ing in his mind for the first letter to Dawson.

"Thank you," said Arthur. But it was evident that he was not
interested. "I must put the past behind me," he went on presently. "I
mustn't think of it."

"After all," suggested Torrey, "you're not as bad off as more than
ninety-nine per cent of the young men. You're just where they are--on bed
rock. And you've got the advantage of your education."

Arthur smiled satirically. "The tools I learned to use at college," said
he, "aren't the tools for the Crusoe Island I've been cast away on."

"Well, I reckon a college don't ruin a young chap with the right stuff in
him, even if it don't do him any great sight of good." He looked uneasily
at Arthur, then began: "If you'd like to study law"--as if he feared the
offer would be accepted, should he make it outright.

"No; thank you, I've another plan," replied Arthur, though "plan" would
have seemed to Judge Torrey a pretentious name for the hazy possibilities
that were beginning to gather in the remote corners of his mind.

"I supposed you wouldn't care for the law," said Torrey, relieved that
his faint hint of a possible offer had not got him into trouble. He liked
Arthur, but estimated him by his accent and his dress, and so thought him
probably handicapped out of the running by those years of training for a
career of polite uselessness. "That East!" he said to himself, looking
pityingly at the big, stalwart youth in the elaborate fopperies of
fashionable mourning. "That _damned_ East! We send it most of our money
and our best young men; and what do we get from it in return? Why, sneers
and snob-ideas." However, he tried to change his expression to one less
discouraging; but his face could not wholly conceal his forebodings.
"It's lucky for the boy," he reflected, "that Hiram left him a good home
as long as his mother's alive. After she's gone--and the five thousand,
if I get it back--I suppose he'll drop down and down, and end by clerking
it somewhere." With a survey of Arthur's fashionable attire, "I should
say he might do fairly well in a gent's furnishing store in one of those
damn cities." The old man was not unfeeling--far from it; he had simply
been educated by long years of experience out of any disposition to
exaggerate the unimportant in the facts of life. "He'll be better off and
more useful as a clerk than he would be as a pattern of damnfoolishness
and snobbishness. So, Hiram was right anyway I look at it, and