t shortly. (As a matter of fact, he
was stood up against a wall and shot the following April.) Why make him
look so small?

Was there nothing under the heavens that this infernal harbor didn't
know all about, and "do business with" so thoroughly that it could
always smile?

CHAPTER V

As I drudged on down there in the warehouse, my bitterness became an
obsession. I even talked about it to Sue.

"Oh, Billy, you make me tired," she said. "Here I've taken the trouble
to bring to the house every magazine writer I know. And they're all
ready to help you break in--but you won't write, you won't even try!"

"How do you know I haven't tried?" I retorted hotly. "But I'm working
all day as it is--and four nights a week besides. And the other three
nights, when I try to think of the kind of thing that I could sell to
the magazines--well, I simply can't do it, that's all--it's not my way
of writing!"

"Then your way is just plain morbid," she said, "and it's about time you
dropped it." She seemed to get a sudden idea. "I know the person _you_
ought to meet----"

"Do you? What's his name?" I inquired.

"Eleanore Dillon," she answered. I looked up at her with a start.

"Eleanore Dillon? Is she still around?"

I hadn't thought of that girl in years.

"She is--and she's just what you need," said Sue, with that know-it-all
smile of hers. Her head was now cocked a bit to one side. "Your little
friend of long ago," she added sympathetically. I eyed Sue for a moment.
I did not care at all for her tone.

"What do I need _her_ for?" I asked.

"To talk to you of the harbor, of course--that's her especial line these
days."

"The harbor?" I demanded. "That girl?"

"Yes--the harbor, that girl." Sue seemed to be having quite a good time.
My jaw set tight.

"What does she do down there?" I asked.

"She worships her father. Don't you remember? An engineer. He's doing a
big piece of work on the harbor and Eleanore is wrapped up in his work,
she's a beautiful case of how a fond parent can literally swallow up his
child. There used to be nothing whatever that Eleanore Dillon wasn't
going to do in life. Don't you remember, when she was small, that little
determined air she had in the way she went at every game? Well, she grew
even more like that. From school she went to college and worked herself
to a frazzle. Then she broke down and had to drop out, and now that
she's strong again she's changed. She used to go in for eve