wn the street, he felt a sense
of loss. The path before him seemed a bit less bright, the night a bit
more barren. And although in the excitement of the eager life about
him he quickly reacted, he did not turn a corner but he found himself
peering beneath the lowered umbrellas with a piquant sense of hope.

Wilson's position was an unusual one for a theological student. He was
wandering at large in a strange city, homeless and penniless, and yet
he was not unhappy in this vagabondage. Every prowler in the dark is,
consciously or unconsciously, a mystic. He is in touch with the
unknown; he is a member of a universal cabal. The unexpected, the
impossible lurk at every corner. He brushes shoulders with strange
things, though often he feels only the lightest breath of their
passing, and hears only a rustle like that of an overturned leaf. But
he knows, either with a little shudder and a startled glance about or
with quickened pulse and eager waiting.

This he felt, and something, too, of that fellowship which exists
between those who have no doors to close behind them. For such stand
shoulder to shoulder facing the barrier Law, which bars them from the
food and warmth behind the doors. To those in a house the Law is
scarcely more than an abstraction; to those without it is a tyrannical
reality. The Law will not even allow a man outside to walk up and down
in the gray mist enjoying his own dreams without looking upon him with
suspicion. The Law is a shatterer of dreams. The Law is as eager as a
gossip to misinterpret; and this puts one, however innocent, in an
aggressive mood.

Looking up at the sodden sky from beneath a dripping slouch hat,
Wilson was keenly alive to this. Each rubber-coated officer he passed
affected him like an insolent intrusion. He brought home all the
mediocrity of the night, all the shrilling gray, all the hunger, all
the ache. These fellows took the color out of the picture, leaving
only the cold details of a photograph. They were the men who swung
open the street doors at the close of a matinee, admitting the stale
sounds of the road, the sober light of the late afternoon.

This was distinctly a novel viewpoint for Wilson. As a student he had
most sincerely approved of the Law; as a citizen of the world behind
the closed doors he had forgotten it. Now with a trace of uneasiness
he found himself resenting it.

A month ago Wilson had thought his life mapped out beyond the
possibility of change,