tories reached them--especially the women. They were hardworking women,
most of them supporting indigent husbands or brothers, and they laughed
rather bitterly at having stirred the boy to such fervid and florid
inventions. They agreed with the faculty and with his father that Paul's
was a bad case.

The eastbound train was plowing through a January snowstorm; the dull
dawn was beginning to show gray when the engine whistled a mile out of
Newark. Paul started up from the seat where he had lain curled in uneasy
slumber, rubbed the breath-misted window glass with his hand, and peered
out. The snow was whirling in curling eddies above the white bottom
lands, and the drifts lay already deep in the fields and along the
fences, while here and there the long dead grass and dried weed stalks
protruded black above it. Lights shone from the scattered houses, and a
gang of laborers who stood beside the track waved their lanterns.

Paul had slept very little, and he felt grimy and uncomfortable. He
had made the all-night journey in a day coach, partly because he was
ashamed, dressed as he was, to go into a Pullman, and partly because he
was afraid of being seen there by some Pittsburgh businessman, who might
have noticed him in Denny & Carson's office. When the whistle awoke him,
he clutched quickly at his breast pocket, glancing about him with an
uncertain smile. But the little, clay-bespattered Italians were still
sleeping, the slatternly women across the aisle were in open-mouthed
oblivion, and even the crumby, crying babies were for the nonce stilled.
Paul settled back to struggle with his impatience as best he could.

When he arrived at the Jersey City station he hurried through his
breakfast, manifestly ill at ease and keeping a sharp eye about him.
After he reached the Twenty-third Street station, he consulted a cabman
and had himself driven to a men's-furnishings establishment that was
just opening for the day. He spent upward of two hours there, buying
with endless reconsidering and great care. His new street suit he put
on in the fitting room; the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundled
into the cab with his linen. Then he drove to a hatter's and a shoe
house. His next errand was at Tiffany's, where he selected his silver
and a new scarf pin. He would not wait to have his silver marked,
he said. Lastly, he stopped at a trunk shop on Broadway and had his
purchases packed into various traveling bags.

It was a litt