owe money to were the gruesome committee that
brought him his grief; the doctor, the druggist, the casket-maker, the
sexton, and the dealer in the unreal estate who sold the tiny lots in
the sad little town.

His soul was too bruised to grope its way about, but instinct told him
that bills must be paid. Instinct automatically set him to work clearing
up his accounts. For their sakes he devoted himself to a stricter
economy than ever. He engaged meals at Mrs. Judd's boarding-house. He
resolved even to rent his home. But, mercifully, there was no one in
town to take the place. In economy's name, too, he put away his
pipe--for one horrible evening. The next day he remembered how Marthy
had sung out, "Why don't you smoke your pipe any more, Will?" and he had
answered: "I'd kind o' got out of the habit, Marthy, but I guess I'll
git back in." And Lordy, how she laughed! The laughter of the dead--it
made a lonely echo in the house.

Gradually he found, as so many dismal castaways have found, that there
is a mystic companionship in that weed which has come out of the
vegetable world, as the dog from among the animals, to make fellowship
with man. Rudd and his pipe were Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday on
the desert island of loneliness. They stared out to sea; and imagined.

Remembering how Martha and he used to dream about the child, in the
tobacco twilight, and how they planned his future, Rudd's soul learned
to follow the pipe smoke out from the porch, over the fence and to
disappear beyond the horizons of the town and the sharp definition of
the graveyard fence. He became addicted to dreams, habituated to dealing
in futurities that could never come to pass.

Being his only luxury on earth, by and by they became his necessities,
realities more concrete than the shoes he sold or the board walk he
plodded to and from his store.

One Sunday Rudd was present at church when Mr. and Mrs. Budd Granger
brought their fourth baby forward to be christened. The infant bawled
and choked and kicked its safety-pins loose. Rudd was sure that Eric
never would have misbehaved like that. Yet Eric had been denied the
sacred rite.

This reminded Rudd how many learned theologians had proved by rigid
logic that unbaptized babies are damned forever. He spent days of horror
at the frightful possibility, and nights of infernal travel across
gridirons where babies flung their blistered hands in vain appeal to
far-off mothers. He could not ge