drew out the check and the editorial
letter. He had sold half a dozen short tales to third-rate
magazines; but this letter had been issued from a distinguished
editorial room, of international reputation. If he could keep it
up--style and calibre of imagination--within a year the name of
Taber would become widely known. Everything in the world to live
for!--fame that he could not reap, love that he must not take! What
was all this pother about hell as a future state?

By and by things began to stir on the table: little invisible
things. The life with which he had endued these sheets of paper
began to beckon imperiously. So he sharpened a score of pencils,
and after fiddling about and rewriting the last page he had written
the previous night, he plunged into work. It was hot and dry. There
were mysterious rustlings that made him glance hopefully toward the
sea. He was always deceived by these rustlings which promised wind
and seldom fulfilled that promise.

"Time to dress for dinner," said Ruth from behind the curtain. "I
don't see how you do it, Hoddy. It's so stuffy--and all that
tobacco smoke!"

He inspected his watch. Half after six. He was astonished. For four
hours he had shifted his own troubles to the shoulders of these
imaginative characters.

"He called me a wanton, Hoddy. That is what I don't understand."

"There isn't an angel in heaven, Ruth, purer or sweeter than you
are. No doubt--because he did not understand you--he thought you
had run away with someone. The trader you spoke about: he disliked
your father, didn't he? Well, he probably played your father a
horrible practical joke."

"Perhaps that was it. I always wondered why he bought my mother's
pearls so readily. I am dreadfully sad."

"I'll tell you what. I'll speak to McClintock to-night and see if
he won't take us for a junket on _The Tigress_. Eh? Banging against
the old rollers--that'll put some life into us both. Run along
while I rig up and get the part in my hair straight."

"If he had only been my father!--McClintock!"

"God didn't standardize human beings, Ruth; no grain of wheat is
like another. See the new litter of Mrs. Pig? By George, every one
of them looks like the other; and yet each one attacks the source
of supply with a squeal and an oof that's entirely different from
his brothers' and sisters'. Put on that new dress--the one that's
all white. We'll celebrate that check, and let the rest of the
world go hang."

"You a