uld be ambitious as Caesar--but not for himself. He was a
groundling, but his son should climb.

Husband and wife spent evenings and evenings debating the future of the
child. They never agreed on the name--or the alternative names. For it
is advisable to have two ready for any emergency. But the future was
rosy. They were unanimous on that--President of the United States,
mebbe; or at least the President's wife.

Mrs. Rudd, who occasionally read the continued stories in the evening
paper, had happened on a hero named "Eric." She favored that name--or
Gwendolynne (with a "y"), as the case might be. In any event, the
child's future was so glowing that it warmed Mrs. Rudd to asking one
evening, forgetful of her earlier edict:

"Why don't you smoke your pipe any more, Will?"

"I'd kind o' got out of the habit, Marthy," he said, and added, hastily,
"but I guess I'll git back in."

Thereafter they sat of evenings by the lamp, he smoking, she sewing
things--holding them up now and then for him to see. They looked almost
too small to be convincing, until he brought home from the store a pair
of shoes--"the smallest size made, Marthy, too small for some of the
dolls you see over at Bostwick's."

It was the golden period of his life. Rudd never sold shoes so well.
People could hardly resist his high spirits. Anticipation is a great
thing--it is all that some people get.

To be a successful shoe clerk one must acquire the patience of Job
without his gift of complaint, and Rudd was thoroughly schooled. So he
waited with a hope-lit serenity the preamble to the arrival of
his--her--their child.

And then fate, which had previously been content with denying him
comforts and keeping him from luxuries, dealt him a blow in the face,
smote him on his patient mouth. The doctor told him that the little body
of his son had been born still. After that it was rather a stupor of
despair than courage that carried him through the vain struggle for life
of the worn-out housewife who became only almost a mother. It seemed
merely the logical completion of the world's cruelty when the doctor
laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and walked out of the door, without
leaving any prescription to fill. Rudd stood like a wooden Indian, too
dazed to understand or to feel. He opened the door to the undertaker and
waited outside the room, just twiddling his fingers and wondering. His
world had come to an end and he did not know what to do.

At the chu