a
beginning all blotted and scratched--I brought it away, and tore it up
the first night you came here. The Farthest Lantern, it was. Here is the
pen she broke by stabbing into the table, she was that mad!"

The Farthest Lantern!

Remotely Dan Regan hears the word, with a little shock, as a challenge
whispered in darkness; he shrugs his shoulders.

"Come, Timothy," he urges.

Now memory has seized on the word, sending it echoing through his brain;
but he goes on, impatient of the start which Tim has given him, and not
yet realizing how it was done.

"Will you help those crooks of Barlow against myself and all the good
people of the town? Will you cheat Craney of the price of his road in
case he ever comes back? Is this duty? I tell you, no!" And in a flash
of afterthought: "The wise old woman herself would cry 'No' from the
grave of her. I tell you as one who knows. For she was Regan's mother,
and her message of the things she saw beyond the day's work at
Turntable--was to me!"

With terrible fascination Tim gazes at the man racked by the old powers
of pull-down and trample-under, which Tim himself holds imprisoned in
Regan's breast. And as the last words drive home the vagabond answers,
high and clear: "Sure, you must know then. Tell me true, Mr. Regan--'t
will not be breaking the promise?"

Through the dingy panes in the corner wink the lights as did those of
Turntable long ago; but they do not beckon.

"I will ditch the car now," says Tim.

"I might be mistaken----" Regan's voice is hollow; the memories of a
lifetime cloud his vision. "Perhaps you would do well not to trust me,"
he says; the warning of a hypocrite to satisfy his startled conscience
as once more his gaze lifts bold and far along the road which lies
through the corner guarded by this scarecrow of a boy.

"Sure, I trust you," answers Tim in that singing voice the likes of
which was never heard out of him before, and ties his tatters round him
against the cold outside. The promise has been kept, the duty done, he
is at last on the road with Regan.

The man holds the pen in his hand--the pen his mother had tried to write
her last, her life's message with, and failed. Fearfully he gazes on
this gaunt campaigner of destiny, delivering his unspoken message by
deed and bearing and duty done, through storm and danger, indifferent to
bribe and threat.

But now this Tim Cannon nods and is on his way like any credulous boy to
clear the highway of