se," David said hastily. "Do you know what time it is, Mr.
Fry?"

"No! Hear the rest!" said Anthony.

"... But those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury, or woe,
Seek me in vain and ceaselessly implore;
I answer not and I return--no more!"

Almost reverently the book closed.

"Have you quite assimilated the full meaning of that little poem,
David?" he asked gravely.

"Er--yes."

"Quite?" Anthony persisted.

"Why, I guess so," David said, eyes opening again. "Yes, I know I
have--only don't look at me like that and----"

"Then hear the rest of what I have to say," Anthony went on quickly and
impressively, "for now we come to my reason for bringing you here.
David, you are poor. You are without a profession--without a business of
your own. Your brightest hope at present is to become a plumber."

"Say----" David began.

"I should have said, your brightest chance," Anthony corrected. "But
your _ambition_, David, is altogether different. Your ambition is to
become--_what_?"

And now, before the penetrating, hypnotic eye, David seemed, not without
warrant, to have grown downright frightened. He glanced swiftly at
Anthony and at the door.

"I don't know," he said breathlessly. "What's the answer?"

"Well, what do you want to become? A doctor? A lawyer? A teacher? An
electrician? A journalist? A clergyman? A painter? An architect? A
mining engineer? A civil engineer? A----"

It was plain to Johnson Boller that the situation was getting beyond
David's doubtless nimble, doubtless criminal, mind. The boy held up an
unsteady hand and stayed the flow.

"That's it!" he said hoarsely. "A civil engineer! You got it out of me,
didn't you? And now I'd better go and----"

His quick, scared grin showed all his teeth, and he nodded in the most
ridiculous fashion--really much in the fashion one might nod at a
hopeless lunatic when agreeing that, as a matter of course, he is the
original Pharaoh. His mental state fairly glowed from him; all that
David wanted was to leave the Hotel Lasande.

David, in short, was doing just what ninety-nine per cent. of the human
race insists on doing; even at the hint of opportunity, he was trying to
face about and escape. But more than that, David, obviously one of the
lower classes, was treating Anthony Fry with a tolerance that was more
than mere disrespect. He was causing Johnson Boller to chuckle wearily
over his cigar--and in spite of his purely abst