tself to her observing eyes in
many ways. The confidence reposed in him by his old friend, the counsel
of the Desbrosses Trust & Guaranty Company, had not only pleased him,
but the success that had attended his efforts to adjust the traction
company's difficulties without resorting to the courts had strengthened
his waning self-confidence. He even appeared in a new suit of clothes,
and with his beard cut shorter than he usually wore it,--changes that
evoked the raillery in which Phil liked to indulge herself. He was
promised the care of certain other Western interests of the Trust
Company, and he had been offered a partnership in Indianapolis by one of
the best lawyers in the state.

"Things are looking up, Phil. If another year had gone by in the old
way, I should have been ready for the scrap heap. But I miss the cooking
our poverty introduced me to; and I shan't have any more time for
fooling with excursions into Picardy with the Gray Knight. By the way, I
found some strange manuscript on my desk at the office to-day. If you've
take up the literary life you'll have to be careful how you leave your
vestigia in lawyers' offices. It was page eighteen of something that I
took the liberty of reading, and I thirsted for more."

She had not told him about "The Dogs of Main Street," wishing to wait
until she could put the magazine containing it into his hands. Under the
stimulus of the acceptance of her sketch she had been scratching
vigorously in her spare moments. Having begun with dogs she meditated an
attack upon man, and the incriminating page she had left behind in her
father's office was a part of a story she was writing based upon an
incident that had occurred at a reunion of Captain Wilson's regiment
that fall in Montgomery. A man who had been drummed out of the regiment
for cowardice suddenly reappeared among his old comrades with an
explanation that restored him to honored fellowship. Phil had elaborated
the real incident as Captain Wilson described it, and invested it with
the element of "suspense," which she had read somewhere was essential to
the short story.

Phil was living just now in a state of exaltation. She began a notebook
after the manner of Hawthorne's, and was astonished at the ease with
which she filled its pages. Now that her interest was aroused she saw
"material" everywhere. The high school had given her German and French,
and having heard her father say that the French were the great masters