itted from
the past and future to the present.

A question that he now asked himself was: "Do women snore?" And: "If
people cannot travel in drawing-rooms, why do they travel at all?" The
safety of his nine hundred dollars worried him; he knelt up to look in
the inside pocket of his jacket, and bumped his head, a dull, solid
bump. Pale golden stars, shaped like the enlarged pictures of
snow-flakes, streamed across his consciousness. But the money was safe.

Already his nostrils were irritable with cinders; he attempted to blow
them clear, and failed. He was terribly thirsty. He wished very much to
smoke. Whichever way he turned, the frogs on the uppers of his pajamas
made painful holes in him. He woke at last with two coarse blankets
wrapped firmly about his head and shoulders and the rest of him
half-naked, gritty with cinders, and as cold as a well curb. Through the
ventilators (tightly closed) daylight was struggling with gas-light. The
car smelled of stale steam and man. The car wheels played a headachy
tune to the metre of the Phoebe-Snow-upon-the-road-of-anthracite
verses. David cursed Phoebe Snow, and determined that if ever God
vouchsafed him a honey-moon it should be upon the clean, fresh ocean.

There had been wistaria in Aiken. There was snow in New York. There was
a hurricane in Chicago. But in the smoker bound West there was a fine
old gentleman in a blue-serge suit and white spats who took a fancy to
David, just when David had about come to the conclusion that nothing in
the world looked friendly except suicide.

If David had learned nothing else from Miss Tennant, he had learned to
speak the truth. "Any employer that I am ever to have," he resolved,
"shall know all that there is to be known about me. I shall not try to
create the usual impression of a young man seeking his fortune in the
West purely for amusement." And so, when the preliminaries of
smoking-room acquaintance had been made--the cigar offered and refused,
and one's reasons for or against smoking plainly stated--David was
offered (and accepted) the opportunity to tell the story of his life.

David shook his head at a brilliantly labelled cigar eight inches long.

"I love to smoke," he said, "but I've promised not to."

"Better habit than liquor," suggested the old gentleman in the white
spats.

"I've promised not to drink."

"Men who don't smoke and who don't drink," said the old gentleman,
"usually spend their time running after th