oughing in a silent church. As he seethed adown the warm sidewalk the
soles of his shoes smote the pavement, for mentally he was walking not
upon cement but upon Mr. Atwater.

Unconsciously his pace presently became slower for a more concentrated
brooding upon this slanderous old man who took advantage of his position
to poison his daughter's mind against the only one of her suitors who
cared in the highest way. And upon this there came an infinitesimal
consolation in the midst of anguish, for he thought of what Herbert had
told him about Mr. Newland Sanders's poems to Julia, and he had a strong
conviction that one time or another Mr. Atwater must have spoken even
more disparagingly of these poems and their author than he had of Orduma
cigarettes and their smoker. Perhaps the old man was not altogether
vile.

This charitable moment passed. He recalled the little moonlit drama on
the embowered veranda, when Julia, in her voice of plucked harp strings,
told him that he smoked too much, and he had said it didn't matter;
nobody would care much if he died--and Julia said gently that his mother
would, and other people, too; he mustn't talk so recklessly. Out of this
the old eavesdropper had viciously represented him to be a poser, not
really reckless at all; had insulted his cigarettes and his salary.
Well, Noble would show him! He had doubts about being able to show Mr.
Atwater anything important connected with the cigarettes or the salary,
but he _could_ prove how reckless he was. With that, a vision formed
before him: he saw Julia and her father standing spellbound at a
crossing while a smiling youth stood directly between the rails in the
middle of the street and let a charging trolley-car destroy him--not
instantly, for he would live long enough to whisper, as the stricken
pair bent over him: "Now, Julia, which do you believe: your father, or
me?" And then with a slight, dying sneer: "Well, Mr. Atwater, is _this_
reckless enough to suit you?"

* * * * *

Town squirrels flitted along their high paths in the shade-tree branches
above the embittered young lover, and he noticed them not at all, which
was but little less than he noticed the elderly human couple who
observed him from a side-yard as he passed by. Mr. and Mrs. Burgess had
been happily married for fifty-three years and four months. Mr. Burgess
lay in a hammock between two maple trees, and was soothingly swung by
means of a strin