on the floor lay countless burned matches, a pipe or two
which scattered tobacco. The floor itself was covered layers deep with
the ruins of two Sunday papers--at which form of journalism Horace
Brooks openly scoffed, but none the less ruthlessly devoured after his
own fashion each Sabbath afternoon.

He sat with his bearded chin sunk in his shirt bosom, his mild blue eye
seeing nothing at all, his hands idle in his lap. He was concluding his
Sabbath as usually he did, in the midst of the scenes surrounding his
daily toil throughout the week. He started at the sound of Aurora Lane's
knock on the door.

"Come in!" he called.

He supposed it was some young lawyer from one of the offices down the
hall, where struggling students, or clerks from the abstract offices,
sometimes brought knotty problems for him to solve. These folk still
lived in the rear of their offices--as indeed Horace Brooks but recently
had done himself. A disorderly couch still might have been found in the
room beyond, fragments of soap, a soiled towel or so, a broken comb, a
sidelong mirror--traces of his own humble and arduous beginnings in the
law.

But he turned half about now, and dropped his feet to the floor as he
heard the rustle of a gown. He sat half leaning forward as Aurora Lane
entered. He had small training in the social usages--he did not always
rise when a woman entered the room, unless some special reason for that
act existed. So he sat for just a time, and looked at her, the fact of
her presence seeming slowly to filter into his brain. Then quickly he
stood and went forward to her, his rare smile illuminating his homely
features.

"Come in," said he. "Will you be seated? Why have you come here?" He was
simple and direct of habit.

Aurora Lane looked at him not only with the eyes of a client, but with
the eyes of a woman. She saw plainly the quick look of eagerness, the
swift hopefulness which came into his eyes.

But she must forestall all that. "Mr. Brooks," said she, "I've come to
you for help--I need your professional services."

He sat looking at her gravely for some time, the light in his face
slowly fading away. "Help?" said he. "As how?" He was of the plain
people, and at times lapsed into the colloquial inelegancies of his
early life. But he needed little divination now to know that Aurora
Lane came to him for no personal reasons that offered him any hope.

"It's about my boy," said Aurora. "You know--Don."

He nodd