character under observation. He pledged himself to return at any time
the favor extended him, and promised also never to mention it after it
had been extended. He apologized for the lack of further and more
adequate treatment of the subject, expressing his conviction that the
more delicate shades of meaning which might be employed after a more
extended study would not be comprehended by the person addressed.

George Henry--it is with regret that it is admitted--had a wild hope
that this creditor would become enraged to the point of making a
personal assault on him from this simple summing up of affairs, because
he had an imbedded desire to lick, or anyway try to lick, this
particular person, could he be provoked into an encounter. It is as well
to say here that his dream was never gratified. The nagging man is never
a fighting man.

And so the Feast of the Paying of Bills went on to its conclusion. It
was a season of intense enjoyment for George Henry. When it was ended,
having money, having also a notable gift as a shot, he fled to the
northern woods, where grouse and deer fell plentifully before him, and
then after a month he returned to enjoy life at ease.

It was upon his return home that George Henry Harrison, well-to-do and
content, learned something which for a time made him think this probably
the hollowest of all the worlds which swing around the sun. He came
back, vigorous and hopeful of spirit, with the strength of the woods and
of nature in him, and with open heart and hand ready to greet his
fellow-beings, glad to be one with them. The thing which smote him was
odd. It was that he found himself a stranger among the fellow-beings he
had come to meet. He found himself still a Selkirk of the world of trade
and traffic and transfer of thought and well-wishing and strong-doing
and of all social life. He was like a strange bird, like an albatross
blown into unaccustomed seas, alighting upon an island where albatrosses
were unknown.

He found his office as bright and attractive as urgently and sternly
directed servitude could make it. There were no letters upon his desk,
however, the desk so overburdened in the past. The desk spoke of
loneliness. The new carpet, without a worn white strip leading from the
doorway, said loneliness. All was loneliness. He could not understand
it.

There was the abomination of clean and cold desolation in and all about
his belongings. He sat down in the easy-chair before his de