walked at her side. "Good night, Mr. Brooks," said
she.

But old Hod Brooks only put his hands deeper in his pockets and slouched
on alongside. "I'll just go on along with you to the gate. It's hot
tonight, isn't it? I don't know when we've had such a spell."

She could not well dismiss him now, so indeed the three walked yet a
while together.

Don Lane still was silent, moody. There was little of the Jesuit in his
own frank soul. He knew nothing of dissembling, and had no art of
putting a good face upon a bad matter. All these complications which so
swiftly had come into his life seemed to him only a terrible and
overwhelming thing in the total. The morrow was coming for him--nay, it
already was at hand, and he knew what that must bring of additional
grief. Anne! Anne! He must tell her. He must leave her. Never in all his
care-free life had he been so wretched, so miserable, as he was now.
Moreover, for reasons he could not stifle he did not like the presence
of Brooks here, even though he and his mother must acknowledge the debt
under which he had laid them that day.

"I'll tell you, Mother," said he after a time, when he had turned off
the square into their own street. "Just excuse me for a few minutes,
won't you? It's so hot and stuffy that I don't feel that I can sleep.
I'll just take a little run down the street, if you don't mind."

"But why, Don?" she inquired.

"You see, I've always been used to keeping fit, and I don't like to
break my training--we always had to exercise in college, on the teams. I
don't feel good when I don't. I'm used to doing my half mile or so every
night just before I go to sleep."

"Huh!" said Old Hod Brooks, looking at the young man appraisingly. "So
that's how you keep in training, eh? Well, it seems to work all right!"
His sudden gusty laughter sounded loud in the night, but it lacked the
note of ease.

"Go on, go on," he added--"as you get older maybe you'll find it takes
all your gimp to take care of your mind and your money, and you'll let
your body just about take care of itself. But go ahead--I'll just walk
on down with your mother."

"Don't be long, Don," said Aurora Lane; and she meant it, for she felt
uneasy at thus being accompanied to her own gate, a thing unknown in her
history. She was glad that old Nels Jorgens, on ahead, had just turned
in at his own gate.

Don Lane trotted off slowly, with long elastic stride, up on his toes,
with his elbows tucked in and h