n
the street together, one, big and muscular, with head erect and an easy,
fearless stride; the other, humped down, frowsy, shambling, a sort of
half-product of humanity, whose companion was the river, whose days were
solitary, who had no part in the moonlight, the perfume of honeysuckle
blossoms, the pleasure of companionship, the easy comfort that wealth
can bring. His to bear the heat and the cinders on the rear platforms of
jerky freight-trains, his to serve his best food to imperious young city
girls lost in an impetuous passion of disappointment in a new and
bewildering land. And yet his mind was serene. Knowing the river would
bring him his food in the morning and his commodity of commerce for his
needs, he was vastly more contented with his lot to-night than was the
stalwart young man who stalked beside him, grimly resolving to go out
and do things.

Jerry watched the two until they turned into a side-street and
disappeared. The moonlight was wondrously bright and the air was like
crystal. A faint, sweet odor from hay-fields came up the valley now and
then, and all the world was serenely silent under the spell of night.
The net seemed torn away from about the girl's feet, the cloud lifted
from her brain, the blinding, blurring mists from before her eyes.

"I have crossed my Rubicon," she murmured, standing still in the
doorway of the porch trellis, breathing deeply of the pure evening air.
"I'm glad he came. I am free again, and I'm really happy. I suppose I am
queer. If anybody should put me in a novel, the critics would say 'such
a girl never came to Kansas.' But then if Gene should paint that
blowout, the critics would say 'there never was such a landscape in
Kansas.' These critics know so much. Only Gene will never paint any more
pictures--not masterpieces, anyhow. But I'm going to live my life my own
way. I won't go back to idleness and a life of sand at 'Eden.' I'll win
out here--I will, I will! 'If a woman goes right with herself.' Oh,
Uncle Cornie, I am starting. Whether I hold out depends on the way--and
myself."

When Laura Macpherson peeped into Jerry's room late that night she saw
her guest sleeping as serenely as if her mind had never a puzzling
question, her sunny day never a storm-cloud. So far Jerry had gone right
with herself.

X

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

The big dramas of life are enacted in the big centers of human
population. Great cities foster great commercial institutions;