of Inverness & Heath.

Now, at twenty-nine, he was head of the fifth floor. The cold sore had
vanished permanently under a regime of health-food, dumb-bells, and icy
plunges. The shoes were bench-made and flawless. If the legs still were
somewhat spindling their correctly creased casings hid the fact.

There's little doubt that if Florian had been named Bill, and if the
calves of his legs had bulged, and if, in his youth, he had gone to work
for a wholesale grocer, he would never have forged for himself a coat of
mail whose links were pretense and whose bolts were sham. He probably
would have been frankly content with the sight of an occasional
ball-game out at the Polo Grounds, and the newspaper bulletins of a
prizefight by rounds. But here he was at the base that supplied
America's outdoor equipment. He who outfitted mountaineers must speak
knowingly of glaciers, chasms, crevices, and peaks. He who advised
canoeists must assume wisdom of paddles, rapids, currents, and portages.
He whose sleeping hours were spangled with the clang of the street cars
must counsel such hardy ones as were preparing cheerfully to seek rest
rolled in blankets before a camp-fire's dying embers. And so, slowly,
year by year, in his rise from errand to stock boy, from stock boy to
clerk, from clerk to assistant manager, thence to his present official
position, he had built about himself a tissue of innocent lies. He
actually believed them himself.

Sometimes a customer who in June had come in to purchase his vacation
supplies with the city pallor upon him, returned in September, brown,
hard, energized, to thank Florian for the comfort of the outfit
supplied him.

"I just want to tell you, Sykes, that that was a great little outfit you
sold me. Yessir! Not a thing too much, and not a thing too little,
either. Remember how I kicked about that air mattress? Well, say, it
saved my life! I slept like a baby every night. And the trip! You've
been there, haven't you?"

Florian would smile and nod his head. His grateful customer would clap
him on the shoulder. "Some pebble, that mountain!"

"Get to the top?" Florian would ask.

"Well, we didn't do the peak. That is, not right to the top. Started to
a couple of times, but the girls got tired, and we didn't want to leave
'em alone. Pretty stiff climb, let me tell you, young feller."

"You should have made the top."

"Been up, have you?"

"A dozen times."

"Oh, well, that's your business,