r against loss, while the
mention of its existence caused the commissioner again to rub his head.
Why in the world should a man----? He gave up the conundrum in despair,
and applied himself to the necessary business.

Friedrich took but a passive part in the transaction, whose detail,
with its rapid interchange of technicalities, he did not attempt to
understand. His courteous dignity and submission to the justice of the
legal procedure told nothing of the caldron of feeling boiling within
him at the _in_-justice that had brought him to a pass where this thing
was right.

As he walked away from the Federal Building, his mind began to leave
these thoughts and to dwell on the almost equally disagreeable subject
of what he should do next. His immediate need was of something to eat.
He was sick with hunger, and he found himself even casting a regretful
thought after Wilder's quarter of a dollar. His hand had happened to
touch it in his pocket during his morning ride, and he had flung it
from him as far as he could into the woods beside the road.

"But, no," he thought, "rather would I starve than buy food with that."

He went up Patton Avenue, and eyed the signs on the buildings in the
hope of seeing one that would suggest to him some way of making money.

The early morning's rain had turned into snow, that beat into the open
place from the north, and drove the loafers from their accustomed
haunts. The pavement was whitening rapidly.

"The first of April to-morrow," thought von Rittenheim, disgustedly.
"What will happen to those pease that I put into the gr-round last
week?"

As he stood, sheltered from the storm by a projecting building, he
reflected that it was useless for him to go back into the country.
There was no planting to be done as early as this, except that of a few
garden vegetables, and he had no seeds to plant even if he went.

He remembered as if it were long ago that he had meant to come to
Asheville to-day, and thought with grim humor that after all he had not
been obliged to walk.

Yes, he must find some occupation in town that would support him during
the month that intervened before the sitting of the court. He knew that
the usual sentence for moonshining was "A hundred dollars or three
months," and, since he had no money, he must submit to the degradation
of imprisonment. May, June, July. That would bring him to August, and
it would be time enough then to consider the future.

A von Rittenh