he privileged of the city. "We had crossed to-day," he said,
"an invisible threshold. Some were to go on to higher institutions of
learning. Others..." I gulped. Quoting the Scriptures, he complimented
those who had made the most of their opportunities. And it was then
that he called out, impressively, the name of Ralph Forrester Hambleton.
Summa cum laude! Suddenly I was seized with passionate, vehement regrets
at the sound of the applause. I might have been the prize scholar,
instead of Ralph, if I had only worked, if I had only realized what
this focussing day of graduation meant! I might have been a marked
individual, with people murmuring words of admiration, of speculation
concerning the brilliancy of my future!... When at last my name
was called and I rose to receive my diploma it seemed as though my
incompetency had been proclaimed to the world...

That evening I stood in the narrow gallery of the flag-decked gymnasium
and watched Nancy dancing with Ralph.

I let her go without protest or reproach. A mysterious lesion seemed to
have taken place, I felt astonished and relieved, yet I was heavy with
sadness. My emancipation had been bought at a price. Something hitherto
spontaneous, warm and living was withering within me.

V.

It was true to my father's character that he should have waited until
the day after graduation to discuss my future, if discussion be the
proper word. The next evening at supper he informed me that he wished
to talk to me in the sitting-room, whither I followed him with a sinking
heart. He seated himself at his desk, and sat for a moment gazing at me
with a curious and benumbing expression, and then the blow fell.

"Hugh, I have spoken to your Cousin Robert Breck about you, and he has
kindly consented to give you a trial."

"To give me a trial, sir!" I exclaimed.

"To employ you at a small but reasonable salary."

I could find no words to express my dismay. My dreams had come to this,
that I was to be made a clerk in a grocery store! The fact that it was a
wholesale grocery store was little consolation.

"But father," I faltered, "I don't want to go into business."

"Ah!" The sharpness of the exclamation might have betrayed to me the
pain in which he was, but he recovered himself instantly. And I could
see nothing but an inexorable justice closing in on me mechanically;
a blind justice, in its inability to read my soul. "The time to have
decided that," he declared, "was som