haberdashed into his part—a Western gold-fish come East to flap his fins in the Big Puddle. He mustn’t forget that he now was a wealthy man, with no obligations except one voluntary vow and that to himself; that he still was young enough to feel as gay as any costume could make him look; that so far in life he had proved strong enough to do whatever he had decided to do.

So what—what?

The dusk of even this daylight-saving hour was thickening. Pape urged his mount into the rack of Times Cañon. There, toward the convergence of each street, clumps of vehicles spun forward, only to stop and lose all they had gained at the command of traffic signals. Variously bound surface cars clattered through; clanged with self-importance; puffed with passengers. Pedestrians darted this way, often, to turn and dart back that, in what seemed a limb-regardless passion to get home in the fewest possible seconds. Like flour upon the other ingredients in some great mixing bowl, Evening was sifted over all, then stirred into a conglomerate, working mass—dough to be baked by dinner time.

The sensation rather than sight of an overhead flash caused the splotched horse to throw back his head with a snort and the rider to hang his gaze on high. Unexpectedly, as happen most miracles, a blaze lit the ungeometrical square and searched the lowering clouds—millions of watts bottled in bulbs—a fan-fare of nitrogen dyed red, yellow, blue, green and diamond-white—incalculable volts of power wired into legible array.

The gray eyes of the Westerner upheld, fascinated, to this sight of Broadway’s electric display, to him the marvel of the marvels of to-day. Always was his pulse stirred by it and his imagination set apace. As, when a child, he had pored over the lurid illustrations of his fairy-book, so now nightly he pored over this real-life picture. For him it lit a bridle path into byways of the unknown—into the highway of the impossible.

A moment before a problem had darkened his brow. Now the darkness was displaced by light. Over the suggested answer to the unanswerable he exulted. What was difficulty of any sort except illusion? His Fatness the Quail—that is to say, the park sparrow cop—to-day had accused him of believing too devoutly in signs. Yet what were signs for if not to point the way?

His chuckles evoked the curiosity of Polkadot. Back toward him waggled one white-tipped, enquiring ear. Willingly, as at all such requests of his quadruped pal, he leaned to oblige.

 Prev. P 13/190 next