.

The wind moaned about him and somewhere far off he heard the ripping
groan of an overladen tree giving way under its paralysis of sleet. In
himself he felt something also breaking away from its old place. He
felt forces rending their bonds and straining for freedom, and it
almost seemed to his burning eyes that while he gazed toward that spot
hundreds of miles away which he had never seen, there slowly kindled in
the sky a pale and luminous aura, such as hangs over the spires and
shafts of a giant city. His fancy pictured the unsainted halo that
gleams above thronged and never-sleeping streets: streets that always
beckon. Vague echoes of sounds came toward him, warring in the teeth of
the wind; sounds of the many voices and the many clamors that merge into
one dull, insistent roar: the voice of the city.

So he stood there shivering and not realizing that the frost was
shrewdly biting him. His spirit was the spirit of a hatching eaglet
impatiently rapping at the shell which too slowly opens to give it
freedom.

"What I did to Slivers Martin," he told himself, "I can do to the rest
of them. There ain't much difference between doin' big things an' little
things, except that you've got to be where there are big things to do
an' you've got to _know_ you can do 'em."

Part II

THE BOOK OF LIFE

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

CHAPTER V

It was eight o'clock, and the year as well as the day was in its
morning. The watch which young Carl Bristoll drew from his pocket was
very thin and exquisite, and he did not look at its face. Instead he
touched a delicate spring with his finger-nail and listened to the
tinkle of its low, silvery chime. This watch might have spoken the hour
to a blind man as well as to eyes as clear and engaging as those of its
present possessor.

In some Swiss shop, where for generations an hereditary skill of adept
fingers had come down from father to son, a master of his craft had
toiled long and lovingly over this thin disc of gold which epitomized in
its small circumference a perfection of accuracy and beauty. Because it
was a prince's plaything and because the young Titan of finance who
employed Carl Bristoll as his confidential secretary had brought it back
by way of an affectionate gift from his last trip to the Continent, the
lad prized it above other possessions. To young Bristoll, who was no
unwilling wage-earner, but a hero-worshiper in all the intensity of
strong youth, it had been as