is journalistic career, so he explained
to Ann. But in his heart he had other ambitions. It would enable him
to put them to the test.

So there came an evening when Ann stood waving a handkerchief as a
great liner cast its moorings. She watched it till its lights grew
dim, and then returned to West Twentieth Street. Strangers would take
possession of it on the morrow. Ann had her supper in the kitchen in
company with the nurse, who had stayed on at her request; and that
night, slipping noiselessly from her room, she lay upon the floor, her
head resting against the arm of the chair where Abner had been wont to
sit and smoke his evening pipe; somehow it seemed to comfort her. And
Matthew the while, beneath the stars, was pacing the silent deck of the
great liner and planning out the future.

To only one other being had he ever confided his dreams. She lay in
the churchyard; and there was nothing left to encourage him but his own
heart. But he had no doubts. He would be a great writer. His two
hundred pounds would support him till he had gained a foothold. After
that he would climb swiftly. He had done right, so he told himself, to
turn his back on journalism: the grave of literature. He would see men
and cities, writing as he went. Looking back, years later, he was able
to congratulate himself on having chosen the right road. He thought it
would lead him by easy ascent to fame and fortune. It did better for
him than that. It led him through poverty and loneliness, through hope
deferred and heartache--through long nights of fear, when pride and
confidence fell upon him, leaving him only the courage to endure.

His great poems, his brilliant essays, had been rejected so often that
even he himself had lost all love for them. At the suggestion of an
editor more kindly than the general run, and urged by need, he had
written some short pieces of a less ambitious nature. It was in bitter
disappointment he commenced them, regarding them as mere pot-boilers.
He would not give them his name. He signed them "Aston Rowant." It
was the name of the village in Oxfordshire where he had been born. It
occurred to him by chance. It would serve the purpose as well as
another. As the work progressed it grew upon him. He made his stories
out of incidents and people he had seen; everyday comedies and
tragedies that he had lived among, of things that he had felt; and when
after their appearance in the magazine a publish