still hopeful, was left in Kingsborough.

Then, upon his nineteenth birthday, the judge, who had left the bench
and resumed his legal practice, sent for him and offered to take him
into his office while he prepared himself for the bar.

II

When Nicholas descended the judge's steps he lingered for a moment in
the narrow walk. His head was bent, and the books which he carried under
his arm were pressed against his side. They seemed to contain all that
was needed for the making of his future--those books and his impatient
mind. His success was as assured as if he held it already in the hollow
of his hand--and with success would come honour and happiness and all
that was desired of man. It seemed to him that his lot was the one of
all others which he would have chosen of his free and untrammelled will.
To strive and to win; to surmount all obstacles by the determined dash
of ambition; to rise from obscurity unto prominence through the sheer
forces that make for power--what was better than this?

Still plunged in thought, he passed the church and followed the street
to the Old Stage Road. From the college dormitories a group of students
sang out a greeting, and he responded impulsively, tossing his hat in
the air. In his face a glow had risen, harmonising his inharmonious
features. He felt as a man feels who stands before a closed door and
knows that he has but to cross the threshold to grasp the fulness of his
aspiration. Yes, to-day he envied no one--neither Tom Bassett nor Dudley
Webb, neither the general nor the judge. He held the books tightly
under his arm and smiled down upon the road. His clumsy, store-made
boots left heavy tracks in the dust, but he seemed to be treading air.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon of a murky day in early November,
and the clouds were swollen with incoming autumnal rains. The open
country stretched before him in monotonous grays, the long road gleaming
pallid in the general drab of the landscape. As he passed along, holding
his hat in his hand, his uplifted head struck the single, high-coloured
note in the picture--all else was dull and leaden.

A farmer driving a cow to market neared him, and Nicholas stopped to
remark upon the outlook. The farmer, a thick-set, hairy man, whose name
was Turner, gave a sudden hitch to the halter to check the progress of
the cow, and nodded ominously.

"Bad weather's brewin'," he said. "The wind's blowin' from the
northeast; I can tel