, he knows he's dead now. But I broke down and sobbed like a
child when I gave it to him--I'm all heart. It's over now, all but the
life insurance. And yet he didn't thank me. On the contrary he spoke
language I should blush to repeat."

The others put on looks of chastened gloom and were speaking in hushed
tones of the sad event when Baldwin returned. He dismissed his uniformed
attendants with largesse.

"Thing that needed to be done for his own good," he explained. "Max
believes he's an art editor, but nobody else does--nobody else ever
believed it in this whole wide, beautiful world. So I lined those
trusting little boys up in front of his door and said, 'Boys, look in
there and you will see a real art editor.' They looked in at old Max and
then at me. 'You believe it, don't you, boys?' I asked them, and they
all said, 'Yes, sir!' So I made them bow to him and say in concert, 'We
_do_ believe you are an art editor, no matter what other people say,'
and then we left. We had to. I'm ashamed to tell you--but old Max seemed
to forget that he was a gentleman. He'll thank me when he comes to his
senses, all the same. He can lay his head on his pillow to-night knowing
that there are others in the world besides himself who believe he's an
art editor. Oh, I love to do good!" he concluded with a benevolent
smirk.

Once more they were in the hansoms and Ewing slept again, to the strains
of "I have other mothers now," sung by Baldwin, who sat in his lap.

As they climbed the stairs of the Rookery Baldwin found the moment
suited for sage counsel to Chalmers.

"'T won't do, my boy--'t won't do! Can't burn candles both ends. Your
face this minute looks like one of those cheap apple pies in a
restaurant window."

Ewing mounted to his own floor and found himself in the curious
stillness of the big room. It had seemed to wait there for him, mutely,
but with desire. He stood a moment in the silence, his ears ringing with
after sounds of the night. He fell on the couch, too tired to go
formally to bed, and felt himself falling into sleep as into a
beneficent and welcoming abyss.

CHAPTER XIII

SEARCHING THE WILDERNESS

He awoke from a dream noisy with laughter and the ring of shod hoofs on
a stone roadway; a phantasma in which faces were gray and distorted
through smoke and people did wild things in sane ways. He lay long
enough to separate the fiction of this dream from the actual but not
more credible performances