rk, and, if I do say it myself, I'm a
pretty good hack."

"Very well," said Sidney. "Then I shall be a hack, too. Of course, I had
thought of other things,--my father wanted me to go to college,--but I'm
strong and willing. And one thing I must make up my mind to, Dr. Ed; I
shall have to support my mother."

Harriet passed the door on her way in to a belated supper. The man in
the parlor had a momentary glimpse of her slender, sagging shoulders,
her thin face, her undisguised middle age.

"Yes," he said, when she was out of hearing. "It's hard, but I dare say
it's right enough, too. Your aunt ought to have her chance. Only--I wish
it didn't have to be."

Sidney, left alone, stood in the little parlor beside the roses. She
touched them tenderly, absently. Life, which the day before had called
her with the beckoning finger of dreams, now reached out grim insistent
hands. Life--in the raw.

CHAPTER III

K. Le Moyne had wakened early that first morning in his new quarters.
When he sat up and yawned, it was to see his worn cravat disappearing
with vigorous tugs under the bureau. He rescued it, gently but firmly.

"You and I, Reginald," he apostrophized the bureau, "will have to come
to an understanding. What I leave on the floor you may have, but what
blows down is not to be touched."

Because he was young and very strong, he wakened to a certain lightness
of spirit. The morning sun had always called him to a new day, and the
sun was shining. But he grew depressed as he prepared for the office.
He told himself savagely, as he put on his shabby clothing, that, having
sought for peace and now found it, he was an ass for resenting it. The
trouble was, of course, that he came of fighting stock: soldiers and
explorers, even a gentleman adventurer or two, had been his forefather.
He loathed peace with a deadly loathing.

Having given up everything else, K. Le Moyne had also given up the
love of woman. That, of course, is figurative. He had been too busy for
women; and now he was too idle. A small part of his brain added figures
in the office of a gas company daily, for the sum of two dollars and
fifty cents per eight-hour working day. But the real K. Le Moyne
that had dreamed dreams, had nothing to do with the figures, but sat
somewhere in his head and mocked him as he worked at his task.

"Time's going by, and here you are!" mocked the real person--who was, of
course, not K. Le Moyne at all. "You're the hell o