n--often cursing the printing in books which
makes them so hard to understand--it is certain that Tim Cannon alone of
all the world can read what is written here. The eagerness of things
beyond, which had been Molly Regan's, the falter of disappointment when
discovering that she could not reveal them to Dan, the fierce bitterness
of her rebellion--all are written plainly in the cramped scribbling and
broad hideous scratches. The huge black blots were threats and
prophecies of death, struck from the pen in her hand by a Providence
impatient of her lingering.

The vagabond raises his eyes, his body flat and motionless. "All she
wanted," he says sullenly, "was to write a page 'cause it was duty." It
was another duty which had made her take him in that freezing night. He
is resentful toward some thing or power--he does not know what--that
Molly was prevented from writing this message.

"I might have stayed till I learned how to write it for her," he says;
and all at once is tremendously sorry that it is too late to do this;
too late to knock on the cottage door and be welcomed by the old dame to
the cheerful room; to show he would keep his promise; too late to leave
pull-down and trample-under behind him and begin all over again.

Just this far Tim Cannon lets his musings lead him; then fiercely, in a
scorn of his own musings and loneliness, rouses up to sit a while,
cross-legged, darting deliberately the untamable blue eye to the dark
corners, and listening, as if daring all these bright memories, which
would lure him from his purpose of being boss like Regan, to come out
in the open and halt him.

Presently in cold defiance of them he tears across the page of yellowed
writing; no doubt, remembering Dan, a spirit looks wistfully down upon
the vagabond with the scroll in his fist. Again and again he tears
deliberately. The very scratches of Molly's message are tatters. Tim
Cannon is himself again.

And the great door at the end of the building rolls back and a towering
figure stands whipping in the storm; slowly he comes up to the lantern;
the visitor is Regan.

"Where is Craney, who owns the car line?" he asks.

"He is gone; I am the manager," says Tim, rising. And after he has
explained, "No matter," nods Regan.

At the great man's feet lies his mother's message, and as he muses with
resentment and wonder that circumstances should drive him here to parley
with a ragged boy on the highway of his destiny the last t