be glad to have him in me house. Now I'll just tell you what me
house is like and what we'll have to expect of each other."

After an hour's talk Dennis said: "I will give you fifty dollars a month
and board and lodging for the lad."

Mrs. Manning flushed with relief. Jim, who had not said a word since
coming into the house, spoke suddenly in his father's own drawl:

"I don't want anyone to give me my keep. I'll take care of the furnace
and do the work round the house you pay a man to do, and if that isn't
enough to pay for keeping me, I'll work for you in your office
Saturdays."

Mr. Dennis looked at the tall boy keenly, then said whimsically, "Well,
I thought you'd been smitten dumb."

"He's very still, Jim is, except when he's fearfully worked up. All the
Mannings are that way," said his mother.

Mr. Dennis nodded. "The house takes lots of care. Your mother will get a
maid to help her and I'll let the man go who has been doing janitor
service for me. With this arrangement, I'll make your mother's salary
$65 a month."

And so the decision was made.

It was the last week in September when Jim and his mother left Exham.
The day before they left the old town, Jim tramped doggedly up the
street toward the old Manning mansion. He had not been there since his
father's death.

When he reached the dooryard he stopped, pulled off his cap and stood
looking at the doorway that had welcomed so many Mannings and sped so
many more. The boy stood, erect and slender, the wind ruffling his thick
dark hair across his dreamer's forehead, his energetic jaw set firmly.
Now and again tears blinded his gray eyes, but he blinked them back
resolutely.

Jim must have stood before the door of his old home for half an hour, a
silent, lonely young figure at whom the quarry men glanced curiously.
When the whistle blew five Jim made an heroic effort and turned and
looked at the derrick, again spliced into place. He shuddered but forced
himself to look.

It was after sunset when Jim finally turned away. It was many years
before he came to this place again. Yet Exham had made its indelible
imprint on the boy. The convictions that had molded his first fourteen
years were to mold his whole life. Somehow he felt that his father had
been a futile sacrifice to the thing that was destroying New England and
that old New England spirit which he had been taught to revere. What the
thing was he did not know. And yet, with his boyish lips trembli