taut with the tenseness of the
chase, he waves the paper high in air and cries, "I've made a
killing!"

For two years Jock McChesney had watched the field as it swept by
in its patient, devious, cruel game of Hunt the Contract. But he
had never been in at the death. Those two years had taught him how
to ride; to take a fence; to leap a ditch. He had had his awkward
bumps, and his clumsy falls. He had lost his way more than once.
But he had always groped his way back again, stumblingly, through
the dusk. Jock McChesney was the youngest man on the Berg, Shriner
Advertising Company's big staff of surprisingly young men. So
young that the casual glance did not reveal to you the marks that
the strain of those two years had left on his boyish face. But the
marks were there.

Nature etches with the most delicate of points. She knows the
cunning secret of light and shadow. You scarcely realize that she
has been at work. A faint line about the mouth, a fairy tracing at
the corners of the eyes, a mere vague touch just at the
nostrils--and the thing is done.

Even Emma McChesney's eyes--those mother-eyes which make the lynx
seem a mole--had failed to note the subtle change. Then, suddenly,
one night, the lines leaped out at her.

They were seated at opposite sides of the book-littered library
table in the living-room of the cheerful up-town apartment which
was the realization of the nightly dream which Mrs. Emma McChesney
had had in her ten years on the road for the T.A. Buck Featherloom
Petticoat Company. Jock McChesney's side of the big table was
completely covered with the mass of copy-paper, rough sketches,
photographs and drawings which make up an advertising lay-out. He
was bent over the work, absorbed, intent, his forearms resting on
the table. Emma McChesney glanced up from her magazine just as
Jock bent forward to reach a scrap of paper that had fluttered
away. The lamplight fell full on his face. And Emma McChesney saw.
The hand that held the magazine fell to her lap. Her lips were
parted slightly. She sat very quietly, her eyes never leaving the
face that frowned so intently over the littered table. The room
had been very quiet before--Jock busy with his work, his mother
interested in her magazine. But this silence was different. There
was something electric in it. It was a silence that beats on the
brain like a noise. Jock McChesney, bent over his work, heard it,
felt it, and, oppressed by it, looked up suddenly