of cold
blue sky tinged with the pale, chill yellow of a typical autumn sunset.

The cold look of that sunset was well borne out by a keen nip in the air,
but Dale was too thankful to have it clear at all to complain. Besides,
he wasn't exactly the complaining sort. Turning up the collar of a rather
shabby coat, he thrust both hands deep into his trousers' pockets and
hurried whistling along, bent on delivering his papers in the quickest
possible time.

"I ought to get home by seven, anyhow," he thought calculatingly. "And
if Mother'll only give me a hurry-up snack, I'll be in time for meeting."

He rolled the last word under his tongue with the prideful accent of a
novice. Then, with a sudden start, one hand jerked out of his pocket
and slipped between the buttons of the thread-bare coat. For an anxious
moment it groped there before the fingers closed over a metal badge,
shaped like a trefoil, that was pinned securely to the flannel shirt.
A somewhat sheepish grin overspread the freckled face, and through
an open gate Dale shot a paper dexterously across the porch to land
accurately in the middle of the door-mat.

"I'd hate to lose it the very first week," he muttered, with a touch
of apology. Mechanically he delivered another paper, and then he sighed.
"Gee! A month sure seems an awful long time to wait when you know about
all the tests already. I could even pass some of the first-class ones, I
bet! That handbook's a dandy, all right. I don't guess there was ever
another book printed with so much in it, exceptin', maybe--"

The words froze on his lips, and he caught his breath with a sharp,
hissing intake. From somewhere in the next block a scream rang out
on the still air, so shrill, so sudden, so full of surprise and pain
and utter terror that Dale's blood turned cold within him, and the
arm, half extended to toss a folded paper, halted in the middle of its
swing, as if encountering an invisible obstacle. The pause was only
momentary. Abruptly, as if two hands were pressed around a throbbing
throat, the cry was cut off, and in the deathly silence that followed,
Dale hurled the paper hastily, but accurately, from him, and turned
and ran.

Eyes wide and face a little white, he tore across the road, splashing
through puddles and slipping in the soft mud. Whirling around the corner
into Pine Street, he saw a woman rush bareheaded out of a near-by
house and two men come running down an adjacent alley. Rather, he no