result that fruit became wormier and
scarcer every year. But in the "Fruit Belt" conditions were different;
everywhere was order and care; the budding blossoms made the
well-ordered fruit patches fairy groves for beauty. The first day of
his sojourn Evan opened his nostrils, closed his eyes, forgot the bank,
and thanked God some doctors knew their business.

His employer would have had him rest a second day, and particularly
would Miss Japers have done so, but Evan wanted to show that he was a
worker, and also had an eye on the coming dollar per day. So he walked
manfully up the rhubarb patch and set to work. Occasionally a muscle
slipped and he jerked a whole root out of the ground; but this error
was remedied immediately by clawing a little dirt around the root and
leaving it--to die. Evan, of course, was innocent of harm done: he saw
no reason why rhubarb should not grow in loose dirt as well as tight.

In his sleep, the second night, he wandered in a field of burdocks,
plucking the largest stalks for Burdock Blood Bitters. He stopped to
chat with a buxom girl possessed of an innocent, rustic manner, and
thought she laughed at his white, feminine hands. Next day, as a
coincidence with his dream, Lizzie Japers did remark about the
ex-clerk's hands, but the stains on them and not their whiteness
elicited her observations--and decided her to telephone to the grocer's
for a box of snap.

When his back got used to bending Evan began to enjoy gardening. He
felt like a bird that had flown out of a cellar into a garden. Lake
Ontario sent a breeze up to him, to carry his mind away on its wings.
Peach blossoms were turning more pink; sight of them and the smell of
them made the world irresistibly charming. Was it really he who had
wallowed in janitor's dust and vault damps with a monster called "Cash
Book?" Was not that but a figment of those vague nightmares he had had
as a child, when he fell asleep with his clothes on?

Anyway, it did not exist now; and the superb happiness of that
realization made the days fly--and days brought dollars. Of course,
money did not matter so much now that he had no landlady to pacify; he
would have been satisfied with fifty cents a day and board. Such meals
as he got!--onions, radishes, lettuce, cream, butter made from real
cream, eggs still bearing traces of the hen, and everything to build
without poisoning.

During the first week a letter came from Hometon. It had been
a