grateful for it. “Grateful!”--there was the word that he stuck at. For, after all, had there not been from the start an element of patronage in their kindness to him? “Kindness” another word that hurt.

Number Six was “punching” the watchman's clock that always hung just within the station door. “Hallo,” he said to Halloran. “Hallo.” “Wet night.” “Yes, rather.” “Better keep an eye on that light off the long pier. She's running in pretty close, I think.” “All right; good-night.” Number Six disappeared in the dark of the road, bound for bed; and Halloran pulled his sweater up around his neck and fell to pacing the veranda. The surf was booming on the beach below; the rain was cutting in toward the land. Out beyond the breakers were lights--a line of them along the horizon.

The time had come to look ahead. In another six months his college course would be completed; his playtime would be over; realities lay beyond--downright realities that surround a man, that show clear through him, that bear him down and under unless he be made of stronger stuff than they. Wits were needed, and judgment; the determination that goes against things, not with them. There would be no making up of cuts, out there in the world, no special examinations; a man must look higher than the faculty there. Mistakes would be hard to rectify, perhaps could never be rectified, where a man was already nearer thirty than twenty. He decided not to make that next call.

BOOK -- PINE CHAPTER I--A Decision to Fight 

The little city of Wauchung straggled over and between and almost burrowed under a chain of sand-hills--shining yellow hills with tops entirely bald save for a spear of rank grass here and there or a dwarfed pine. Outside the mouth of the river was Lake Michigan; behind the little city were the pine forests of the Lower Peninsula. And the one interesting object of this whole region was a man--for houses and shops were commonplace, streets were ill-paved, the railroad was wanting in energy and capital, the inhabitants were mostly leveled down to the colourless monotony of the sand-hills--a man named Martin L. Higginson.

There was one imposing building of granite and red bricks on the business street--a glance showed the name of Higginson over the entrance. Two large mills stood by the river, surrounded by piles of lumber on the land, fronted by rafts of logs in the water, sending out their droning hum all day long (and frequently all night long); inside, men were bustling and pushing in the effort to keep up with the drive of work outside, the long 

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