, he set out to find an acceptable store. He had an idea that he would ask the bootblack if he were really to quit business, but it was not necessary to ask. A sign, freshly pasted on the window, announced to all and sundry that the place was to let, and carried the invitation to "see F. L. Plecktoff, real estate and insurance."

A girl in the real estate office told Bert that Mr. Plecktoff had gone to the city and would not be back until four o'clock. At the appointed hour he returned to the office.

"Mr. Plecktoff just telephoned," the girl told him. "He has been detained. He won't be here until seven o'clock."

At seven o'clock Bert was back again. This time Mr. Plecktoff was there, a thin little wisp of man, bald and bilious, with a habit of leaning back in his chair and drumming—his fingers on his legs. If he was surprised at a boy asking the rental of a store he did not show it. . . many strange

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 things come under the observation of a real estate agent.

"Twenty-five dollars a month," he said. "The present tenant will move out in about five days. You can have what amounts to immediate possession. I'll accept a deposit now."

Bert had less than one dollar in his pocket. It seemed to him, even in his inexperience, that to admit to such a fact would make this visit ludicrous.

"I'll have to talk to my partner," he said.

"The store may be taken when you get back," Mr. Plecktoff said, and saw that the shot went home. "A man was in to see me about the place early this morning. I'm expecting him back any moment. You had better take it quickly if you want it."

Bert grew cold with the thought of losing this opportunity and for a moment played with the wild idea of offering the dollar for an option until nine o'clock. But the smallness of the sum held him back.

"I'll have to see my partner," he repeated.

"You won't find another small store along Washington Avenue," Mr. Plecktoff prodded, pressing his advantage. "If I had only five dollars," Bert thought, and left abruptly lest he be tempted, if he stayed, to reveal the meagerness of his immediate resources.

No candy store meeting to-night; time was too

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 precious. He waited near his father's place. Would that other man reach Mr. Plecktoff's before he and Sam had a chance to get there? What would they do if the store was taken? Would they be able to find another place in which to establish themselves? Twice he walked back to the real estate office, and sighed with relief to find nobody there. At nine o'clock he was still keeping his vigil for Sam, and when the clerk appeared he caught his arm.

"Hurry," he said. "I've found our store, but somebody else is hot after it and we may be too late."

Sam quickened his pace. "I saw Plecktoff's sign in the window at noon. Went around to see him, but he wasn't there. Who told you somebody else was after it?"

"Mr. Plecktoff."

"Oh!" Sam's stride lessened. "I told his clerk I was interested; I'm the other man. That's an old game with real estate men, trying to rush you into biting on what they have. Did he tell you the rent?"

"Twenty-five dollars a month."

"Huh! Well, we'll see. Maybe we can do better than that. Pay as little as you can and sell for all you can get. That's business."

They came to the real estate office, and Sam led the way inside. Mr. Plecktoff gave Bert an unemotional glance. He seemed to pick Sam as

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 the leader of the expedition, and gave that young man his attention.

"My partner has been telling me about the store," Sam began boldly. "It isn't exactly what we want, but we might be able to use it. If we take the place, when does the rent start?"

"The day the store becomes vacant." Mr. Plecktoff was watching him narrowly.

"But we won't be able to start business for three weeks. We'll pay rent from the first of next month."

The real estate agent's fingers tapped his knees faster. "Impossible! I can't have one of my properties bringing in no revenue. I must pay taxes and I must make a living."

"And we can't pay rent for a store until it brings us a revenue. We haven't the capital," Sam said bluntly. "Do we pay from the first of next month?"

"I cannot do it."

"Then we can't do business. We'll look around for something else. If we can find a better bargain we'll take that. If not, we'll come back here just before we're ready to open."

"A man was in to-day inquiring about that store. If you wait you'll lose it."

"Oh, no, I won't," said Sam. "I was the one who was asking about it. I wasn't sure whether my partner would be in to see you."

Mr. Plecktoff's expression showed that some of

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 the wind had been knocked from his sails. And yet he still had one trump card.

"You won't find another store on Washington Avenue," he said with thin triumph.

"We may decide to take a couple of rooms above a store," Sam said carelessly.

Mr. Plecktoff's fingers began to beat a furious rhythm, showing that he was agitated. It might be that these queer visitors might rent rooms. And then what? He had known of stores on the avenue to remain idle a year at a stretch. Better a loss of three weeks than a loss of twelve months.

"My friend," he said with forced cordiality, "on second thought I agree to your proposition. We must make concessions to those who, just starting, have their way before them. We will make a contract for one year, at twenty-five dollars a month. . . ."

"Twenty-five?" Sam broke in, and swung around to Bert. "You told me twenty." Then, without waiting for a reply, he was back again facing Mr. Plecktoff. "We can't afford any twenty-five dollars."

Bert, for a moment bewildered, suddenly began to see light. Sam, by devious wiles and pretensions, was trying to beat down the price. The game was new to Bert, and not at all to his liking. To his boyishly clean nature it smacked a bit of fraud. Sam, in appealing to him, had made him a

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 party to it. Yet he lacked the courage to object, afraid that objection might sum him up as a weak and pitiful being lacking in daring.

He listened, fascinated for all his squeamishness, to the boldness of Sam's attack; and presently a tinge of admiration for the clerk's shrewdness grew upon him. For it was apparent that Sam was holding his own with this real estate man who was probably a veteran of hundreds of such conflicts. Mr. Plecktoff scoffed and cajoled, sneered and argued, grew cold and became wheedling, but all to no purpose. Suddenly Sam shifted the battle ground.

"How about a coat of paint?" he demanded.

Mr. Plecktoff bristled. "What about it?"

"It has to be freshened with a coat of paint. Who's going to pay for that?"

"The tenant."

"Not this tenant. We're renting something we can use, not something we've got to doctor. Here; I'll meet you halfway. You paint the store and we'll pay you twenty-two dollars and a half a month."

"Twenty-four," said Mr. Plecktoff.

"Twenty-three," said Sam. "I can't stand here all night. Take it or leave it." He turned toward the door.

"No wonder," Mr. Plecktoff said feelingly, "that landlords die in poorhouses. Twenty-three dollars, then, and a deposit now. If you want the

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 place give me no promises, but put something down. Money talks."

"Put it in writing," said Sam.

The paper was prepared and signed. The partners of The Shoppers' Service came out into a Washington Avenue that was dark and deserted, for most of the stores were closed.

"Well," Sam said with satisfaction, "that saves us some money. I was sure we'd pay twenty-five dollars, and I expected we'd have to paint the place ourselves. You got to play a sharp hand to get anything out of those fellows."

Bert had an idea that "sharpness" was not the right word, but he did not argue the point.

"How did I do it?" the clerk asked; "good?" Abruptly struck by another thought he changed the conversation without waiting for an answer. "Don't forget that the company owes me the five dollars I paid as a deposit."

The morrow brought, not the catalogue Sam had written for, but several mimeographed sheets describing goods and prices. Sitting in the ice cream parlor, they checked the list, and their faces fell.

"Is it going to cost that much?" Bert asked faintly.

As usual, it was Sam who saw the way out. "We won't order six tables," he said; "we'll get four. Then we'll need only eight chairs instead of twelve. If we find business good we can easily

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 order more. It's time we put up our money. I'll meet you during my lunch hour to-morrow and we'll go to the bank."

So next day Bert withdrew his funds, and then he and Sam filled out a new account card and pushed it through a grilled window to a cashier who viewed them curiously.

"Shoppers' Service," he read, and looked at them again. "What is it?"

"A business," Sam said shortly.

The cashier frowned. "You realize that no money can be withdrawn unless you both sign?"

"That's how I want it," said Sam.

The cashier proceeded to enter their account. When they came out of the bank Bert asked:

"Who's going to mind the bank book?"

"You take it," said Sam. "I won't have to worry. You can't draw anything without my signature. That's business."

It might be business, but the more Bert thought about the remark the queerer it seemed.

Every day there was something to buy, and everything cost more than they had expected to pay. The bootblack moved out, the painters came in, stayed a while and went their way, and then crates, and packages and bundles began to arrive. Bert scrubbed the floor boards, found two small rugs in the attic, begged them from his mother, and brought them to the store. Sam picked up a small counter in the town, and bought

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 a second-hand gas stove that he saw advertised in the local newspaper. When the tables and chairs were set out on the rugs the place began to assume dimensions and proportions.

A curtain was stretched across the store three-quarters way back, and behind this they placed the stove, and the ice box, and the dishes. The curtain was an extra expense. . . they had not expected to buy one. But even Bert could see that the proprieties demanded that the operation of cookirig be hidden from the front of the store.

"When do we begin to get our members?" he asked, "at fifty cents each?" The money was going, out so fast that he had begun to worry. He wanted to see some cash begin to come in.

The question brought to light the fact that there was still more money to spend.

"We've got to let the public know we're in business and what our business is," Sam said. "We've got to have a sign man put our name on the window, and we've got to see that a letter gets to every house in the good part of town. Then, when we go out asking for subscribers, we won't have to explain the whole business at every door."

Sam wrote the copy for the letter and delivered it to a local printer. After grave discussion they decided that mailing the letters would be too expensive.

"We'll put each letter in an envelope that will command attention," Sam said, "and shove them

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 under doorways or drop them in letter boxes."

"Maybe they won't read them," Bert observed dubiously. "Put something on the envelope that will catch their eyes," said Sam. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, thought a moment, and wrote:

"All women are shoppers," he stated, "and they all want to save money. This will get them."

The printing was delivered, and for six hours Bert opened gates and climbed porch steps with The Shoppers' Service first appeal. That day he discovered that there were more miles of highway in Springham than he had ever dreamed existed. Footsore and weary he came back to the store to find Bill Harrison and Dolf Muller waiting on the sidewalk.

"You're not starting a business, are you?" Bill demanded.

Bert, completely absorbed in his new occupation, had dropped away from his friends. "Who told you?" he wanted to know.

"Tom Woods. I was out there yesterday."

Bert did not answer at once. It was apparent that to these two, at least, he had stepped out of the ordinary groove of accepted fact and conduct, that he was a person apart, and he gloried in his

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 moment of conquest. Dolf misinterpreted his silence.

"I knew it was a lie," he said triumphantly.

"It's true," Bert said; "we open the store Saturday week."

Dolf's face fell. Bert took a key from his pocket, turned it in the lock, and let them into the store. Bill, after a quick survey, stood leaning against the counter, grave and silent. Dolf went about poking into corners.

"What are you going to sell?" he asked at last.

Bert told them of Sam's idea, showed them the printed letters, and enlarged upon his hopes. Bill read a letter gravely, folded it, and put it back in its envelope. Dolf was frankly scornful.

"It's a punk idea," he sniffed. "The only thing to sell is something people have to have—clothes, and bread and cake, and meat and groceries. We buy one paper every day. Why should we pay fifty cents a month to look at other papers? Why, often my father has time only to look at the funny page. If we had three papers they'd be scattered all over the house and my mother'd be throwing them out."

"We don't deliver the papers," Bert said; "we keep them here."

"That's worse," Dolf said positively. "Catch my mother getting all dressed up just to come out and look at a newspaper."

"Dolf," Bill drawled, "you really ought to come

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 out next year and try for the athletic team."

"Eh?" Dolf started, and squirmed his fat neck out of the tight clutch of his collar. "Why?"

"Because you could beat everybody at the coldwater throw. You must have practiced it a lot."

Dolf sniffed, sulked, and soon departed. It was the usual order of his going whenever the barb of criticism touched him.

Bert turned to the friend who remained. "What do you think of it, Bill?"

"I don't know. Dolf is right in a way . . . you're not selling something that people must have. You're selling what I think is called service. People can't get along without telephones any more—telephone service is too convenient. Maybe, if people find what you have is a big help, they'll never want to be without that, either."

"That's what Sam says," Bert cried, and felt his spirits soar. "How are you coming on with your drawing?"

Bill's eyes glowed. "Tom Woods sent some of my things to an artist in Philadelphia and asked him what he thought of them. The artist says they're promising: that I'm not a bad draughtsman and that I've got a sense of color values. Oh, I'll be doing the pictures for Tom Woods' books some day."

"That's great," said Bert, and meant it. "How do your folks feel about it?"

"All right now. At first my father didn't think

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 much of it, but he's changed around. I think he went out and had a talk with Tom Woods. I'm not sure, but I think so."

After Bill had gone, Bert stood in thought beside the counter. Well, he wasn't getting any encouragement at home. Between him and his father there was a sort of formal neutrality. From his mother he had learned that a new clerk had been engaged. The clerk's name was Matthew Kirby and, putting two and two together, the boy had arrived at the conclusion that no surprising gifts were expected of the newcomer. Matthew Kirby had been accepted, in a sort of resignation, as the best that the moment offered. Bert was sorry for that; his own short experience had given him a taste of some of business's sharp dif—iculties. But he was sorrier still that, at the supper table, prudence closed his lips upon matters that lay close to his heart. It would have meant so much if he could have talked over his problems as he had once discussed the rocks and reefs of his school books.

"Oh, well," he said, rousing himself, "I won't be the first fellow who has had to fight his own way out." The thought, at least, gave him a sense of independence. "To-morrow Sam finishes with my father and then we'll make things hum."

That night the partners decided not to begin the canvas for members until Monday.

"If they join The Shoppers' Service too soon,"

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 St. Michael and St. George in the side lights. St. Michael has at his feet "the great dragon, that old serpent, called the devil and satan." (Rev. xxii, 7-9.) St. George is also here represented with his vanquished dragon, which he overcame, the legend says, by the sign of the Cross. He was born in Cappadocia of Christian parents, became an officer of high rank in the Imperial army, and is said to have torn down from the Church doors of Nicomedia Diocletian's edicts against the Christians. He suffered martyrdom about 303. He is said to have appeared with his Red Cross to help the Crusaders, and at the Synod of Oxford in 1222 was acknowledged as the Patron Saint of England, in the place of Edward the Confessor. St. George's Red Cross has thus its place on our national flag.

The tracery of these three windows is filled with figures of Saints, some of whom may he easily recognised by their usual emblems: St. Lucy, St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, St. Prisca, St. Barbara, St. Leonard, St. Agatha, St. Catharine, &c.

There are a few Tablets on the West Wall to various members of the Nichols family of Cinder-hill, and one to the late Giles Shaw of Barnby Green, who died in 1854, and his wife who died in 1865.

It will be noticed in the Roof Decoration that part of the Epistle for All Saints' Day is read on the west sides of the three tie-beams: "I beheld, and lo! a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreda, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands." (Rev. vii, 9.) On the sides facing east are these three verses from the Gospel for All Saints' Day" (St. Matt. v.): "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God;" "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God;" "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

The former Aisle of 1826 will be referred to in the account of the Registers, &c.

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 Sam said thoughtfully, "they'll have a chance to forget it before we open. We can cover all our territory in four days. We've got to get our name on the window, but that can be done any time next week."

So there would be nothing to hold Bert to the store to-morrow. Suddenly he found himself glad of the respite. The work of preparing for the opening had fallen largely on his shoulders. . . . Sam could not get away during the day. . . and he was tired. He did not ask himself what he would do with this unexpected holiday. He knew. Something deep within him urged him to ride out in the country and see the Butterfly Man.

He planned an early start, but the plan miscarried. As he mounted his bicycle at the curb in front of his house and pushed away, the bellowing voice of Peg Scudder halted his progress.

"Hey! Blast you, there, you Quinby, where's your ears?"

Bert halted. "What do you want?"

"I got a letter for you from the other fellow. And don't give me any snippy talk. I'm a hard man when I get going, and I might take a notion to larrup you."

Bert had come to learn that Peg's talk was largely bluster. "Give me the letter," he said, and broke the seal and read:

I got wind this morning that Mr. Scudder does window lettering. The regulat sign painter wants twelve

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 dollars, but Mr. Scudder will do it for five dollars. It may not be a perfect job, but it will save us seven dollars. Let him do the job at once, and then it's out of the way. .

Bert viewed, with equal disfavor, both the letter and its bearer. His desire to ride out into the country became doubly keen now that his plan had been set aside. Yet seven dollars. . . . He remembered having heard his father say that a business man was a slave to his business. There was some truth to it. He crumpled the letter impatiently.

"When can you start?" he asked.

Peg shifted his crutch. "Where's the place? That little hole in the wall on the avenue?"

"That's our store."

"Blast me, but you're getting stuck-up, ain't you? I've seen kids like you before. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

Peg was as good as his word. He came stumping down the avenue to the minute, a can of paint swinging at his side, brushes in his hip pocket, his wide open shirt showing his suspenders, and his tawny beard rioting in fierce disorder. He wasted little time chalking in the letters, and then set to work with the brushes. At ten o'clock he halted.

"Hey, you!" he called.

Bert came to the door.

"I want two dollars now."

"What do you want it for?"

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 "Blast me, but you're a nosey kid! What difference does it make what I want it for? Do I have to tell you my private affairs? Maybe I want it to buy a ticket to London and maybe I don't. Just pony up two dollars and ask no questions, and don't forget there'll be three dollars more coming to me when I finish."

Bert was not sure about the ethics of paying for a job before it was finished, but he paid rather than argue. Peg laid his brush across the can and hobbled down the street. Twenty minutes later he was back, a suspicious odor on his breath and a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth. Whatever had transpired while he was away had evidently put him in a bad humor, for he growled and grumbled as he plied his brush.

The hands of Bert's watch crawled past eleven o'clock. It was apparent that Peg was nearing the end of his labors. Bert walked out into the street, studied the lettering and made a grimace. Well, it saved seven dollars, anyway.

"What's the matter with you?" Peg demanded truculently. "Don't you like it?"

"It will do. What time will you finish?"

"About noon. So it will do! What did you expect for five dollars, an oil painting? Maybe you'd like it in gold leaf. Give a kid a few dollars and he thinks he's quality and sasses his betters. Blast me, in my day a youngster knew his place and kept it."

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 Bert went into the store. If he could be off by noon he could be at the Butterfly Man's at two o'clock and the day would be saved. When the job was finished he gave Peg the remaining three dollars, demanded a receipt, stuck it in his pocket and locked the store door. Ten minutes later he had left Springham behind.

He found Tom Woods at his bench mounting specimens for a high school museum in another part of the state. There was a constraint about the meeting, and Bert grew ill at ease. In the past he had been content in this room to sit back relaxed, his body at ease, his soul tranquil under the atmosphere of peace and understanding. To-day he stirred restlessly. The Butterfly Man finished, stood two boards of mounted insects against the wall, and absently filled his pipe.

"Bill Harrison was out yesterday," he said.

Bert, in a flash of vision, saw what lay behind the sentence. Bill had told of his visit to the store. A nameless urge had sent him on this visit, but the store was the one topic he wished to avoid. He tried to steer the subject into safer channels.

"Bill was telling me about that letter from the artist!"

The man's voice brightened. "Good ol' Bill. I was scared stiff after it came; afraid I had made a mistake in showing it to him. But I wanted to give him something to hang a hope on. I was afraid he'd get puffed up. 'I suppose you think

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 you're an artist,' I said, watching to see how he'd take it. 'Yes,' he said, 'just the way a drop of water thinks it's a river.' Oh, there's something solid about Bill. Nobody's going to stampede him."

Bert nodded, and sat there silent. That strange restlessness was on him again. The man fell to whistling a tune, and broke it off abruptly.

"Bill tells me, Bert, that you're in this thing."

"Yes, sir. The store opens a week from to-day."

"What does your father think of it?"

"He's sore."

"I thought he would be," said the Butterfly Maan, and silence came again.

Never had a visit to this place of enchantment gone so dismally. Bert said, after a time, that he thought he had better make a break for home. The Butterfly Man roused himself.

"I think I'll run in to Springham and see how much the town has grown. I'll get the car and drive you in. We can put your bicycle in the rear."

Bert gave a feeble grin. The plot was transparent. He was not surprised when, as they ran into the town, the man said:

"Suppose you give me a look at your store. It may be an age before I come to Springham again, and I'd like to get a look at it while I'm here."

So Bert unlocked the door and turned on the

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 lights. Dolf Muller had pried and poked into every corner; Tom. Woods merely sat on the counter and let his eyes rove. His face was inscrutable.

"Rather cozy," he said, and made no other comment. Bert was disappointed and nettled. With clouded face he saw Tom Woods swing down from the counter. He followed him out to the car. The man started the engine and let it idle.

"Bert."

"Yes, sir."

"Will you make me a promise?"

The boy stared at him.

"If anything queer turns up in your business will you promise me to go to your father?"

"Yes, sir."

The man held out his hand. "Shake on it. Good luck."

Those last two words took the sting out of the whole day.

Monday the great adventure started. Instead of struggling alone, Bert found a co-worker at his elbow: and the companionship was warm and stimulating. He had thought that, early in the morning, they would begin the siege of the town in search of members for the Service. But Sam had not read his book of business success for nothing.

"The first thing," he said, "is to lay out a strong, sure-fire selling talk. We can't go out and

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 babble; we must say something. When we ring the bell and a woman opens the door, we must interest her before she can close it. Once her interest is caught the rest should be easy. 'Madam,' we say, 'I am here to save you money.' Money is a magic word. She'll listen, and then we'll tell her how it's done."

All morning they rehearsed imaginary front-door interviews. At noon Bert was sure that he would neither stammer nor falter. He hastened home, ate a hurried meal, and was off to storm the citadel.

The first he rang brought no immediate response. He rang again. The door opened.

"Madam—" he began.

A child, not a woman, stood within the hall. He was not prepared to be greeted by little girls and his set talk was utterly routed from his mind.

"Mother," the child piped, "says she has all the soaps, and mops, and peeling knives she needs." The door closed.

Bert went down the steps with flushed cheeks. He had been taken for a peddlar—he who had come with a soaring idea of selling a useful service. His pride suffered a fall from which it did not recover all the afternoon.

By five o'clock he found that women were beginning to prepare the evening meal and had no time to waste on salesmen. He came back to the

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 office discouraged and disillusioned. Sam was there, writing names into a book.

"What luck?" he asked.

"Only three."

"I got twelve. I didn't figure you were going to get many the first day. You've got to learn salesmanship. To-morrow you'll do better."

Bert's heart warmed toward his partner. But Sam was not showing a rare magnanimity. The business book had warned him not to expect too much from-new men and not to discourage a beginner with sharp criticism. He had read that in the chapter headed "How the Executive Can Get the Most Out of His Force."

Sam's prediction proved true. On the morrow Bert did better but his total for the day was only five. It was nothing to boast about. By Friday night the entire town had been canvassed, and seventy-eight customers were on the books. That meant a membership fee of $39 a month.

It wasn't much. Even Sam admitted that. But the clerk insisted stoutly that it was a start.

"We can't expect a paying business over night," he said. "The public doesn't really know us yet. We must make our service so good that one woman will tell another. And don't forget we're going to sell food at those tables, and we're going to sell it to-morrow."

Bert was encouraged. "I'll be down early in the morning."

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 "We'll both be down early," said Sam. "Some of these women may be going down on early trains and we want to be here when they stop to see the advertisements."

But it was ten o'clock next day before the first woman came in to see what the Shoppers' Service had to offer, and Bert had a sneaking idea that she came in out of curiosity.

At noon, when he came home to eat, his mother studied his face.

"How did it go, Bert?"

"Not so good. Sam says we can't expect much at the start."

"Your father's opening day was a disappointment." It was the first word of encouragement that he had received at home, and he looked at his mother gratefully.

A sprinkle of patrons came in during the afternoon, and he copied Sam's manner of cordiality and confidence. Once there were four women in the place at once, and his heart began to flutter with the hope that the rush had started at last. But this sudden burst of trade was only a flurry, and half an hour later the tables were vacant again. He wanted to count the money in the drawer behind the counter, but that would have seemed like a sign of weakness. He restrained his impatience.

"What's that Mr. Clud doing around here?" Sam asked suddenly.

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 Bert, taking a soiled cloth from a table, swung around. "Where? I haven't seen him."

"He just walked away. That's the third time he's been looking in our window. What's the matter with him?"

Bert did not know. Bill Harrison had told him that Mr. Clud had been snooping around the doorway. He was mystified.

"He can't have much business to attend to," Sam said irritably, "if he's got to come around trying to mind ours. The next time he does it I'll ask him what he wants."

But Old Man Clud did not appear at the window again.

The day grew dark and they turned on the lights.

"Going home for supper?" Sam asked.

"Sure." Bert looked at him in surprise. "Why?"

"There's some of this stuff we won't sell to-day. It may not keep over Sunday. We might as well eat it ourself."

Not wishing to be at a table should a customer enter, they ate in the rear, setting their plates on the three-burner gas stove. Bert washed the dishes, put them away and came down to the door. Washington Avenue was filled with Saturday night shoppers. Back and forth they went along the sidewalk, each one a potential spender of cash. Now and then somebody came in, but the waits in

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 between grew dismal. At eight o'clock the tide of trade was at its height. By nine o'clock it had dwindled perceptibly. Half an hour later some of the stores began to turn out rear lights.

"Might as well call it a day," said Sam.

They counted the receipts—ten dollars and five cents—and entered the amount in a ledger. Probably not more than three dollars of it was profit. And against that meager sum stood rent, light, telephone, the cost of the newspapers and magazines that they would have to buy. Bert felt a stab of discouragement that sickened him. It was Sam who locked the door.

"We've got to find a way to get more interest into this," he said. It was his first confession of failure. "I'll think about it over Sunday. If every business that didn't make a ten-strike right at the start gave up there wouldn't be any business at all."

Bert walked toward home alone. Before he had gone half a block he was conscious of short, quick footsteps in his rear, the wheeze of an asthmatic breathing and a panting call of his name.

"Mr. Quinby! Just a moment, if you please, Mr. Quinby."

It was Old Man Clud, sweating profusely, his coat buttoned tight to his fat, colorless throat though the night was hot. Bert waited.

"So you have gone in business, my young friend.

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 Following in your worthy father's footsteps. You are a fine, bright lad; I always said so. I can see success weaving a web around you. Oh, I have been watching; I am a busy man but I have eyes. From early morning until late at night I have seen you at your labors and I have said to myself. 'There is a young man who will go far.' Believe me, I have your interest at heart, and if you ever need a friend do not hesitate to come to me. There is such a thing, in business, as needing a friend."

He pressed something into Bert's hand and was gone, wheezing and panting and sweating his unhealthy sweat.

Bert looked at his hand and found a card there. He read it:

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HE realization came to Bert, with over whelming poignancy, that this was not the home-coming he had visioned. His imagination had pictured a long day of busy trade, a jubilant counting of receipts, and a triumphant departure from the scene of victory.

In contrast his present bearing was leaden and dull. After Mr. Clud had left him, he went slowly along the avenue. He was too discouraged to think. He dared not think. For, stifle it though he tried, an inner voice kept whispering that perhaps, after all, he had made a mistake, that Tom Woods and his father had been right.

And so he came to that part of the thoroughfare occupied by his father's store. Mr. Quinby, his back turned to the street, was just locking the door. Bert could have slipped past. He half made the motion, only to stop. And then his father faced around, and saw him, and paused before slipping the key into his pocket.

"Hello," he said half-doubtfully. Then, because the moment plainly demanded something more than this: "Been waiting?"

"No, sir; I just came along."

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 "Oh!" They walked on together, father and son by the blood tie, but as far apart as the poles in their understanding of each other.

This meeting, too, was far from the pattern of Bert's dreams. As he had seen it in imagination, his was to be the part of one who had conquered and had proven his case, and his father's that of one who was forced to give honest credit and admiration. He sighed.

"Tired?" Mr. Quinby asked without warmth.

"Yes, sir."

"A night's sleep will fix you up. How was business?"

"Good." The boy would have bitten off his tongue before he would have confessed otherwise.

His father glanced at him sharply, but the darkness hid whatever of the bitter truth his face would have shown. They came to the house, and were almost at the door, before Mr. Quinby spoke again.

"Who's holding the money?"

"Why, it's in the bank."

"I know that; the bank teller told me—I mean who's holding the book?"

"I am. We can't draw money unless we both sign."

"That was Sam's idea."

"Yes, sir."

"Careful Sam," said the man, and passed inside. As Bert undressed he thought that he had

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 never before heard his father speak of his former clerk in just that tone.

The morning brought him a return of courage. After all, fortune was too much to expect at one stroke. He attended church, went for a long walk, and came back to dinner in a more cheerful frame of mind. There were signs that he had learned to read, and one of these was his father's face. Just now his father's mouth told him that something was again amiss. After dinner Mr. Quinby followed him out of the dining room.

"Bert, what's this? I found it in the hall upstairs."

It was Old Man Clud's card.

"He gave it to me last night," the boy said.

"Why did he give it to you?"

"I don't know; he forced it into my hand."

"Have you done any business with this man?"

"No, sir."

Mr. Quinby, with an angry twist of his hands, tore the card into pieces. "The vultures gather before the feast," he exclaimed.

Bert, from his reading, knew something of the habits of vultures. His cheeks flushed. "You're not very encouraging," he said.

This time it was the man who flushed. "I shouldn't have said that, Bert. But keep away from Clud. Mind that. Take a word of advice for once in your life. Keep away from Clud."

Next day, when Bert reached the store, Sam

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 was there ahead of him, a new scheme bubbling in his fertile brain.

"Every great business success in America," he said wisely, "has been built out of the ashes of a failure or a near-failure. In most cases the original plan was good . . . all it needed was one more touch to put it across. The eye that sees to-morrow is always a jump ahead of the eye that sees only to-day. What did you do yesterday?"

"I took a walk."

"I sat home and tried to find ways to improve the business. We can't wait for people to come in here and look over our newspaper files. We've got to bring the papers to them."

"Deliver papers to everybody?" Bert cried, aghast. "That would cost more than fifty cents a week for each subscriber."

"No; no. I'm going to go out to-day and to-morrow and call on everybody we've signed up. I'm going to ask every woman if there's anything she's particularly interested in buying. Suppose some one wants a dining room table. I make a note of that. I get here early in the morning and go through the papers. If there are any dining room table bargains I telephone her and tell her what is offered, the store and the price. What's going to happen after we do that once or twice?"

Bert shook his head.

"Oh, use your imagination," Sam said impatiently. "She's going to be so tickled she'll tell all

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 her friends, and they'll send in their half-dollars a month for a Service membership. It isn't all a question of what you sell. It's how you sell it."

It needed no argument to convince Bert that the plan was good. The complexion of his fortunes changed, and he dusted the tables and polished the counter with a light heart. That day he was all alone in the store and, though trade was distressingly dull, his courage never once fell from its high notch.

Noon was on him before he knew it. He did not want to close the store lest some customer, arriving and finding the door locked, would depart dissatisfied and irritated. He telephoned his mother that he would not be home for dinner, opened a can of sardines, and ate once more with the gas stove as his table. At two o'clock Bill Harrison stumped in and presented him with a painting of a Purple Emperor on the wing.

"I thought you'd like to have it hang in your bedroom," Bill said shyly.

Bert was astounded at the progress his friend had made. The picture was unmistakably boyish, but the drawing was boldly executed and the coloring did not suggest indecision or uncertainty. The thing had life.

"I'm going to frame it," Bert said impulsively. "And some day, when you're famous, it will be the best picture in the house."

Bill grinned. "Rave on," he said. "You're

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262 where $$c$$ is a constant with the values $1.88$, $1.58$, and $$1.37$$ respectively for the three cases. In this way we find the following corrected values which represent the variation of temperature, if the solid ground changes its temperature 1° C. in consequence of a variation of $$\beta$$ as calculated by means of.

If we now assume as a mean for the whole earth $$\text{K}=1$$ and $$\text{W}=1$$, we get $$\beta=0.785$$, and taking the clouded part to be 52.5 p. c. and the clouds to have a height of 2000 metres, further assuming the unclouded remainder of the earth's surface to consist equally of land and water, we find as average variation of temperature or very nearly the same effect as we may calculate directly from the. On this ground I have used the simpler formula.

In the foregoing I have remarked that according to my estimation the air is less transparent for dark heat than on Langley's estimate and nearly in the proportion 37.2 : 44, How great an influence this difference may exercise is very easily calculated with the help of or. According to Langley's valuation, the effect should be nearly 15 p. c. greater than according to mine. Now I think that my estimate agrees better with the great absorption that Langley has found for heat from terrestrial radiating bodies (see p. ), and in all circumstances I have preferred to slightly underestimate than to overrate the effect in question.


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 looking years ahead, but I like to hear you say it. Tom Woods came to my house after he left here Saturday. He asked me to give you a message. He wants you to write him and let him know how things are going."

Bert wrote that afternoon.

At five o'clock Sam came back to the store, jubilant.

"It went over big," he reported. "I signed up five new ones. I landed an old friend of yours."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Busher."

Bert made a grimace.

"She put you on the fire," Sam continued, "and roasted you to a turn. She said you were an impertinent young whipper-snapper. I had a job smoothing her out and getting her subscription. She's got one of those high-and-mighty ways of talking that would get under anybody's skin; but when you're in business you've got to smile and give soft answers. You can't insult a person to

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 day and have him give you his trade to-morrow."

"I'd like to tell her a few things," Bert said hotly.

"Here, now," Sam cried in alarm; "none of that. If she ever calls up and you answer the telephone, be as sweet as honey. She's one of our subscribers and her half-dollar is as good as anybody else's."

"I guess I've got sense enough to try to hold our trade," Bert said stiffly. For the first time, he thought, he had seen an assumption of superiority on Sam's part, and he did not like it. He was willing to admit, to himself, that Sam was the strength of the partnership, but he objected to Sam rubbing that truth in.

Saturday night, when they balanced the books for the second time, the complete receipts for the week ran fifty-two dollars, and their expenses had been forty dollars. Bert gave a gurgle of delight.

"Twelve dollars profit. Not so bad, Sam. We're off now, aren't we?"

Sam looked at him queerly. "Profit? There's no profit. Where are you leaving our drawing accounts? Your father takes so much out of his business every week to live on, doesn't he?"

"Why . . . I suppose so."

"Do you think I can live on air? I've got to have a drawing account. I've got to pay board, and laundry bills, and restaurant checks, and my clothes won't last forever. Where's the money

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 coming from if it doesn't come out of the work I do? Even if your father's business wasn't profitable he'd have to draw out money every week to support his family."

The logic of the situation was all with Sam. "How much are you going to draw?" Bert asked weakly.

"Ten dollars a week. That means you draw five dollars every Saturday. Two-thirds of the weekly account for me; one-third for you."

Bert paid Sam his money and took his own share. The amount to be deposited on Monday had shrunk to thirty-seven dollars.

"We . . . we lost money on the week's business," he said.

"We'll be showing a profit within two more weeks," Sam said confidently.

But, as the weeks passed, each Monday morning saw less money deposited than had been spent the week before. Slowly, but inexorably, the account of The Shoppers' Service at the bank grew slimmer and slimmer.

In September the high school reopened, and Bert went back for his second year. The call went out for football candidates, but he did not respond—he had no time for athletics. Sam was coming to the store very early each morning, going through the newspapers and telephoning prices to customers so that they might take an early train to the city. In the afternoon, as soon as classes

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 were over, Bert hurried over to Washington Avenue and relieved him. And then Sam went home, sometimes to catch up with needed sleep, sometimes to rack his brain for new ways in which to make the business prosper.

He was working with a fervor and a concentration worthy of a better cause. Eleven hours a day in the store was no uncommon occurrence, nor was it unusual for him to telephone to thirty subscribers during the course of the morning. Twice he went to the city and tried to induce the big department stores to send him copies of their advertisements before publication so that he would have advance information to give his clients. That the plan failed left him no whit discouraged. The book that had been his business Gospel had pounded into him the philosophy that most men struggle desperately to achieve their business salvation. He was steeled to go on in daily expectation of the turning of the tide. Was he not industrious? Was he not gracious in his dealings with customers? Was he not always awake to catch at opportunity? Did not the book pledge him that these things would bring their reward?

In one way, spending his afternoons and part of each evening at the store shaped Bert's hours to a useful end. The ice cream, coffee and sandwich trade was never brisk and he had never been one to take kindly to dawdling about with his hands in his pockets. And so, to speed the dragging min-

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 utes, he burrowed into his school books and achieved a standing above that which he had ever known before. He had a shrewd suspicion that his father was waiting for a sight of his first monthly report; and it was not without an inward glow of satisfaction that he brought it home. He had scored over ninety in every subject.

"Good work," Mr. Quinby said briefly, and signed the card and gave it back to him.

The boy frowned. It seemed to him that his father had been expecting a bad record and was all set to lay it against the time given to the Washington Avenue partnership. He said as much to his mother.'

"Bert," his mother sighed, "sometimes I think you've got a few broken corners in your brain. You can see so many things from the wrong angle."

"If I had brought home a rotten report I'd have heard more than two words."

"Many more," his mother admitted cheerfully. "What do you do to your bicycle when it is running perfectly?"

"Nothing; I let it alone."

"Certainly; you tinker with it only when it gets out of order."

He felt that he had been worsted in this fling at logic. However, it was not in his stubborn nature to surrender gracefully.

"It looks funny, anyway," he said, and went

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 back to Sam and the store. . . and to his books.

But the time came when he sat before an open page and took no meaning from what was printed there. Tragedy brooded in his eyes. The bank balance had almost reached the vanishing point. Day by day he and Sam had gone deeper into a hole that seemed to have no bottom. As though to mock him, the business had always been on the point of gaining enough to be self-supporting, and had always been failing of the mark. A few more weeks, he knew, and there would be nothing left in the bank, nothing left in the cash drawer. And then. . ..

The picture froze him. The store closed, its little stock of furniture sold, the end of a dream. To be pointed out through the town as one who had had his chance and who could not seize its promise. To have Dolf Muller cry the dashing of his hopes through the corridors of the high school. To have his father tell him that he had done a foolish thing and, like all fools, had lost his money.

To a boy, whose world is just a succession of to-days, a disaster of the moment seems to bear the imprint of a calamity that will never lift. After the things that had happened to have to confess to his father that he had failed. . . . His face settled into a scowl, his jaw set, and suddenly he slammed shut the book and sat there with his fist upon it. He wouldn't give up.

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 Events had made their mark even upon Sam. All at once he had become a bit silent, a bit preoccupied. To-night, after coming back to the store, he stood down near the window looking out at the people passing in the street. After a time he turned and came back slowly to where Bert leaned against the counter.

"Bert," he said frankly, "we're in a bad way. I don't believe in yelling quits before you're licked, but there's such a thing as not trying to fool yourself. We're pretty nearly at our finish."

Bert's heart thumped. "You mean you want to quit?"

"No. I don't mean that. This wouldn't be the time to quit. In two weeks we have Thanksgiving. A month after that we have Christmas, the biggest shopping season of the year. Why, everybody will be searching for bargains then. It's our time to clean up, to establish ourselves, to put the business on a paying basis. You know what the Christmas rush means all during December. Christmas shopping, Christmas crowds. We've got to get through the Christmas season into clear water."

Bert took the bank book from his pocket and opened it.

"I know." Sam pushed it away with an impatient movement of his hand. "There isn't enough there to carry us three more weeks."

"Then what's the idea of talking about lasting

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 until Christmas? You have some kind of plan, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"We might. . . ." Sam looked down at the floor and suddenly lifted his head. "We might borrow."

Slowly Bert closed the bank book and slipped it back into the pocket of his coat. A shiver had trembled through him. . . and had given place to a burning recklessness. Christmas! The crowd. . . everybody spending. If Christmas boomed their business they would be safe. No need to confess failure to anybody. The hope of that swept every other consideration from his mind.

"Every business borrows," Sam was saying. "Your father has notes over at the bank. I helped to keep his books. I know what I'm talking about."

"Could . . . could we get money at the bank?" Bert asked.

"No. You've got to show a bank you're making money; you've got to be what they call 'a safe risk.' I know that, too. I drew up a couple of statements for your father when he went over to borrow. We couldn't possibly show them any profits."

"Where could we get it?"

"Well. . . ." Sam looked down at the floor

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 again. "I've seen you talking to Old Man Clud. He seems to have taken a shine to you."

Back to Bert's vision flashed the night when the money lender had pressed a card into his hand. And his father had said: "Keep away from Clud." But his father had borrowed money, too; Sam was authority for that. If it was all right for his father to risk a loan, why wasn't it all right for him? And the Christmas trade would sweep away the last of their difficulties and bring them into the sunshine of prosperity.

"If we can only get to Christmas we're safe," Sam murmured.

"I'll see Mr. Clud to-night," Bert said with decision.

There was no reason why he should have tried to hide himself in the stream of people eddying through Washington Avenue. Yet he watched the tide of faces apprehensively lest he meet a familiar countenance. Coming opposite the place where Mr. Clud had his office, he paused at the curb. Above the street, the yellow shade of one window was luminous with light save where a dark patch reflected the outline of a fat, squat figure.

With a studied air of indifference, after the fashion of one who wanders with aimless feet, he crossed the roadway. The door that gave in upon the stairway leading up to Mr. Clud's office was ajar. The boy halted and kicked at an imaginary

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 object on the sidewalk. Side-eyed, he glanced up and down the thoroughfare. No one was in sight who might recognize him. With a quick movement he thrust open the door, closed it, and stood within the hall. For a while he remained there motionless as though half-expecting some one to follow him in. But the minutes passed, and no inquisitive person came to inquire into his motives, and his fast-beating heart grew quiet.

His footsteps echoed hollowly as he mounted the stairs. On the first landing he paused. A gas jet cast a pallid illumination; and as the feeble flame flickered the hallway swelled and shrank with moving shadows. Had it been necessary for him to search, he might have found it hard to read the tenants' names. But only one transom showed a light. He walked toward it and knocked.

"Come in, Mr. Quinby," wheezed Mr. Clud's voice.

The invitation gave him a start. Could Old Man Clud see through solid wood? Then common sense came to his rescue. The man must have observed him crossing the street and must have seen him enter the building. The feeling that he had been watched sent a cold thrill along his spine. He turned the knob and pushed open the door.

The room that he entered was almost as bare as a prison cell. Not so much as a mat upon the floor; not a picture upon the faded walls. Up near the window Old Man Clud sat before a small,

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 unpainted table that held two pens, a bottle of ink and a ledger. One other chair stood close beside his own. An old safe stood in a corner. It was a dismal place; and at any other moment, Bert might have thought that he had come upon a dismal errand.

"It is a pleasure to see you," the man said, and caught his breath between the words. Abroad in the daytime his face, his bald dome of head, his folds of fat, seemed gray and unhealthy; here, in the night, they were ghastly with pallor. "How often have I said to myself, 'There goes one I should like to know better.' I had begun to fear you would never pay me a social visit."

"This is a business visit," said Bert.

"Is it, indeed? I'm glad to have you come in regardless of the reason. And how, might I ask, is your business venture progressing?"

"It . . . it's almost all right, but not quite."

Old Man Clud spread apart his pudgy hands with a gesture of sympathy. "How often have I observed that sometimes the most industrious have the hardest time? But courage, my friend. I have heard something of your business. It only needs a firm hand to hold on until the tide turns."

"That's the reason I came to see you," Bert broke in eagerly. "We want to borrow some money."

The money lender beamed. "You have come to the right place. You may recall that I once

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 gave you one of my cards. Why did I do it? Because, my young friend, it gives me pleasure to help the deserving, to succor them in their time of need, to be able to say to myself, when their time of trial is over. There is a business I helped to success.' It is a wonderful privilege to be able to aid young men on their way to their goals."

Whatever misgivings Bert had brought with him into the room vanished. Here was treatment as whole-souled, as generous and as spontaneous, as he could ask.

"I was afraid," he said in a burst of confidence, "that perhaps you might not lend me the money."

"You have misjudged me," Old Man Clud wheezed; "but I am used to being misjudged. Every man who goes far in the world has his defamers. If I should tell you the names of men in this town that I have helped you would sit there and look at me in astonishment. But to me a loan is a matter of sacred confidence, and I never reveal secrets. What I lend and what you borrow is nobody's business but ours. Am I not right?"

"Yes, sir."

"There! I always judged you for a young man of understanding. I am a shrewd judge of character. And how much might this sick business of yours need to make it well?"

"About one hundred and fifty dollars," said Bert.

"You have it already," said Old Man Clud.

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 He stood up and pushed back the chair and, breathing hard, went over to the safe. For several seconds he tinkered with the combination before he swung open the small, heavy door. From a compartment he took bills—fives, and tens and twenties—and counted out a small pile. These he brought back to the table and set before Bert. And then he mopped his face, and sat down, and seemed to have to wait to recover his breath before he could speak again.

"There, my young friend, is your hundred and fifty dollars, and may your business enjoy the prosperity it deserves. Please count it and tell me if the amount is right. Even the best of us make mistakes. And now that you have your money, it becomes a duty to draw up some papers that will be a record of our transaction. Between you and me there would need to be no paper, but life is uncertain. You might die or I might die, and without writing between us, who would there be to say what money had passed between us to-night? I want to be protected, you want to be protected. Is that not right?"

"Yes, sir. My partner and I signed papers before we started our business."

"A fair proceeding, and one that speaks you credit. If you will bear with me just a moment." He opened the ledger, and took out a loose, printed form, and began to fill it in. By and by it was finished, and he pushed it across the table.

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 "And now, my young friend, if you will sign that our negotiations will be at an end."

Bert read the paper haltingly, stumbling over its wordy, legal phraseology. Two of its statements stood out from everything else. One was that the note was payable in sixty days. The other was that he was signing a receipt for $175.

"But you gave me only $150," he cried. "This is wrong."

"No; no. I'm afraid you misunderstand. In a transaction of this kind there is always a bonus—a purchase price, you might say, of the loan. I assure you it is all quite customary."

"But the bank would only charge me interest."

"Then why do you not go to the bank? Ah, my friend, now we are getting at the kernel of the matter. You do not go to the bank because you have no security on which they would advance you anything. That means that, in lending to you, I run a risk. I take a chance. Isit not so? And is it not right that, taking such a chance, I should receive some extra return for the risk I run? Fair, my friend; be fair."

Bert was doing some rapid mental arithmetic. Considering that the loan was to be paid back within two months, Old Man Clud was charging him in excess of 100 per cent interest per annum. The lender seemed to read what was passing in his thoughts.

"Observe," he said, and laid his hand over

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 Bert's. The palm was hot and sweaty. "I could deduct my bonus from you now. I could have you sign the note for $150 and then give you only $125. But I am too much aboveboard for that. You asked for $150 and $150 you are getting. I ask you to pay nothing now; my profit must wait. First I give you your opportunity to win that success that your industry so richly deserves, and after your pockets are full of rich plums, then I take my share. Think of what it means to you: success, prosperity, the placing of your career upon a firm foundation. Is that not something to be weighed against a mere bonus of $25?"

Bert continued to stare at the note. Abruptly Old Man Clud's manner changed and he reached for the money.

"Come; my time is valuable and you delay. You need not take it."

Bert was quick to stay him. "I'll take it," he said huskily.

He signed the note; and while he folded the bills and stowed them safely in his pocket, Old Man Clud brought forth a little red memorandum book, held it close to his chest, and entered a notation of the transaction. There was something uncomfortably furtive and secret about the way he did it. Suddenly Bert remembered having seen that book before—that day in the bank when Old Man Clud had turned away from the teller's window jotting down a record of his deposit. And

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 that day, too, he had held it almost concealed against his chest.

"My young friend," the lender said, "I wish you every business blessing. I expect you to go far. And do not forget that this little note of ours comes due on January 18."

Bert went out, and down the stairs; and only then did he remember that he had promised Tom Woods to go to his father should anything queer turn up in the affairs of The Shoppers' Service.

Sam was standing in the doorway, waiting and watching, when he came back. "How did it go?" the clerk asked eagerly.

Bert laid the money on the counter.

"He gave it to you? Now we can breathe again. This is a life-saver. You signed a note, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"When is it due?"

"In sixty days."

"He wants his money back fast enough, doesn't he? Well, the Christmas trade will take care of that."

"He made me sign a note for $175," said Bert.

Sam gave acry of indignation. "He did? The blood-sucker! And he's always been calling you 'my fine young friend.' That's friendship, isn't it?" The clerk began to pace the store in agitation, and to scratch his head, and to mutter to himself. Presently his steps slowed. "Anyway,"

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 he said more cheerfully, "it's probably the best bargain we could have made. The bank wouldn't have advanced us a single penny."

Bert paid practically no attention to Sam's change of viewpoint. "How about an afternoon off?" he demanded abruptly. "Can you stick it out alone to-morrow?"

"All day?"

"No; I'll be in in the evening."

"Got something important on?"

"I want to take a trip. We have only geometry, gym and a study period to-morrow afternoon. I think I could get excused from geometry . . . I'm pretty well up in that."

"You want to visit that bug hunter, I bet." Sam shook his head. "It beats me what you see in that fellow. All right; go along. You were a rescuer to-day; that's worth an afternoon off. Don't forget to put that $150 in the bank."

In the morning Bert deposited the money and hurried to the high school to interview the teacher who taught geometry. He won his excuse, and before one o'clock was on his way to the cabin and the house of glass. Snow would come any day now; something told him that this would be his last visit of the winter.

The trip was his response to another nameless urge. The partnership had secured needed funds, the Christmas season was sure to be their salvation, and yet a vague uneasiness had begun to mas-

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48 his countrymen. He was born in the year 1067 and belonged to a family that boasted a descent from Ragnar Lodbrok in Denmark, and from the royal race of Ynglings in Upsala, Sweden. From his seventh to his twenty-first year he lived with the noted chieftain Hall of Hawkdale, where he found an opportunity of being fully informed of what had happened in old days in Iceland, while he at the same time heard much about the condition and history of Norway. Thus he acquired a rich treasure of historical knowledge, which he afterward made use of in his books, and which has made his name so famous. Are was also a priest and a chief (Goði) and died in the year 1148. Of his works we possess only his "Icelendingabók" (The Book of the Icelanders), a brief, somewhat dry account of the first settlement of Iceland, and a history of the island down to the time of bishop Gissur, who died in the year 1118. It is of great importance on account of the ample and reliable genealogical data which it contains. It is, however, in fact only an abstract or a revision of a greater Islendingabók also written by him, and which in turn served as the basis for the production of the Landnamabók (Land taking book). This work, unique in the whole field of literature, treats of the discovery and settlement of Iceland. In its present form it is the work of various writers at different times, and tells of the settlers and their families with such fulness and detail, that no less than 3,000 persons and 1,400 places are named. Are's greater Islendingabók also contains a history of the kings of Norway, Denmark and England, the Konungabók (Book of Kings) which later writers frequently cite as authority, especially on account of its excellent chronological materials. The particulars in regard to this work are not known, but Keyser is doubtless


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 ter his spirit. Tom Woods had said to go to his father. Had Tom Woods foreseen the coming of yesterday's event? A dozen questions he could not answer crowded into his brain. He intended to tell the Butterfly Man nothing, to ask him nothing. He just wanted to see him. In some strange way he seemed to know that he would find a sustaining strength merely by sitting in the company of his friend.

His feelings with respect to Old Man Clud were mixed. There had been a subtle type of warning in the lender's last words reminding him of the date when payment of the loan would be due. Sometimes he thought that a velvet threat lay under the wheezed and gasped syllables; sometimes he reasoned that it was only natural that a man who had lent money should impress the time of its return upon the borrower. The bonus was another stumbling block. Had Old Man Clud driven a hard, grasping, covetous bargain, or had he done only what anybody would do who took a risk that a bank would refuse? Oh, if he had a mere fraction of his father's business knowledge! And yet his father was the last person in the world to whom he would have taken his doubts and his fears at this moment.

He was aroused from his reverie by sounds that had been growing upon him as he rode along. His ears caught a pounding as of wood upon wood, and a man's deep and throaty voice, rising

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 and falling in the sonorous style of country oratory. He pushed down harder on the pedals, rounded a slight turn, and came upon a scene that caused him to apply his brake. The bicycle slowed down, and he swung out of the saddle.

A crowd was gathered in front of a farmhouse set back from the road. The man of sonorous voice was standing on the porch pounding with a gavel against the porch railing. Here and there on the brown autumn lawn were pieces of furniture. It was a nondescript collection gathered from parlor, kitchen and bedrooms; and alien hands pawed it over, and hauled it about, and commented unfeelingly on its value. These things Bert observed in a glance; his interest was fastened on a man and a woman standing dejectedly and forlornly in the doorway of the house.

"Only seventy-five cents for this kitchen table?" the sonorous voice was demanding. "You can't mean it. Why, ladies and gentlemen, this table is as good as new. Not a scratch, not a break, not a loose hinge. Come up and look it over. This table cost seven dollars if it cost a penny, and you offer me seventy-five cents. Who'll make it a dollar. A dollar; a dollar. Do I hear a dollar?"

"Eighty-five," said a voice.

"Eighty-five; eighty-five. Am I offered a dollar? Don't go home regretting that you let a bargain pass you. Am I offered a dollar?"

"A dollar," came from the rear of the crowd.

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 "A dollar; a dollar. Who'll make it a dollar ten. Going at a dollar. Once! Twice! Last call. Sold to the gentleman for a dollar."

The woman in the doorway dropped her head, and turned, and went into the house.

Bert walked over to where two young farmhands stood together. "Why are they auctioning the stuff?" he asked.

One of the two spat a stream of tobacco juice. "They got hard up and went down to Springham and borrowed some money from a fellow. They couldn't make the payments and the fellow from Springham is selling them out."

To Bert, at the moment, it came as mighty uncomfortable news. His mouth went dry.

"Any place I can get a drink around here?" he asked.

"There's a well in back of the house."

He went toward the rear, skirting the crowd and passing the porch where the auctioneer was now offering an ice box. A step or two more, and then he stopped with a jerk. Old Man Clud, his coat buttoned to the throat, stood leaning against a tree writing in a little red memorandum book held close to his chest.

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ERT had started out with the intention of telling the Butterfly Man nothing. . . but now he knew he would have to tell him all. For the fear that had arisen in him all in a moment demanded immediate counsel and advice.

Old Man Clud, absorbed in the secrets of the little red book, had not seen him. Noiselessly he backed away, past the porch, out among the crowd. His bicycle was where he had left it. With the auctioneer's clamor for a higher bid in his ears he rode away, and his tires sang a higher note of speed than they had ever sung before to the gritty surface of the county highway.

To-day it was not necessary for him to ride all the way to the cabin. Scarcely had he left the highway for the dirt road than he saw a tall figure ahead striding along with legs that seemed to annihilate distance. Bert sounded his horn once, twice, three times. The man swung around and then hastily scrambled for the side of the road.

"Nothing doing," he shouted. "You had one chance at me out here and failed. Bea gentleman and let well enough alone."

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 There was no answering laughter in Bert's eyes, and the man's face sobered. The boy swung off the wheel.

"I'm in trouble," he said abruptly.

"Home, school or business?"

"Business. Do you know a man in Springham named Clud?"

"I've heard of him. Sweet individual with a fat, warm body and a cold, thin heart. He'd sell a man's soul for a dollar. He's a shark, a buzzard and a polecat all rolled into one. Talks like a honeybee and stings like a snake. He's a trickster and a schemer, a liar and a cheat, a rascal and a rogue. If he got his just deserts he'd be down in State's Prison in a convict's cell. Every time I pass him in the street I come home and take a strong bath. The night he dies the angels will have to hold their noses. The church they take him into—if they take him into one—will have to be disinfected. Yes; I've heard of him. Why?"

The whimsical Tom Woods, full of dry humor and homely wisdom, was gone, and in his place was a man breathing fire and indignation. Every word of the unexpected denunciation thrust Bert through and through. The fears that had overwhelmed him at the farmhouse, then, were substantial and real. His last hope that he might be mistaken was gone. He sank down, and put his back against the trunk of a tree, and stared at the ground.

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 Light broke in upon the Butterfly Man. He gave an exclamation, and caught the boy's arm. "Bert! He hasn't got you, has he?"

"Yes, sir."

"Christopher!" After that one explosive outburst the man was silent. He seemed to be fighting down his wrath, bringing his mind back to its customary state of calm and disciplined control. He sat down beside the boy. Methodically he drew out the ever ready pipe and filled it with a deliberate measurement of tobacco from a pouch.

"When did you borrow the money?" he asked.

"Yesterday."

"You weren't afraid of Clud then. Why are you afraid of him now?"

Bert told of what he had seen at the farmhouse.

"That's Clud," Tom Woods said grimly. "It isn't the first time it's happened to people through here. How much did you borrow?"

"One hundred and fifty dollars."

"And you gave him a note for about $175. Is that right?"

Bert lifted his head and nodded, and looked at the man with mingled respect and surprise. "How did you know?"

"It's an old dodge," Tom Woods said. "Every skinflint of a loan shark practices it. That's how they beat the law which says that no interest above six per cent must be charged. On the face of that

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 note Clud is getting only legal interest. You can't prove he put the screws on you for $25 interest."

"But he did."

"You can't prove it. The note says he gave you $175. You signed to that effect. He's got your signature to it. He's got you hooked."

"Suppose we can't pay it?"

"He'll sell you out as he sold out the farmer."

And then the business would be gone! Bert drew a long breath.

"I should have come to you first."

"You should have gone to your father," the man said quietly. "You promised me you would."

The silence that followed ran on for many minutes. When Bert spoke again his utterance showed that he had been thinking.

"Old Man Clud will never get $175 for the things in our store. How is he going to get the balance?"

"Clud usually knows how to protect himself. By the way, who signed that note? You and Sam together, or you alone?"

"I signed it alone."

Tom Woods bit hard on his pipe stem. One hand found its way to Bert's shoulder.

"Does that make it worse for me?" the boy demanded.

"I'm afraid it does," the Butterfly Man said quietly. "Here! There's a way out of this. Let

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 me lend you $175 and go down and pay off Clud."

In that moment the current of the boy's life was changed. The first vital, definite spark of manhood was struck from his fiber, hammered out—after the fashion of such sparks—on the hard anvil of adversity. He sprang to his feet.

"I got myself into this mess," he cried passionately, "and I'm not going to use a friend to climb out. How do I know how long you'd have to wait to get your money back? Anyway, you were against this business from the start. Why should you get mixed up in it? If I've got a licking coming to me out of this I'll take it."

Tom Woods' grip on his pipe relaxed. He was conscious, all at once, that this was a November day, and that the ground was damp, and that he was rapidly becoming chilled. He scrambled to his feet.

"You're not sore at me?" Bert asked. His tone said that, sore or not, his mind was fixed.

"Sore?" The Butterfly Man laughed to himself. "Bert, they may get you down on your back, and you may have a tough time of it, but they'll never lick you."

The boy's face seemed older, more mature, as he rode back to Springham. The crowd was gone from in front of the farmhouse; the auction was over. Reaching the store he went in and, bluntly and concisely, told Sam the story of what he had seen that day.

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 Sam was thoughtful. "If anything should go wrong. . . . Mind, I'm not saying it will; I think the Christmas trade will make us a big winner. But if anything should go wrong, and Clud sells these few things in the store, where's he going to get the balance of his $175?"

"Tom Woods said he knew where he could get it or he'd never have let us have the money."

Sam digested this. "Going home to supper?" he asked.

"No; I'll telephone my mother."

"All right. I'll get a breath of air. I want to think this over."

An hour later Sam was back. There was about him a triumphant air of cunning and craft, a pride in his own astuteness, an atmosphere of trium* phant foxiness that Bert had never quite noticed before.

"Look here," Sam began, "you've been saving most of your five dollars a week, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"And I've got a little private bank account of my own. I didn't put everything I had into this business. I guess Clud knows that; he's got to have a way of finding out things in his game. He figures that when the time comes he'll get what's coming to him by going after what we have in the bank in our own private accounts. Well, I'm going to fool him. I'm going to take my money out of this bank and go to the city and put it in a

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 bank there. Then he won't know where it is. You had better do the same."

Bert shook his head. "I'm not going to play any shady tricks."

"Shady!" Sam cried indignantly. "That's not shady; that's a business precaution. Clud's the one who's done the shady trick. Didn't he squeeze us for $25 and then cover it up by making us sign a note for more than we got?"

"But I agreed to it," said Bert, "and signed it."

"You're a fool," Sam said impatiently, and gave him up as hopeless.

That night Bert began to have misgivings of the partnership, but it was something other than failure he was thinking of.

Thanksgiving came and went, and made no appreciable change in the fortunes of The Shoppers' Service. Directly after the holiday winter came on with a rush of intense cold and deep snow. For three days Springham shivered in the teeth of icy blasts and dug itself out. Then the tide of trade began once more to move through frozen Washington Avenue; and Bert, figuring the slimmest week's receipts the partnership had ever known, could again write down a loss instead of a gain.

Because his hopes for December had been so high, the result was doubly disappointing. Hour after hour the Christmas shoppers flowed past his door, buying, buying, buying, but not from him. The ice cream sale fell to nothing. There was a

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 day when coffee and sandwiches netted only ninety cents. Bert became silent and glum. At home he had very little to say. Twice his father and mother, sitting in the dining room, heard him pacing the floor of his bedroom overhead.

"Things are going bad with him," Mrs. Quinby said with an ache of sympathy in her voice.

"He brought it on himself," said the man.

"Oh!" she said in reproach.

The man got up from his chair and his worried footsteps echoed those of his son. "Oh, I know! I know! I'd give a hundred dollars this minute if I could get him out of it. Of course things are going the wrong way; they couldn't go any other way. He's carrying too big a load for a boy. It was a crack-brained scheme to start with. He's got to learn his lesson. If I jumped into this thing and got him off with a whole skin, he'd forget the experience in a year. He'd always have a feeling in the back of his head that no matter how big a fool he made of himself, he could always count on me to get him out. He's got to come to me and ask for help. He's got to admit that he was wrong. When he does that I'll wind up that business of his and save him every dollar I can. But he's got to swallow his medicine and admit that he was wrong."

Mrs. Quinby had a mental picture of her son's sullen eyes and stubborn chin. "He's not the kind to admit failure," she sighed. She did not know

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 that he had already admitted far more than that to the Butterfly Man.

In the morning, while Bert ate, she sat across from him at the breakfast table. Mr. Quinby had already left the house.

"Were you expecting big things this month?" she asked.

The boy nodded.

"It couldn't be, Bert. Christmas shopping is very trying. People just go around in a sort of frenzy. Half the time they don't know what they want. They don't pay much attention to ads. They go from store to store, roaming through the aisles in the hope of finding something that will make a gift for somebody they've got to remember. A lot of people put off shopping until the last minute, and that makes it worse. They're in such a hurry to reach the city in the morning that there's no time to step into your place and look at newspapers, and when they come home in the afternoon they're too tired. Didn't you think of that?"

"Neither of us did," said Bert. There was no need to question his mother's reasoning. Hadn't he seen the restless stream passing and repassing the store day after day? Only a few months ago Sam, spouting second-hand opinions he had formed from a book, had seemed to him to be an oracle. That was past.

"You'll have to wait until after Christmas for

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 people to get interested in your business again, Bert."

"Next month?" He was on the point of saying that next month would be too late, but checked himself and went off to school. That day he flunked in every subject.

Two days before Christmas Bill Harrison came to the store, bought a plate of ice cream, and ate it as though he had something on his mind. "I got a letter to-day from Tom Woods," he said at length. "He asked me to find out how you're making it. I'm going to write an answer to-night."

That the Butterfly Man had sent Bill on this errand meant that Bill knew the facts. Bert spread his hands in a sweep that took in the whole place. "You're the first customer in two hours," he said.

Bill pushed his plate across the counter. "Another," he said. With the refilled dish before him, he toyed with his spoon. "Sam certainly ran you up a fine alley, didn't he?"

"Sam's losing his money, too," said Bert.

Bill looked at him shrewdly. "As much as you?"

"N . . . no. He's been drawing out two dollars to my one."

"Why?"

"Well, it was his idea. . . ."

"He's certainly been getting paid pretty liberally for a burn idea," Bill drawled, and finished

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 his cream. "Just what shall I tell Tom Woods?"

Bert took the dish and began to wash it. Bill leaned across the counter.

"If you're going to tell him anything, Bert, tell him the truth."

"I've always told Tom Woods the truth," Bert said in a low voice. "Tell him it's worse than he thought it would be."

The admission seemed to break down in him the last barrier of pretense and false hope. The end was in sight. He knew it. Yet it was not in him to surrender until the ball had been taken from him on downs.

Every dollar he had in the bank would probably be swept away in the crash. As the daring adventurer, facing death, makes his final gesture of disdain, Bert now had his wild moment of bravado, his defiance of Fate. Even though next Christmas might find him without a penny, this Christmas he could be gloriously lavish. It did not occur to him that, facing a debt he could not meet in full, he was bound by a moral obligation to hold fast to every dollar of his funds. To spend now was, in effect, to take money that rightfully belonged to his creditors. But what he did not know did not worry him.

He drew $20 from the bank and went shopping along Washington Avenue. Eight dollars secured him a box of good cigars for his father. The other $12 bought a handbag for his mother. He

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 carried the gifts home under his coat and secreted them in his bedroom.

Christmas morning he brought them downstairs. His father, appraising the cigars, opened his eyes wide in surprise. Bert felt no elation, but what—a difference it would have made had that look been testimonial to secure success instead of to a dying gasp!

"Bert," his mother whispered, holding the bag. "it's beautiful, but you shouldn't have spent so much money."

"What's the difference," he said; "I wanted you to have it."

Something in the words told her the whole story.

His own gifts scarcely moved him. He brightened at dinner, and ate his share of the good things, only to fall silent after the meal. He tried to read, but the book held no interest. He went out for a walk, found himself heading toward the store, and abruptly returned to the house. There was a new calendar in the hall showing the January page. The date, 18th, seemed to stare at him. He went into the living room, and sat at a window, and looked out at the street. January 18!

Mr. Quinby, studying him from the dining room, suddenly stood up and walked toward his chair.

"Bert, haven't you had enough yet of this confounded foolishness?"

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