er Ewold was a disciple of an old-fashioned custom that has fallen
into disuse since the multiplicity of typewriters made writing for one's
own pleasure too arduous; or, if you will have another reason, since our
existence and feelings have become so complex that we can no longer
express them with the simple directness of our ancestors. He kept a
diary with what he called a perfect regularity of intermittency. A week
might pass without his writing a single word, and again he might indulge
freely for a dozen nights running. He wrote as much or as little as he
pleased. He wrote when he had something to tell and when he was in the
mood to tell it.

"It is facing yourself in your own ink," he said. "It is confessing that
you are an egoist and providing an antidote for your egoism. Firstly, you
will never be bored by your own past if you can appreciate your errors
and inconsistencies. Secondly, you will never be tempted to bore others
with your past as long as you wish to pose as a wise man."

He must have found, as you would find if you had left youth behind and
could see yourself in your own ink, that the first tracery of any
controlling factor in your life was faint and inconsequential to you at
the time, without presage of its importance until you saw other lines,
also faint and inconsequential in their beginnings, drawing in toward it
to form a powerful current.

On the evening that Jack took to the trail again, Jasper Ewold had a
number of thick notebooks out of the box in the library which he always
kept locked, and placed them on the living-room table beside his easy
chair, in which he settled himself. Mary was sewing while he pored over
his life in review as written by his own hand. Her knowledge of the
secrets of that chronicle from wandering student days to desert exile was
limited to glimpses of the close lines of fine-written pages across the
breadth of the circle of the lamp's reflection. He surrounded his diary
with a line of mystery which she never attempted to cross. On occasions
he would read to her certain portions which struck his recollection
happily; but these were invariably limited to his impressions of some
city or some work of art that he was seeing for the first time in the
geniality of the unadulterated joy of living in what she guessed was the
period of youth before she was born; and never did they throw any light
on his story except that of his views as a traveller and a personality.
But he di