this resulted in slow advancement to a junior bookkeeper's desk and better pay. It also broadened his list of acquaintances, for he joined a club, the membership of which was decidedly mixed, and not all of the best kind of associates for Winn.

His aunt, a shallow though well-meaning woman, devoted to church work, gossip, and her pet poodle, considering Winn an unfortunate addition to her cares, held but scant influence over him. She furnished him a home to sleep and eat in without cost, urged him to attend church with her, cautioned him against evil associates; but beyond that she could not and did not go. So Winn drifted. He saved a little money, realizing that he must, or be forever helpless and dependent; he learned the slang of the town and its ways, and forgot for a time the wholesome lessons of his early life. He also grew more mercurial, and, worse than that, he grew cynical.

On all sides, and go where he would, the arrogance of wealth seemed to hedge him about and force upon him the realization that he was but a poorly paid bookkeeper, and not likely to become aught else. And then a worse mishap befell him—he met and became attached to Jack Nickerson.

There is in every club, and in every walk in life, wherever a young man's feet may stray, some one it were better he never met—a Mephistopheles in male garb, whose wit and ways of pleasure-taking are alluring, whose manners are perfect, whose pockets are well filled; and alas, whose morals are a matter of convenience.

That Winn, honest and wholesome-minded country-born fellow that he was, should be attracted by this product of fast city life is not strange. It is the attraction that allures the moth toward the flame, the good toward evil. Follow Nickerson in that course, Winn would not and did not; he merely admired him for his wit, felt half tempted to emulate his vices, absorbed his scepticism—for Jack Nickerson in addition to his vices was a cynic of the most implacable sort. With him all religion was hypocrisy, all virtue a folly, and all truth a farce. He had income sufficient to live well upon, gambled for a pastime, was at the race tracks whenever chance offered, was cheek by jowl with the sporting fraternity, a man about town and hail fellow well met with all.

Per contra, he was generous to a fault, laughed most when he uttered his sharpest sneers, was polished and refined in his tastes and a gentleman always.

One distinguished novelist has deified such a man, and made him a hero of her numerous tales.

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