least of all to Carington,
best friend and close sympathiser.

Arrangements for his journey were about complete. Before he had left New
York he had turned everything into ready cash that could be so turned,
so that even when he first reached Missouri his personal effects had not
made travel a burden to him. During the past weeks all the balance of
his belongings that possessed any negotiability whatsoever had been
turned into meal. And his meal sack was empty! By no sort of
foreknowledge can a man accustomed to enough money for current
expenses,--a goodly budget as recognised by the class of which Steering
was an exemplar,--imagine, during his easy circumstances, how he would
feel if ever things should so go against him that he would be left
staring into an empty meal sack. Steering felt an awkward incompetence
to realise the case now. He had looked at the sack at close range,
patted it, as though to mollify its consequences to him, pooh-poohed it,
taken it philosophically, taken it smilingly, but he had been all the
time unable to get his eyes off it, even though he had finally carried
it down to the river's edge and hung it upon the bough of the weeping
willow tree. His eyes were still upon it, he was still regarding it at
long range, through the shack door, getting the foreshorten of it,
getting the middle distance, getting the perspective, utterly unable to
stop his ceaseless staring into the emptiness of it, stop wondering what
next and how next.

He got up and went to the door of the shack and looked out. By and by
it occurred to him that the case would be much worse if there were
anyone besides himself concerned. All the vague fleeting sympathies that
had ever been aroused within him by newspaper stories of starving
families, the nearest he had ever come to the actuality of starving
families, quivered and stirred within him. The first thing he knew, he
was feeling infinitely relieved that he had no starving family. He had a
sensitive and active imagination, and, as he pictured the hungry little
children that he did not have, tears of gratitude came into his eyes,
and he blew gay kisses to those airy little folks.

It was glorious weather. Wild spring flowers were abundant, and there
were cheerful whiskings among the trees where the birds and squirrels
were busy again. The young shoots strained with the urge of the sap,
making little popping noises. Steering started now and again and held
his head waitingly. He