d piles
of old magazines from the cot in the alcove; for some one else that
Dallas tucked brushes into a ginger jar; and for some one else that
Griggs tested water taps and the radiator.

When they had cheerfully discovered that no one could think of anything
further to do they trooped down Broadway to celebrate Ewing's advent in
a dinner at the Monastery. When this was over and the crowd had thinned
to a few late sitters they had him do a picture. The others watched him
as he worked, standing on a bare table drawn to the wall. Brother
Hilarius grew before their eyes, insecurely astride a bucking broncho,
narrowly observed by two figures in the background--a dismayed brother
of his order in gown of frieze and hempen girdle, and Red Phinney,
contorting himself in ribald glee.

The watchers applauded as the picture grew. They had not supposed that
the quiet, almost timid, boy, who betrayed his unsophistication by
countless little mannerisms, could have attained the sureness of line
his strokes revealed.

The heated air of the room rushed up to make a torrid zone of the region
about the worker's head, and from time to time one of the watchers
handed him a mug of creaming ale with which he washed the dust of the
charcoal from his throat. He lost himself in the work at last. The
voices, laughter, songs, strains of the piano, came but faintly to him,
and were as the echoes of street life that sounded in his ears each
night before he slept. It was after one o'clock when he stepped down
from the table to survey the finished drawing.

He knew he had done well, but he was glad to be told so by others. It
was clearly their opinion that the club had in no way descended from its
high standards of mural decoration. Baldwin brought a bottle of fixative
and sprayed the drawing through a blowpipe. Then they drained a final
bumper to the artist and the work and went out into the mild September
night, making the empty street, sleeping in shadow, resound to their
noisy talk.

The light of a car crept ghostlike toward them and they stood to board
it. As it moved on through Broadway Ewing thought of an empty creek bed
at the bottom of some ravine at home. This was the dry time, but with
earliest dawn would come the freshet, flooding the canyon, surging over
its rocky bed to some outlet as mysterious as its source. The image
brought him a sudden pang of homesickness. Despite the jovial
friendliness of the crowd he was still a detached s