on earth
will ever take me back to that house again, nothing, nothing!"

All this had been said with a mixture of humor and emotion that carried
the boy before it. He saw and heard everything as she described it. His
own relations with his father, which had been so free and friendly,
made Joan's with those two old people seem fantastic and impossible.
All his sympathy went out to her. To help her to get away appealed to
him as being as humane as releasing a squirrel from a trap. No thought
of the fact that she was a girl who had rushed impulsively into a most
awkward position struck him. Into his healthy mind no sex question
thrust itself. She was his friend, and as such, her claim upon him was
overwhelming and unarguable.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Have you thought of anything?"

"Of course I have. In the morning, early, before they find out that
I've bolted, you must drive me to New York and take me to Alice
Palgrave. She'll put me up, and I can telegraph to Mother for money to
buy clothes with. Does it occur to you, Marty, that you're the cause of
all this? If I hadn't turned and found you that afternoon, I should
still be eating my soul away and having my young life crushed. As it
is, you've forced my hand. So you're going to take me to the magic
city, and if you want to see how a country cousin makes up for lost
time and sets things humming, watch me!"

So they talked and talked, sitting in that room which was made the very
sanctum of romance by young blood and moonlight. Eleven o'clock slipped
by, and twelve and one; and while the earth slept, watched by a million
glistening eyes, and nature moved imperceptibly one step nearer to
maturity, this boy and girl made plans for the discovery of a world out
of which so many similar explorers have crept with wounds and
bitterness.

They were wonderful and memorable hours, not ever to be lived again.
They were the hours that all youth enjoys and delights in once--when,
like gold-diggers arrived in sight of El Dorado, they halt and peer at
the chimera that lies at their feet--

"I'm going to make my mark," Martin said. "I'm going to make something
that will last. My father's name was Martin Gray, and I'll make it MEAN
some thing out there for his sake."

"And I," said Joan, springing to her feet and throwing up her chin,
"will go joy-riding in the huge round-about. I've seen what it is to be
old and useless, and so I shall make the most of every day an