d cadaverous, and spoke in a meek and melancholy voice,
studied and slow. He dressed in black and tried to suppress his thin
height by stooping low and hanging his head. The other addition was
Billy, the office-boy, a sharp, bright youth with red hair and brilliant
blue eyes.

There was much else to do. For instance, there were the money affairs to
get in shape. Joe secured a five-per-cent mortgage with his capital.
Marty Briggs paid down two thousand cash and was to pay two thousand a
year and interest. So Joe could figure his income at somewhat over six
thousand dollars, and, as he hoped that he and his mother would use not
more than fifteen hundred a year, or, at the most, two thousand, he felt
he had plenty to throw into his enterprise.

Among the first things that Joe discovered was a gift of his own
temperament. He was a born crowd-man, a "mixer." He found he could
instantly assume the level of the man he talked with, and that his
tongue knew no hindrance. Thought flowed easily into speech. This gave
him a freedom among men, a sense of belonging anywhere, and singled him
out from the rest. It gave him, too, the joy of expression--the joy of
throwing out his thought and getting its immediate reaction in other
lives. Yet he understood perfectly the man who seemed shy and recluse,
who was choked-off before strangers, and who yet burned to be a
democrat, to give and take, to share alien lives, to be of the moving
throng of life. Such a man was the victim either of a wrong education,
an education of repression that discouraged any personal display, or he
had a twist in his temperament. Joe, who began to be well aware of his
gift, used it without stint and found that it had a contagious
quality--it loosened other people up; it unfolded their shy and secret
petals like sun heat on a bud; it made the desert of personality blossom
like the rose. He warmed the life about him because he could express
himself.

So it was not hard for Joe to shift to this new neighborhood and become
absorbed in its existence. Tradespeople, idlers, roomers and landlady in
the house accepted him at once and felt as if they had known him all
their lives. By a power almost of intuition he probed their obscure
histories and entered into their destinies.

However, in spite of these activities and all the bustle and stir of
fresh beginnings, Joe, that sunny morning, was suffering a sharp
reaction. In the presence of Nathan Slate and Billy he was