nward lift, the flying out of his spirit in a rush of
welcoming ecstasy, as he saw the woods hanging misty on the horizon and
the clay bluffs, below which the slow, quiet river uncoiled its yellow
length.

The days at the farm had been the happiest of his life--wonderful days
of fishing and swimming, of sitting in gnarled tree boughs so still the
nesting birds lost their fear and came back to their eggs. For hours
he had lain in patches of shade watching the cloud shadows on the
fields, and the great up-pilings when storms were coming, rising
black-bosomed against the blue. There had been some dark moments to
throw out these brighter ones--when chickens were killed and he had
tried to stand by and look swaggeringly unconcerned as a boy should,
while he sickened internally and shut his lips over pleadings for
mercy. And there was an awful day when pigs were slaughtered, and no
one knew that he stole away to the elder thickets by the river,
burrowed deep into them, and stopped his ears against the shrill,
agonized cries. He knew such weakness was shameful and hid it with a
child's subtlety. At supper he told skillful lies to account for his
pale cheeks and lost appetite.

His uncle, a kindly generous man, without children of his own, had been
fond of him and sympathized with his wish for an education. It was he
who had made it possible for the boy to go to a good school at
Springfield and afterwards to study law. How hard he had worked in
those school years, and what realms of wonder had been opened to him
through books, the first books he had known, reverently handled,
passionately read, that led him into unknown worlds, pointed the way to
ideals that could be realized! With the law books he was not in so
good an accord. But it was his chosen profession, and he approached it
with zeal and high enthusiasm, a young apostle who would sell his
services only for the right.

Now he smiled, looking back at his disillusion. The young apostle was
jostled out of sight in the bustle of the growing town. There was no
room in it for idealists who were diffident and sensitive and stood on
the outside of its self-absorbed activity bewildered by the noises of
life. The stream of events was very different from the pages of books.
David saw men and women struggling toward strange goals, fighting for
soiled and sordid prizes, and felt as he had done on the farm when the
pigs were killed. And as he had fled from that ugly sc