ld why, except that it
expressed the responsibility he accepted of bearing all things that a
father must bear from the child to whom he has given life.

"I should like to go out for an hour, Fanny; but if you would rather
not, I shall stay."

"No, David, I want to be alone," she said, turning into the little
parlor, with eyes big and heavy from weariness and inward clashing
emotions.

Along the length of Lindell avenue from Grand avenue west to Forest
park, reaches for two miles on either side of the wide and well kept
gravel drive a smooth stone walk, bordered its full extent with a
double row of trees which were young and still uncertain, when Hosmer
walked between them.

Had it been Sunday, he would have found himself making one of a
fashionable throng of promenaders; it being at that time a fad with
society people to walk to Forest park and back of a Sunday afternoon.
Driving was then considered a respectable diversion only on the six
work days of the week.

But it was not Sunday and this inviting promenade was almost deserted.
An occasional laborer would walk clumsily by; apathetic; swinging his
tin bucket and bearing some implement of toil with the yellow clay yet
clinging to it. Or it might be a brace of strong-minded girls walking
with long and springing stride, which was then fashionable; looking
not to the right nor left; indulging in no exchange of friendly and
girlish chatter, but grimly intent upon the purpose of their walk.

A steady line of vehicles was pushing on towards the park at the
moderate speed which the law required. On both sides the wide
boulevard tasteful dwellings, many completed, but most of them in
course of construction, were in constant view. Hosmer noted every
thing, but absently; and yet he was not pre-occupied with thought. He
felt himself to be hurrying away from something that was fast
overtaking him, and his faculties for the moment were centered in the
mere act of motion. It is said that motion is pleasurable to man. No
doubt, in connection with a healthy body and free mind, movement
brings to the normal human being a certain degree of enjoyment. But
where the healthful conditions are only physical, rapid motion changes
from a source of pleasure to one of mere expediency.

So long as Hosmer could walk he kept a certain pressing consciousness
at bay. He would have liked to run if he had dared. Since he had
entered the park there were constant trains of cars speeding somewhe