s topic. He became what Winona would have
called informative.

"We can't stop change," he said in his father's manner. "First, there
was star dust, and electricity or something made it into the earth; and
some water and chemicals made life out of this electricity or
something----"

"Hey?" said the startled Sharon, but the story of creation continued.

"And there was just little animals first, but they got to be bigger,
because they had to change; and pretty soon they become monkeys, and
then they changed some more, and stood up on their hind feet, and so
they got to be human beings like us--because--because they had to
change," he concluded, lucidly.

"My shining stars!" breathed Sharon.

"And they lost their tails and got so they would wear neckties and have
post offices and depots and religions," added the historian in a final
flash of memory.

"Well, I'll be switched!" said Sharon.

"It's electricity or something," explained the lecturer. "My father said
so."

"Oh!" said Sharon.

"But he says there's a catch in it somewhere."

"I should think there was," said Sharon. "By gracious goodness, I should
think there was a catch in it somewhere! But you understand the whole
thing as easy as crack a nut, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"Giddap there!" said Sharon.

Wilbur did not tell Winona of this day's encounter with an authentic
Whipple. He would have done so but for the dollar that Sharon absently
bestowed upon him from a crumple of bills when he left the buggy at the
entrance to Whipple Old Place. Winona, he instantly knew, would counsel
him to save the dollar, and he did not wish to save it. As fast as his
bare feet--with a stone bruise on one heel--would carry him he sped to
Solly Gumble's. Yet not with wholly selfish intent. A section of plug
tobacco, charmingly named Peach and Honey, was purchased for a quarter
as a gift to Bill Bardin of the ice wagon. Another quarter secured three
pale-brown cigars, with gay bands about their middles, to be lavished
upon the hero, Starling Tucker.

CHAPTER IX

The colourful years sped. At fifteen Wilbur Cowan, suddenly alive to
this quick way of time, was looking back to the days of his heedless
youth. That long aisle of years seemed unending, but it narrowed in
perspective until earlier experiences were but queerly dissolving
shapes, wavering of outline, dimly discerned, piquant or sad in the
mind, but elusive when he would try to fix them.