ch an one can understand the
feeling of a boy in Alec's position. He wondered sometimes, with a
sudden sinking of the heart, what would be the result if they knew
about his father.

He never looked at Avery Windom without thinking of it. He used to
watch her in church, sitting up between her aristocratic father and
mother, sweet and refined, like a dainty white flower. He wondered if
her slim-gloved hand would ever be held out to him again in greeting,
as it had been on several occasions, if she knew that he was the son
of a criminal.

Then he wondered what she would think if she knew that the touch of
that little hand in his had been like the saving touch of a guardian
angel. Once, urged on by one of the factory boys, an almost
overwhelming temptation had seized him, but the remembrance that if
he yielded he would never again be fit to take her hand made him
thrust his into his pockets and turn away toward home with a shrug of
the shoulders.

Avery, as ignorant of the influence she was exerting as a lily is of
the fragrance it sheds, went serenely on in her gentle, high-bred
way. Alec held no larger place in her thoughts than any other of the
employees in her father's factory.

"Flip would call her one of my islands," he said to himself one
night, as he parted on the corner from a crowd of boys who were
begging him to go with them for a little game of cards and a lark
afterward. "No telling where I would have drifted if it hadn't been
for her. It's no easy matter to keep straight when you're all alone
in a city as big and tough as this."

On his way home, he stopped at the library for a book he had heard
her mention. He had overheard her quoting a line from Sir Galahad,
and although he knew the story well of the maiden knight "whose
strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure," it
took on a new meaning because she had praised it. He learned the
entire poem by heart, and the inspiration of the lines as he bent
over his work in the factory gave him many an uplift that left him
more nearly the man whom he imagined Avery's ideal to be.

One other date was marked on the calendar with a star before Flip's
birthday came round. It was the night of the literary contest at the
high school, when Avery's essay took the prize. Alec had manoeuvred
for a week to get a ticket, and finally procured one from the head
bookkeeper at the factory, whose sister taught in the high school.

[Illustration: "'IT'S TH