ffled crash. Again the flames rose high and fierce; but
they rapidly died down, and soon there remained of the fair white
cottage but a blackened, smouldering ruin.

Checkers climbed down and went over near by. Nothing of value was
left. The very foundations were cracked and fallen in; but the sounds
of voices on the road now warned him that he must be going.

He turned for an instant in the direction of the Barlow house, and
bowed low. "Now, you thieving old highbinder," he said, "take the
change;" and, diving into a grove of trees he took a roundabout way
through the fields to avoid the gathering crows which, finally aroused,
now flocked to the scene of the disaster. Breathless, he arrived on
the nick of time. His trunk was thrown aboard the train; he entered
the sleeper and was whisked away toward Little Rock.

He went out again and stood upon the platform until the last vestige of
Clarksville was passed. He then found a seat in the smoking-room and
smoked until almost morning.

* * * * *

"Chicago!" Checkers stood once more upon his native heath. He had
come directly from Little Rock, had rented a modest room, and had taken
up again the thread of a drifting, devil-may-care existence.
Gradually, the constant, active, throbbing pain of his bereavement wore
away, and in its stead there came a sullen, morbid sense of the
uselessness of all things. He had neither friends nor acquaintances;
even Murray Jameson was out of town. He haunted the Fair grounds in
the daytime and the theatres at night.

"Excitement and Forgetfulness"--this might have been his watchword.

I feel that if I could have met him at this time instead of almost a
year later as I did, I might have brought an active pressure to bear
upon him, and saved to him the good that the refining influence of his
wife and his Clarksville connections had done him. But, alas! in this
busy world there is no such thing as standing still. We either advance
or retrograde. The hill is steep to climb, but going down is easy.

Checkers went down; gradually, it is true, but still he went down.

By degrees he met his fellow-roomers in the house--good fellows, all of
them, in their way, but worthless. Checkers craved companionship.
Often he sat in a poker game all night with them, in some one of their
rooms, or "did the Midway" with them, ever "mocking the spirit which
could be moved to such a thing," but sometimes finding in it