want was stretched out to
him, but a lion in wrath at all iniquity and injustice, was not long in
carrying out his thought to write the history of the Rockhaven Granite
Company, and for the sole purpose of a warning.

To do so, came as an excuse to protect the pride of the poor girl who
had been his co-worker; and when it was done, the editor to whom he took
it gladly used it and, more than that, praised its writer editorially.

Winn, as was his nature, wrote with candor, sparing not even himself or
the way he was duped, and it is needless to say that his article was
widely read. Winn looked for no compensation, but the editor, keen to
discover talent, at once offered him a position as city news reporter on
the paper. And so his reward came. It was not over ample, so far as
salary goes, but it was at least an occupation--what he just now
needed.

One morning, when passing the closed office of Weston & Hill, he saw on
the door a notice that, at two o'clock that afternoon, all the office
fixtures and other assets of this bankrupt firm would be sold at public
auction.

As Winn stood there that wintry morning, with the hurrying stream of
people jostling him as they passed, while he read this business epitaph
posted upon the massive doors, what a grim travesty it seemed!

He looked at the two nickel plates flanking them, once kept bright, but
now tarnished, upon which the firm's name in bold black letters still
stared at him, at the drawn curtains where "Investment Securities" in
gold still uttered their lie; and gazing at these outward signs of
deception and fraud, all the varying changes in his own hopes, plans,
and opinions for a six months passed in review.

And in fancy he leaped back to Rockhaven.

He peeped into the store where quaint Jess Hutton fiddled in lieu of
company; he was one of the little gathering each Sunday at church there;
he saw the quarry with the men at work, the tiny dooryard with Mona
watering her flowers, the grand old gorge where the sea waves leaped in,
and the cave once carpeted with ferns in his honor, and (most touching
of all) the moment he had parted from a timid girl, while the moon,
rising out of a boundless ocean, smiled at them.

Now, it was a memory of the past, and he, sore at heart, with only a few
hundred dollars in the bank, was hunting for news items at so much a
line, and the "so much" a mere pittance.

Truly, the whirligig of time had made a toy of him!

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