look of Haley’s back as he watched it dwindle down Michigan Avenue.

[10]

However, Mrs. Haley had been more satisfactory, if none the less bewildering. She seemed very grateful over the house and the three hundred dollars for its furnishing. A birthday present, he had termed it, with a flicker of humor because the day was his own birthday. His fiftieth birthday it happened to be, and it occurred to him that a man ought to do something a little notable on such an anniversary. This rounding of the half-century had attributes apart; it was no mere annual birthday; it marked the last vanishing flutter of the gilded draperies of youth; the withering of the garlands; the fading tinkle of the light music of hope. It should mark a man’s solid achievements. Once, not so long ago, Winter had believed that his fiftieth birthday would see wide and beneficent and far-reaching results in the province where he ruled. That dream was shattered. He was generous of nature, and he could have been content to behold another reap the fields[11] which he had sown and tilled; it was the harvest, whether his or another’s, for which he worked; but his had been the bitter office to have to stand aside, with no right to protest, and see his work go to waste because his successor had a feeble brain and a pusillanimous caution in place of his own dogged will. For all these reasons, as well as others, the colonel found no zest in his fiftieth birthday; and his reverie drifted dismally from one somber reflection to another until it brought up at the latest wound to his heart—his favorite brother’s death.

[11]

There had been three Winter brothers—Rupert, Melville and Thomas. During the past year both Thomas Winter and his wife had died, leaving one child, a boy of fourteen, named Archibald after his father’s uncle. Rupert Winter and the boy’s great-aunt, the widow of the great-uncle for whom he had been named, were appointed joint guardians of the young Archie. To-night, in his jaded mood, he was assailed by reproaches because he had not seen more of his ward. Why, he hadn’t so much as looked the little chap up when he passed through Fairport—merely had sent him a letter and some truck from the Philippines; nice guardian he was! By a natural enough transition,[12] his thoughts swerved to his own brief and not altogether happy married life. He thought of the graves in Arizona where he had left his wife and his two children, and his heart felt heavy. To escape musings which grew drearier every second, he cast his eyes about the motley crowd shuffling over the tiled floors or resting in 

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