For two whole weeks he had been watching for it, scanning every inch
of type for the news it brought, but now that account of Young Denny's
first match, with a little, square picture of him inset at the column
head, fell woefully flat so far as he was concerned.

Not that the plump newspaperman who had written the account of that
first victorious bout had achieved anything but a masterpiece of
sensationalism. Every line was alive with action, every phrase seemed
to thud with the actual shock of contest. And there was that last
paragraph, too, which hailed Denny--"The Pilgrim," they called him in
the paper, but that couldn't deceive Old Jerry--as the newcomer for
whom the public had been waiting so long, and, toward the end, so
hopelessly.

It was really a perfect thing of its kind--but Old Jerry could not
enjoy it that morning, even though it was Denny Bolton's first
triumph, to be shared by him alone in equal proportion. Instead of
sending creepy thrills chasing up and down his spine it merely
intensified his doleful bitterness of spirit. Long before noon he
breathed a leaden heavy sigh, refolded the sodden sheet and put it
away in the box beneath the seat.

The old mare took her own pace that day. In a brain that was already
burdened until it fairly ached there was no room for the image of the
silver-haired stone-cutter which had made for speed on other
occasions. He had plenty to occupy his mind which was of a strictly
immediate nature.

A dozen times that morning Old Jerry asked himself what he would tell
Dryad Anderson that night, when he stopped at the little drab cottage
at the route's end, ostensibly to bid her good-by. He asked himself,
in desperate reiteration, _how_ he would tell, for he knew that the
long delay in the delivery of Denny's message was going to need more
than a little explanation. And when he had wrestled with the question
until his eyes stung and his temples throbbed, and still could find no
solution for it, he turned helplessly to the consideration of another
phase of the problem.

He fell to tormenting himself with the possibility of her having gone
already. Everything in those bare rooms had been packed--there was no
real reason for the girl to remain another hour. Perhaps she had
reconsidered, changed her mind, and departed even earlier than she had
planned, and if she had--if she had----

Whenever he reached that point, dumbly he bowed his head.

It was dark when he turned of