he mood he happens to be in--and the mood we happen to
be in--at the time of making the acquaintanceship. Another day, in
other moods, he would make a quite different impression--if the
impression already made could be effaced. I have a theory that the
world's sorrow is largely a matter of moods. I don't deny the sorrow,
nor the need for sorrow, nor the reality of it, but I do believe there
is a mood of happiness which even the deepest sorrows cannot suppress.
And the more you study people the more you will understand moods, and,
perhaps, be master of your own. And the man who can, by force of his
own will, determine the mood in which he will live, is master of the
world."

So Dave came to realize that every incident in the reportorial round
was to be assimilated for its educational value, and this lent a zest
to his work which it could not otherwise have had. But the attraction
of the Duncan household grew upon him, and many an hour he spent under
its hospitable roof. Mrs. Duncan, motherly, and yet not too
motherly--she might almost have been an older sister--appealed to the
young man as an ideal of womanhood. Her soft, well modulated voice
seemed to him to express the perfect harmony of the perfect home, and
underneath its even tones he caught glimpses of a reserve of power and
judgment not easily unbalanced. She was a woman to whom men might
carry their ambitions, and women their hopes, and little children their
wonderings, and all be assured of sympathetic audience and wise
counsel. And as Dave's eyes would follow her healthy, handsome figure
as it moved noiselessly about in her domestic duties, or as he caught
the flush of beauty that still bloomed in her thoughtful face, or as at
rarer intervals he plunged into the honest depths of her frank grey
eyes, the tragedy of his own orphaned life bore down upon him and he
rebelled that he had been denied the start which such a mother could
have given him.

"I am twenty years behind myself," he would reflect, with a grim smile.
"Never mind. I will do three men's work for the next ten, and then we
will be even."

And there was Edith,--Edith, who had held him rapture-bound on that
first Sunday in church--Edith, who had burst so unexpectedly upon his
life that first evening in her father's home. He had not allowed
himself any foolishness about Edith. It was evident that Edith was
pre-empted, just as he was pre-empted, and the part of honour in his
friend's hou