--enlightening the traveling public about the three-twenty-four
train; dispensing time-tables and other precious mediums of education--"

"I'm happy here," he said doggedly.

"Are you going to be, always?"

His face darkened with doubt. "Why shouldn't I be?" he argued. "I've got
everything I need. Some day I thought I might write."

"What about?" The question came sharp and quick.

He looked vaguely around the horizon.

"Oh, no, Ban!" she said. "Not this. You've got to know something besides
cactuses and owls to write, these days. You've got to know men. And
women," she added, in a curious tone, with a suspicion of effort, even
of jealousy in it.

"I've never cared much for people," he said.

"It's an acquired taste, I suppose for some of us. There's something
else." She came slowly to a sitting posture and fixed her questioning,
baffling eyes on his. "Ban, don't you want to make a success in life?"

For a moment he did not answer. When he spoke, it was with apparent
irrelevance to what she had said. "Once I went to a revival. A reformed
tough was running it. About every three minutes he'd thrust out his
hands and grab at the air and say, 'Oh, brothers; don't you yearn for
Jesus?'"

"What has that to do with it?" questioned Io, surprised and impatient.

"Only that, somehow, the way you said 'success in life' made me think of
him and his 'yearn for Jesus.'"

"Errol Banneker," said Io, amused in spite of her annoyance, "you are
possessed of a familiar devil who betrays other people's inner thoughts
to you. Success _is_ a species of religion to me, I suppose."

"And you are making converts, like all true enthusiasts. Tell, tell me.
What kind of success?"

"Oh, power. Money. Position. Being somebody."

"I'm somebody here all right. I'm the station-agent of the Atkinson and
St. Philip Railroad Company."

"Now you're trying to provoke me."

"No. But to get success you've got to want it, haven't you?" he asked
more earnestly. "To want it with all your strength."

"Of course. Every man ought to."

"I'm not so sure," he objected. "There's a kind of virtue in staying
put, isn't there?"

She made a little gesture of impatience.

"I'll give you a return for your sonnet," he pursued, and repeated from
memory:

"What else is Wisdom? What of man's endeavor Or God's high grace, so
lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
To hold a hand uplifted over Hate. And shall not Lovelines