n his way to Minnesota."

"Um." A long pause followed in which the cabman appeared to be counting
the coins in his pocket by the sense of touch. Then: "Would yez be
writing that down for me on a bit av paper, Misther Edwards?--his name,
and the name av the place where he does be going, I mane?"

"So you can write to him and refund the over-payment after you've been
to confession?" laughed the clerk. Nevertheless, he wrote the name and
address on a card for the petitioner.

"Thank ye, sorr; thank ye kindly. Whin a man has a wife and sivin
childer hangin' to um--" but here the singsong voice of the porter
calling the Burlington westbound silenced all other sounds and the clerk
heard no more.

Seated at a well-appointed table in the Chouteau cafe, Griswold had
ample time to overtake himself in the race reconstructive, and for the
moment the point of view became frankly Philistine. The luxurious hotel,
with its air of invincible respectability; the snowy napery, the cut
glass, the shaded lights, the deferential service; all these appealed
irresistibly to the epicurean in him. It was as if he had come suddenly
to his own again after an undeserved season of deprivation, and the
effect of it was to push the hardships and perils of the preceding weeks
and months into a far-away past.

He ordered his supper deliberately, and while he waited for its serving,
imagination cleared the stage and set the scenes for the drama of the
future. That future, with all its opportunities for the realizing of
ideals, was now safely assured. He could go whither he pleased and do
what seemed right in his own eyes, and there was none to say him nay.

It was good to be able to pick and choose in a whole worldful of
possibilities, and he gave himself a broad credit mark for persevering
in the resolution which held him steadfastly to the modest, workaday
plan struck out in the beginning. Apart from Miss Farnham's recognition
of him on the _Belle Julie_--a recognition which, he persuaded himself,
would never carry over from Gavitt the deck-hand to Griswold the student
and benefactor of his kind--there was nothing to fear; no reason why he
should not make Wahaska his workshop.

In this minor city of the clerk's describing he would find the
environment most favorable for a re-writing of his book and for a
renewal of his studies. Here, too, he might hope to become by
unostentatious degrees the beneficent god-in-the-car of his worthier
ambition, r