eered at him from the two broken doors in
front, and seemed to face him with a crazy, drunken reel on its
mis-matched legs. He was hungry, but he sat there enjoying in a morbid
way the pang of hunger. It helped him someway to bear the sting of his
defeat.

It was the darkest hour of his life. He swore never to go back again to
that room. He couldn't face that crowd of grinning faces. He turned hot
and cold by turns as he thought of his folly. He was a cursed fool for
ever thinking of trying to do anything but just dig away on a farm. He
might have known how it would be; he'd got behind and had to be classed
in with the children; there was no help for it; he'd never go back.

The thought of _Her_ came in again and again, but the thought couldn't
help him. _Her_ face drove the last of his curses from his lips, but it
threw him into a fathomless despair, where he no longer defined his
thoughts into words. _Her_ face shone like a star, but it stood over a
bottomless rift in the earth and showed how impassable its yawning
barrier was.

There came a whoop outside and a scramble at the door and somebody
tumbled into the room.

"Anybody here?"

"Hello, where are you, Brad?"

He recognized Milton's voice. "Yes, I'm here; but wait a minute."

"Caesar, I _guess_ we'll wait! Break our necks if we don't," said the
other shadow whom he now recognized as Shep Watson. "Always live in the
dark?"

They waited while he lighted the dim little kerosene lamp on the table.
"O conspiracy, shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,"
quoted Shep in the interim.

"Been 'sleep?" asked Milton.

"No. Se' down, anywheres," he added on second thought, as he realized
that chairs were limited.

"Say, Brad, come on; let's go over t' the society."

"I guess not," said Brad sullenly.

"Why not?" asked Milton, recognizing something bitter in his voice.

"Because, I aint got any right to go. I aint goin' t' school ag'in. I'm
goin' west."

"Why, what's up?"

"I aint a-goin', that's all. I can't never ketch up with the rest of
you fellers." His voice broke a little, "an' it aint much fun havin' to
go in with a whole raft o' little boys and girls."

"Oh, say now, Brad, I wouldn't mind 'em if I was you," said Milton,
after a pause. He had the delicacy not to say he had heard the details
of Bradley's experience. "We all have to go through 'bout the same row
o' stumps, don't we, Shep? The way to do with 'em is to jest pay no
'tention