gh just establishing
himself. He had taken two small and severely plain rooms in a quaint
old frame cottage, one story high, but perched importantly upon a bank
at the intersection of two much-traveled streets.

"What luck?" asked Pierson, lounging in on him.

"A hundred days' campaign; a thousand dollars net," replied the book
agent. "And I'm hard as oak from tramping those roads, and I've
learned--you ought to have been along, Pierson. I know people as I
never could have come to know them by any other means--what they think,
what they want, how they can be reached."

There was still much of the boy in Pierson's face. But Scarborough
looked the man, developed, ready.

Pierson wandered into the bedroom to complete his survey. "I see
you're going to live by the clock," he called out presently. He had
found, pasted to the wall, Scarborough's schedule of the daily division
of his time; just above it, upon a shelf, was a new alarm clock, the
bell so big that it overhung like a canopy. "You don't mean you're
going to get up at four?"

"Every morning--all winter," replied Scarborough, without stopping his
unpacking. "You see, I'm going to finish this year--take the two years
in one. Then I've registered in a law office--Judge Holcombe's. And
there's my speaking--I must practise that every day."

Pierson came back to the sitting-room and collapsed into a chair. "I
see you allow yourself five hours for sleep," he said. "It's too much,
old man. You're self-indulgent."

"That's a mistake," replied Scarborough. "Since making out the schedule
I've decided to cut sleep down to four hours and a half."

"That's more like it!"

"We all sleep too much," he continued. "And as I shan't smoke, or
drink, or worry, I'll need even less than the average man. I'm going
to do nothing but work. A man doesn't need much rest from mere work."

"What! No play?"

"Play all the time. I've simply changed my playthings."

Pierson seated himself at the table and stared gloomily at his friend.

"Look here, old man. For heaven's sake, don't let Olivia find out
about this program."

But Olivia did hear of it, and Pierson was compelled to leave his
luxury in the main street and to take the two remaining available rooms
at Scarborough's place. His bed was against the wall of Scarborough's
bedroom--the wall where the alarm clock was. At four o'clock on his
first morning he started from a profound sleep.

"My bed must be moved