e night; he had copied briefs for
a lawyer after hours; but he had pitched for the nine and hustled for
his "frat," and he had led class rushes with ardor and success.

He had now been for several years in the offices of Knight, Kittredge
and Carr at Mariona, only an hour's ride from Tippecanoe; and he still
kept in touch with the college. Michael Carr fully appreciated a young
man who took the law seriously and who could sit down in a court room
on call mornings, when need be, and turn off a demurrer without
paraphrasing it from a text-book.

Mrs. Carr, too, found Morris Leighton useful, and she liked him, because
he always responded unquestioningly to any summons to fill up a blank at
her table; and if Mr. Carr was reluctant at the last minute to attend a
lecture on "Egyptian Burial Customs," Mrs. Carr could usually summon
Morris Leighton by telephone in time to act as her escort. Young men
were at a premium in Mariona, as in most other places, and it was
something to have one of the species, of an accommodating turn, and very
presentable, within telephone range. Mrs. Carr was grateful, and so, it
must be said, was her husband, who did not care to spend his evenings
digging up Egyptians that had been a long time dead, or listening to
comic operas. It was through Mrs. Carr that Leighton came to be well
known in Mariona; she told her friends to ask him to call, and there
were now many homes besides hers that he visited.

It sometimes occurred to Morris Leighton that he was not getting ahead
in the world very fast. He knew that his salary from Carr was more than
any other young lawyer of his years earned by independent practice; but
it seemed to him that he ought to be doing better. He had not drawn on
his mother's small resources since his first year at college; he had
made his own way--and a little more--but he experienced moments of
restlessness in which the difficulties of establishing himself in his
profession loomed large and formidable.

An errand to a law firm in one of the fashionable new buildings that had
lately raised the Mariona sky-line led him one afternoon past the office
of his college classmate, Jack Balcomb. "J. Arthur Balcomb," was the
inscription on the door, "Suite B, Room 1." Leighton had seen little of
Balcomb for a year or more, and his friend's name on the ground-glass
door arrested his eye.

Two girls were busily employed at typewriters in the anteroom, and one
of them extended a blank car