ther's eyes. He had carried it home in the
evening, and smoothed the gray hair over the gentle little face, and tied
it on her before he would let her go to the glass. She was just as pleased
as he, and kissed him with her arms tight about his neck and the tears in
her eyes. An hour afterward he had found her tearing it into bits with an
idiotic laugh. A little later--

He shut his eyes, as if to keep out some real sight before him.

It seemed to him as if his whole boyhood had been made up of just such
nights as this one which he remembered.

It was not often that Neckart looked back at that early time. He was
neither morbid nor addicted to self-torture. He had carefully walled up
this miserable background of youth from his busy, cheerful, wide-awake
life. Why should he go back to it? Something, however, in the air to-day,
in the moan of the sea through the sunlight, brought it all before him,
more real than the stretch of water and sand.

The captain smoked out his cigar and began to talk. Gaps of silence were
so much wasted time in the world; and besides, he owed a duty to Bruce.
Here was a man going headlong to the devil by the road of ambition, a
sweet, high nature becoming soured and tainted, all for the lack of honest
direction from somebody of age and experience.

When Neckart roused himself enough to understand, the captain was in the
full swing of his dictatorial oration. "I don't want to intrude with my
opinion. But no man should live for himself," he said. "Now, if my
scissors had turned out as I expected, I should have been worth a million
to-day. I'd have spent a good share of it--let me see--on churches, I
think. Small churches--at corners in place of grogshops. Pure Gothic,
say--"

"Stained glass and gargoyles instead of whiskey? You must bid higher for
souls in back alleys than that, captain."

"Well, schools, then--colleges, asylums, soup-houses. I tell you, Bruce,
if I had your opportunities, if I could work political machinery, I'd lift
this festering mass below us up--at least to civilization and
Christianity."

"I thought you meant me," laughing. "Go on."

"Of course I can't give you detailed advice. Take me on pistons and
screws, and I'm at home; but I know only the broad outlines of political
economy. My view," ponderously, "is purely philosophic. Our politics need
reform, sir. An honest man who would come to the front just now would save
the country. The masses would follow him to hone