which changed, while
he was at breakfast in the dining car, to the snow-covered fields and
farms of northern Illinois. Toward noon, he could see, as the train
rounded curves, that the horizon to the east had taken on a murky look.
Vast, vague, the shadow--the emanation of hundreds of thousands of
chimneys--thickened and grew more definite as the train sped on;
suburban villages began supplanting country towns; stations became more
pretentious. They passed factories; then hundreds of acres of little
houses of the factory workers in long rows; swiftly the buildings
became larger, closer together; he had a vision of miles upon miles of
streets, and the train rolled slowly into a long trainshed and stopped.

Alan, following the porter with his suitcase from the car, stepped down
among the crowds hurrying to and from the trains. He was not confused,
he was only intensely excited. Acting in implicit accord with the
instructions of the letter, which he knew by heart, he went to the
uniformed attendant and engaged a taxicab--itself no small experience;
there would be no one at the station to meet him, the letter had said.
He gave the Astor Street address and got into the cab. Leaning forward
in his seat, looking to the right and then to the left as he was driven
through the city, his first sensation was only disappointment.

Except that it was larger, with more and bigger buildings and with more
people upon its streets, Chicago apparently did not differ from Kansas
City. If it was, in reality, the city of his birth, or if ever he had
seen these streets before, they now aroused no memories in him.

It had begun to snow again. For a few blocks the taxicab drove north
past more or less ordinary buildings, then turned east on a broad
boulevard where tall tile and brick and stone structures towered till
their roofs were hidden in the snowfall. The large, light flakes,
falling lazily, were thick enough so that, when the taxicab swung to
the north again, there seemed to Alan only a great vague void to his
right. For the hundred yards which he could view clearly, the space
appeared to be a park; now a huge granite building, guarded by stone
lions, went by; then more park; but beyond-- A strange stir and
tingle, quite distinct from the excitement of the arrival at the
station, pricked in Alan's veins, and hastily he dropped the window to
his right and gazed out again. The lake, as he had known since his
geography days, lay