eel toward little sounds that beat their slow
way into our consciousness at night, to irritate us unendurably at last.

"Go," he urged, "go along to Halloran's. Go anywhere."

"Well, what do you know about that?" began Willard, offended, and then
forgave him. There was a look in Neil's pale face that commanded
forgiveness. It was pale and strained with a trouble that had nothing to
do with Willard, and Willard was respectful and inarticulate before it.

"That's all right," Willard muttered, "that will be all right. I'll go."

Neil took no notice of this promise. Up in the hall the waltz had
swelled to a high, light-hearted climax, heady and strained, like the
sudden excitements that sweep a crowd. It came clear through the open
windows, making one last appeal to the boy below to come up and be part
of what was there. And just then a small closed car swept down through
the empty square and stopped. Two men stepped out, and paused in the
doorway under the red-shaded light.

One was the Colonel's secretary, waiting on the step beyond range of
the light, a tall, shadowy figure, and the other, who stood with the
light on his face, was Colonel Everard.

He was still pale from his week of illness, but his keen eyes and
clear-cut profile were more effective for that. He stood listening to
the sounds from upstairs, and he smiled as he listened. He turned at
last and looked out across the square as if he could feel Neil's eyes
upon him and were returning their look, and then turned away and
disappeared up the stairs.

"Neil," Willard was announcing uneasily, "I think a lot of you. I'd do a
lot for you. If you're in wrong, any way, if----"

Willard broke off, rebuffed. Neil did not even look at him. He stood
staring at the lighted doorway where the Colonel had stood and smiled,
as if he could still see him there. He was a creature beyond Willard's
world, as he looked, but unaccountably fascinating to Willard. Willard
regarded him in awed silence.

Now Dugan's music had stopped. Some one above shut a window with a
clatter that echoed disproportionately loud. Then there was silence up
there, tense silence, and the call of the silence was harder to resist
than the music. The boy by the court-house railing could not resist it.
He pushed away Willard's detaining hand, and without a word to him or
another glance at him, was across the square and through the red-lighted
door, and running up the stairs.

"What do you know about