erman
language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend the
book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that extended through
weeks, Professor Wert took a dislike to the young man, believed him
a liar, and classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness for not
giving him a glimpse of this wonderful screed that was older than the
oldest any philologist had ever known or dreamed.

But little good did it do this much-mixed young man to know that half of
him was late American and the other half early Teuton. Nevertheless, the
late American in him was no weakling, and he (if he were a he and had
a shred of existence outside of these two) compelled an adjustment or
compromise between his one self that was a nightprowling savage that
kept his other self sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was
cultured and refined and that wanted to be normal and live and love and
prosecute business like other people. The afternoons and early evenings
he gave to the one, the nights to the other; the forenoons and parts of
the nights were devoted to sleep for the twain. But in the mornings he
slept in bed like a civilized man. In the night time he slept like a
wild animal, as he had slept Dave Slotter stepped on him in the woods.

Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went into business
and keen and successful business he made of it, devoting his afternoons
whole-souled to it, while his partner devoted the mornings. The early
evenings he spent socially, but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an
irresistible restlessness overcame him and he disappeared from the
haunts of men until the next afternoon. Friends and acquaintances
thought that he spent much of his time in sport. And they were right,
though they never would have dreamed of the nature of the sport, even if
they had seen him running coyotes in night-chases over the hills of Mill
Valley. Neither were the schooner captains believed when they reported
seeing, on cold winter mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of
Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents between Goat island and Angel
Island miles from shore.

In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save for Lee Sing, the
Chinese cook and factotum, who knew much about the strangeness of his
master, who was paid well for saying nothing, and who never did say
anything. After the satisfaction of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a
breakfast of Lee Sing's, James Ward crossed the bay to San Fra