anded proprietor" who managed a big
ranch out in one of the western counties. The instructors took
their leave early, but Claude stayed on. What was it that made
life seem so much more interesting and attractive here than
elsewhere? There was nothing wonderful about this room; a lot of
books, a lamp... comfortable, hard-used furniture, some people
whose lives were in no way remarkable--and yet he had the sense
of being in a warm and gracious atmosphere, charged with generous
enthusiasms and ennobled by romantic friendships. He was glad to
see the same pictures on the wall; to find the Swiss wood-cutter
on the mantel, still bending under his load of faggots; to handle
again the heavy brass paper-knife that in its time had cut so
many interesting pages. He picked it up from the cover of a red
book lying there,-one of Trevelyan's volumes on Garibaldi, which
Julius told him he must read before he was another week older.

The next afternoon Claude took Mrs. Erlich to the football game
and came home with the family for dinner. He lingered on day
after day, but after the first few evenings his heart was growing
a little heavier all the time. The Erlich boys had so many new
interests he couldn't keep up with them; they had been going on,
and he had been standing still. He wasn't conceited enough to
mind that. The thing that hurt was the feeling of being out of
it, of being lost in another kind of life in which ideas played
but little part. He was a stranger who walked in and sat down
here; but he belonged out in the big, lonely country, where
people worked hard with their backs and got tired like the
horses, and were too sleepy at night to think of anything to say.
If Mrs. Erlich and her Hungarian woman made lentil soup and
potato dumplings and Wiener-Schnitzel for him, it only made the
plain fare on the farm seem the heavier.

When the second Friday came round, he went to bid his friends
good-bye and explained that he must be going home tomorrow. On
leaving the house that night, he looked back at the ruddy windows
and told himself that it was goodbye indeed, and not, as Mrs.
Erlich had fondly said, auf wiedersehen. Coming here only made
him more discontented with his lot; his frail claim on this kind
of life existed no longer. He must settle down into something
that was his own, take hold of it with both hands, no matter how
grim it was. The next day, during his journey out through the
bleak winter country, he felt that he