tter luck. Ah, if one could promise any
one better luck, if one could assure a single human being of happiness!
He had thought he could do so, once; and it was thinking of that that he
at last fell asleep. In his sleep, as if it had nothing fresher to work
upon, his mind went back and tortured itself with something years and
years away, an old, long-forgotten sorrow of his childhood.

When Alexander awoke in the morning, the sun was just rising through
pale golden ripples of cloud, and the fresh yellow light was vibrating
through the pine woods. The white birches, with their little unfolding
leaves, gleamed in the lowlands, and the marsh meadows were already
coming to life with their first green, a thin, bright color which
had run over them like fire. As the train rushed along the trestles,
thousands of wild birds rose screaming into the light. The sky was
already a pale blue and of the clearness of crystal. Bartley caught
up his bag and hurried through the Pullman coaches until he found the
conductor. There was a stateroom unoccupied, and he took it and set
about changing his clothes. Last night he would not have believed that
anything could be so pleasant as the cold water he dashed over his head
and shoulders and the freshness of clean linen on his body.

After he had dressed, Alexander sat down at the window and drew into his
lungs deep breaths of the pine-scented air. He had awakened with all his
old sense of power. He could not believe that things were as bad with
him as they had seemed last night, that there was no way to set them
entirely right. Even if he went to London at midsummer, what would that
mean except that he was a fool? And he had been a fool before. That was
not the reality of his life. Yet he knew that he would go to London.

Half an hour later the train stopped at Moorlock. Alexander sprang to
the platform and hurried up the siding, waving to Philip Horton, one
of his assistants, who was anxiously looking up at the windows of the
coaches. Bartley took his arm and they went together into the station
buffet.

"I'll have my coffee first, Philip. Have you had yours? And now, what
seems to be the matter up here?"

The young man, in a hurried, nervous way, began his explanation.

But Alexander cut him short. "When did you stop work?" he asked sharply.

The young engineer looked confused. "I haven't stopped work yet,
Mr. Alexander. I didn't feel that I could go so far without definite
authorizatio