idea. -- He would pay the customary substitute to
drive the stage to Stenton, and cross Cheap Mountain
on foot; by dark he would be in Sprucesap, play
that night, and return the following day, Friday.

With an effort he still put the scheme from his
thoughts; but, while he kept it in abeyance, nothing
further occurred to him. That gave him a possible
reprieve; all else offered sure disaster. He rose,
and walked slowly toward his home, revolving, testing,
the various aspects of the trip to Sprucesap; at
once deciding upon that venture, and repeating to
himself the incontestable fact of its utter folly.

The dark was intense, blue-black, about his dwelling.
He struck a match at the edge of the porch,
a pointed, orange exclamation on the impenetrable
gloom. Clare, weary of waiting, had gone to bed;
her door was shut, her window tightly closed. The
invisible stream gurgled sadly past its banks, the
whippoorwills throbbed with ceaseless, insistent passion.

A sudden, jumbled vision of the past woven about
this dwelling, his home, wheeled through Gordon's
mind, scenes happy and unhappy; prevailing want
and slim, momentary plenty; his father dead, in his
coffin with a stony, pinched countenance, a jaw still
unrelaxed above the bright flag that draped his nondescript
uniform. Later events followed -- his
elder, vanished brother bullying him; the brief ro-

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