h a
man I know and care for."

Kent had not spoken since they had felt their way out of the dark lower
hall of the Farquhar Building. Up to this point the talk had been
pointedly reminiscent; of the men of their university year, of mutual
friends in the far-away "God's country" to the eastward, of the Gastonian
epic, of all things save only two--the exile's cast for fortune in the
untamed West, and one other.

"That brings us a little nearer to the things that be--and to your
prospects, David," said the guest. "How are you fixed here?"

Kent shrugged.

"Gaston is dead, as you see; too dead to bury."

"Why don't you get out of it, then?"

"I shall some day, perhaps. Up to date there has been no place to go to,
and no good way to arrive. Like some thousands of others, I've made an ass
of myself here, Loring."

"By coming, you mean? Oh, I don't know about that. You have had some hard
knocks, I take it, but if you are the same David Kent I used to know, they
have made a bigger man of you."

"Think so?"

"I'd bet on it. We have had the Gaston epic done out for us in the
newspapers. No man could live through such an experience as you must have
had without growing a few inches. Hello! What's this?"

A turned corner had brought them in front of a lighted building in Texas
Street with a straggling crowd gathered about the porticoed entrance. As
Loring spoke, there was a rattle of snare drums followed by the _dum-dum_
of the bass, and a brass band ramped out the opening measures of a
campaign march.

"It is a rally," said Kent, when they had passed far enough beyond the
zone of brass-throated clamorings to make the reply audible. "I told you
that the Gaston wolf-pack had gone into politics. We are in the throes of
a State election, and there is to be a political speech-making at the
Opera House to-night, with Bucks in the title role. And there is a fair
measure of the deadness of the town! When you see people flock together
like that to hear a brass band play, it means one of two things: that the
town hasn't outgrown the country village stage, or else it has passed that
and all other stages and is well on its way to the cemetery."

"That is one way of putting it," Loring rejoined. "If things are as bad as
that, it's time you were moving on, don't you think?"

"I guess so," was the lack-luster response. "Only I don't know where to
go, or what to do when I get there."

They were crossing the open square in front o