he desk and fell to pounding
his knee again in the excess of his appreciation.

"Maybe," he chortled, "maybe he did! Well--I--reckon!"

And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in which
all but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk,
saw that there was a white circle about the boy's tight mouth as Young
Denny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and
passed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the
faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back
to the big notebook open on his knees--a vaguely unpleasant smile that
was not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face.

For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turned
upward, the roar in the room behind him beating in his ears; then he
turned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak house
on the hill--he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again in
the deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see.

It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry had
failed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that he
recalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had been
ploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automatic
fashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn.

The interior was dark, blacker even than the thick darkness of the
night outside. Young Denny, muttering to himself, forgot to strike a
light--he even forgot to speak aloud to the nervous animals in the
stalls until his fingers, groping ahead of him, touched something
sleek and warm and brought him back to himself. Then, instinctively,
although it was too late, he threw up one big shoulder to protect his
face before he was lifted and hurled crashing back against the wall by
the impact of the heavy hoofs that catapulted out of the blackness. A
moment the boy stood, swayed sickeningly, and sank to his knees. Then
he began to think clearly again, and with one hand clasped over the
great, jagged gash which the glancing iron shoe had laid open across
his chin, he reached up and found a cross beam and dragged himself
erect.

"Whoa, Tommy, whoa boy!" he soothed the dancing horse. "Steady, it's
only me, boy!" he stammered, and supporting himself against the wall
he groped again until he found the feedbin and finished his day's
work.

It was even darker in the bare kitchen when he lurched dizzily thro