added bearing to his muscular, well-formed body; his pleasant, strong young face acquired self-reliance and self-control. Life became filled with possibilities for himself which it had never held before. 

 But on his day of graduation he had to put away the enterprises he had planned and the dreams he dreamed and, conscious that his debt to father and mother still remained unpaid, he had returned to care for them; for father's health had failed and Jim who had opened a law office in Kansas City, could do nothing to help. 

 No more money had followed the draft from Chicago and there had been no communication of any kind; but the receipt of so considerable a sum had revived and intensified all Alan's speculations about himself. The vague expectation of his childhood that sometime, in some way, he would be "sent for" had grown during the last six years to a definite belief. And now—on the afternoon before—the summons had come. 

 This time, as he tore open the envelope, he saw that besides a check, there was writing within—an uneven and nervous-looking but plainly legible communication in longhand. The letter made no explanation. It told him, rather than asked him, to come to Chicago, gave minute instructions for the journey, and advised him to telegraph when he started. The check was for a hundred dollars to pay his expenses. Check and letter were signed by a name completely strange to him. 

 He was a distinctly attractive looking lad, as he stood now on the station platform of the little town, while the eastbound train rumbled in, and he fingered in his pocket the letter from Chicago. 

 As the train came to a stop, he pushed his suitcase up on to a car platform and stood on the bottom step, looking back at the little town standing away from its railroad station among brown, treeless hills, now scantily snow-covered—the town which was the only home he ever consciously had known. His eyes dampened and he choked, as he looked at it and at the people on the station platform—the station-master, the drayman, the man from the post office who would receive the mail bag, people who called him by his first name, as he called them by theirs. He did not doubt at all that he would see the town and them again. The question was what he would be when he did see them. They and it would not be changed, but he would. As the train started, he picked up the suitcase and carried it into the second day-coach. 

 Finding a seat, at once he took the letter from his pocket and for 

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