ncreasing menace, a sudden light flared across the
southern sky followed by the reverberation of distant thunder.

Presently a great rain drop was blown against the youth's face; the
vividness of the lightning had increased; the rumbling of the thunder
had grown to the proportions of a titanic bombardment; but he dared not
pause to seek shelter.

Another flash of lightning revealed a fork in the road immediately
ahead--to the left ran the broad, smooth highway, to the right a dirt
road, overarched by trees, led away into the impenetrable dark.

The fugitive paused, undecided. Which way should he turn? The better
travelled highway seemed less mysterious and awesome, yet would his
pursuers not naturally assume that he had followed it? Then, of course,
the right hand road was the road for him. Yet still he hesitated, for
the right hand road was black and forbidding; suggesting the entrance to
a pit of unknown horrors.

As he stood there with the rain and the wind, the thunder and the
lightning, horror of the past and terror of the future his only
companions there broke suddenly through the storm the voice of a man
just ahead and evidently approaching along the highway.

The youth turned to flee; but the thought of the men tracking him from
that direction brought him to a sudden halt. There was only the road to
the right, then, after all. Cautiously he moved toward it, and at the
same time the words of the voice came clearly through the night:

"'... as, swinging heel and toe,

'We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road

to Anywhere,

'The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years

ago.'"

The voice seemed reassuring--its quality and the annunciation of the
words bespoke for its owner considerable claim to refinement. The youth
had halted again, but he now crouched to one side fearing to reveal his
presence because of the bloody crime he thought he had committed; yet
how he yearned to throw himself upon the compassion of this fine voiced
stranger! How his every fibre cried out for companionship in this night
of his greatest terror; but he would have let the invisible minstrel
pass had not Fate ordained to light the scene at that particular instant
with a prolonged flare of sheet lightning, revealing the two wayfarers
to one another.

The youth saw a slight though well built man in ragged clothes and
disreputable soft hat. The image was photographed upon his bra