ept out the close little entry, and left the sanctum for the
bright June afternoon.

He chose the way to the west, strolling thoughtfully out of town by the
white, hot, deserted Main Street, and thence onward by the country
road into which its proud half-mile of old brick store buildings,
tumbled-down frame shops and thinly painted cottages degenerated. The
sun was in his face, where the road ran between the summer fields, lying
waveless, low, gracious in promise; but, coming to a wood of hickory and
beech and walnut that stood beyond, he might turn his down-bent-hat-brim
up and hold his head erect. Here the shade fell deep and cool on the
green tangle of rag and iron weed and long grass in the corners of the
snake fence, although the sun beat upon the road so dose beside. There
was no movement in the crisp young leaves overhead; high in the boughs
there was a quick flirt of crimson where two robins hopped noiselessly.
No insect raised resentment of the lonesomeness: the late afternoon,
when the air is quite still, had come; yet there rested--somewhere--on
the quiet day, a faint, pleasant, woody smell. It came to the editor of
the "Herald" as he climbed to the top rail of the fence for a seat,
and he drew a long, deep breath to get the elusive odor more
luxuriously--and then it was gone altogether.

"A habit of delicacies," he said aloud, addressing the wide silence
complainingly. He drew a faded tobacco-bag and a brier pipe from his
coat pocket and filled and lit the pipe. "One taste--and they quit," he
finished, gazing solemnly upon the shining little town down the road.
He twirled the pouch mechanically about his finger, and then, suddenly
regarding it, patted it caressingly. It had been a giddy little bag,
long ago, satin, and gay with embroidery in the colors of the editor's
university; and although now it was frayed to the verge of tatters, it
still bore an air of pristine jauntiness, an air of which its owner in
no wise partook. He looked from it over the fields toward the town in
the clear distance and sighed softly as he put the pouch back in his
pocket, and, resting his arm on his knee and his chin in his hand, sat
blowing clouds of smoke out of the shade into the sunshine, absently
watching the ghostly shadows dance on the white dust of the road.

A little garter snake crept under the fence beneath him and disappeared
in the underbrush; a rabbit progressing timidly on his travels by a
series of brilliant da