e was right. Then he opened his door and glanced about
the hall. It was one blank, except for the doors. He went down the two
flights of stairs to the street. Even that had the deserted look of
summer. He turned and went back to his room. Sitting down once more at
his desk, and opening somebody "On Torts" again, he took up his pen and
began to copy the pages literally. He wrote steadily for a time, then
with pauses. Finally, the hand ceased to follow the lines, and became
straggly. Then he ceased to write. The words blurred, the paper faded
from view, and all Peter saw was a pair of slate-colored eyes. He laid
his head down on the blotter, and the erect, firm figure relaxed.

There is no more terrible ordeal of courage than passive waiting. Most
of us can be brave with something to do, but to be brave for months, for
years, with nothing to be done and without hope of the future! So it was
in Peter's case. It was waiting--waiting--for what? If clients came, if
fame came, if every form of success came,--for what?

There is nothing in loneliness to equal the loneliness of a big city.
About him, so crowded and compressed together as to risk life and
health, were a million people. Yet not a soul of that million knew that
Peter sat at his desk, with his head on his blotter, immovable, from
noon one day till daylight of the next.

CHAPTER IX.

HAPPINESS BY PROXY.

The window of Peter's office faced east, and the rays of the morning sun
shining dazzlingly in his eyes forced him back to a consciousness of
things mundane. He rose, and went downstairs, to find the night
watch-man just opening the building. Fortunately he had already met the
man, so that he was not suspected as an intruder; and giving him a
pleasant "good-morning," Peter passed into the street. It was a good
morning indeed, with all that freshness and coolness which even a great
city cannot take from a summer dawn. For some reason Peter felt more
encouraged. Perhaps it was the consciousness of having beaten his
loneliness and misery by mere physical endurance. Perhaps it was only
the natural spring of twenty years. At all events, he felt dimly, that
miserable and unhopeful as the future looked, he was not conquered yet;
that he was going to fight on, come what might.

He turned to the river front, and after bargaining with a passing cart
for a pint of what the poorer people of the city buy as milk, he turned
north, and quickening his pace, walked till