lowed into Middleville River. The roar of water falling over
the dam came melodiously and stirringly to his ears. And as he looked
again he was assailed by that strange sense of littleness, of
shrunkenness, which had struck him so forcibly at the station. He
listened to the murmur of running water. Then, while the sweetness of
joy pervaded him, there seemed to rise from below or across the river
or from somewhere the same strange misgiving, a keener dread, a chill
that was not in the air, a fatal portent of the future. Why should
this come to mock him at such a sacred and beautiful moment?

Passers-by stared at Lane, and some of them whispered, and one
hesitated, as if impelled to speak. Wheeling away Lane crossed the
bridge, turned up River Street, soon turned off again into a darker
street, and reaching High School Park he sat down to rest again. He
was almost spent. The park was quiet and lonely. The bare trees showed
their skeleton outlines against the cold sky. It was March and the air
was raw and chilly. This park that had once been a wonderful place now
appeared so small. Everything he saw was familiar yet grotesque in the
way it had become dwarfed. Across the street from where he sat lights
shone in the windows of a house. He knew the place. Who lived there?
One of the girls--he had forgotten which. From somewhere the
discordance of a Victrola jarred on Lane's sensitive ears.

Lifting his bag he proceeded on his way, halting every little while to
catch his breath. When he turned a corner into a side street,
recognizing every tree and gate and house, there came a gathering and
swelling of his emotions and he began to weaken and shake. He was
afraid he could not make it half way up the street. But he kept on.
The torture now was more a mingled rapture and grief than the physical
protest of his racked body. At last he saw the modest little
house--and then he stood at the gate, quivering. Home! A light in the
window of his old room! A terrible and tremendous storm of feeling
forced him to lean on the gate. How many endless hours had the
pictured memory of that house haunted him? There was the beloved room
where he had lived and slept and read, and cherished over his books
and over his compositions a secret hope and ambition to make of
himself an author. How strange to remember that! But it was true. His
day labor at Manton's office, for all the years since he had graduated
from High School, had been only a means to