, flat leather wallet as he rose. "Do
you remember lending that sixty dollars to my friend Keston last year?
He turned up yesterday, and asked me to see that you got this."

"I'd forgotten all about it," averred Justin. He had not realized until
he took the bills that he had been keeping up all day by main strength,
with that caved-in sensation of there being nothing back of it--nothing
back of it. There are times when the touch of money is as the elixir of
life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand
dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with
this paltry sixty dollars it was suddenly possible to draw a free
breath, felt a sheer lightness of spirit that showed how terrible was
the persistent weight under which he was living. The very feeling of
those separate bills in his pocket made him calmly sanguine.

He got ready to go home a little earlier than usual, saying lightly to
Harker, who had come in for his signature to some papers:

"Those payments will begin to straggle in next week. Coneways' isn't due
until the 31st--the very last minute! But he's always prompt, thank
Heaven--what are you doing?"

"Knocking on wood," said Harker, with a grim smile.

"Oh, knock on wood all you want to," returned Justin.

He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to buy her some flowers.
It was the first time he had thought of her unconsciously for a week.
While he was waiting for a car to pass before he crossed the street, his
eye caught the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him:

GREAT CRASH

CONEWAYS & CO. FAIL

IN BOSTON

XX

"I don't think Justin looks very well," said Dosia that afternoon. She
was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her arms spread out
half-protectingly over Lois. The latter was only resting; she had been
up and around the house now for three or four weeks, and, although she
looked unusually fragile, seemed well, if not very strong.

The baby, wrapped in a blue embroidered blanket, with only a round
forehead and a small pink nose visible, was of that satisfactory variety
entirely given to sleep. Zaidee and even Redge, adoring little sister
and brother, had been allowed to hold him in their arms, so securely
unstirring was their little burden. Lois, who had passionately rebelled
against the prospect of additional motherhood, exhibited a not unusual
phase of it now in as passionately adoring this second boy. He seemed
pe