Ho! Jim Nar-ha-nay! There's a brick in your hat!"

Another shout of laugher and a second boy exclaimed:

"Look out, old feller! You'll spill it!"

All the voices seemed those of boys; but this was an hour when most of
the town lads were supposed to be under the more or less eagle eye of
Mr. Nelson Haley, the principal of the Polktown school. Janice
attended the Middletown Seminary, and this chanced to be a holiday at
that institution. She stood anxiously on the corner now to see if her
cousin, Marty, was one of this crowd of noisy fellows.

With stumbling feet, and with the half dozen laughing, mocking boys
tailing him, a bewhiskered, rough-looking, shabby man came into sight.
His appearance on the pleasant main thoroughfare of the little lakeside
town quite spoiled the prospect.

Before, it had been a lovely scene. Young Spring, garbed only in the
tender greens of the quickened earth and the swelling buds of maple and
lilac, had accompanied Janice Day down Hillside Avenue into High Street
from the old Day house where she lived with her Uncle Jason, her Aunt
'Mira, and Marty. All the neighbors had seen Janice and had smiled at
her; and those whose eyes were anointed by Romance saw Spring dancing
by the young girl's side.

Her eyes sparkled; there was a rose in either cheek; her trim figure in
the brown frock, well-built walking shoes of tan, and pretty toque, was
an effective bit of life in the picture, the background of which was
the sloping street to the steamboat dock and the beautiful, blue,
dancing waters of the lake beyond.

An intoxicated man on the streets of Polktown during the three years of
Janice Day's sojourn here was almost unknown. There had been no demand
for the sale of liquor in the town until Lem Parraday, proprietor of
the Lake View Inn, applied to the Town Council for a bar license.

The request had been granted without much opposition. Mr. Cross Moore,
President of the Council, held a large mortgage on the Parraday
premises, and it was whispered that this fact aided in putting the
license through in so quiet a way.

It was agreed that Polktown was growing. The "boom" had started some
months before. Already the sparkling waters of the lake were plied by
a new _Constance Colfax_, and the C. V. Railroad was rapidly completing
its branch which was to connect Polktown with the Eastern seaboard.

Whereas in the past a half dozen traveling men might visit the town in
a week and put