y from contrast with all that
weight which he carried high in his chest.

But it was not the possibilities of the newcomer's body that held
Ogden's fascinated attention. In point of fact, he did not notice that
at all, until some time later. Denny Bolton's long, tanned face was
entirely grave--even graver than usual. Just a hint of wistfulness
that would never quite leave them showed in his eyes and lurked in the
line of his lips--an intangible, fleeting suggestion of expectation
that had waited patiently for something that had been very long in the
coming. And the black felt hat and smooth black suit which he wore
finished the picture and made the illusion complete. His face and
figure, even there in the doorway of Hogarty's Fourteenth Street
place, could have suggested but one thing to an observant man. He
might have been a composite of all the New England Pilgrim Fathers who
had ever braved a rock-bound coast.

And Bobby Ogden was observing. Utterly unconscious of Hogarty's
threatening storm of protest, he sat and gazed and gazed, scarcely
crediting his own eyes. Domino poised in hand, Hogarty had turned in
preoccupied resignation back to a perplexed contemplation of whether
it would be better to play a blank-six and block the game or a
double-blank and risk being caught with a handful of high counters,
when Ogden reached out and clutched him by the wrist.

"Shades of Miles Standish!" that silk-shirted person gasped. "In the
name of the Mayflower and John Alden, and hallowed Plymouth Rock,
look, Flash, look! For the love o' Mike look, before he moves and
spoils the tableau!"

Hogarty lifted his head and looked.

Denny Bolton's eyes had returned from their deliberate excursion about
the gymnasium just in time to meet halfway that utterly impersonal
scrutiny. For a long moment or two that mutual inspection endured;
then the boy's lips moved--open with a smile that was far graver than
his gravity had been--and he started slowly across the floor toward
the table. Hogarty half rose, one hand outstretched as if to halt him,
but for some reason which the ex-lightweight scarcely understood
himself, he failed to utter the protest that was at his tongue's end.
And Young Denny continued to advance--continued, and left in the rear
a neatly defined trail where the heavy nails of his shoes marred the
sacred sheen of that floor.

Within arm's reach of the table he stopped, his eyes flitting
questioningly from Hogarty's tota