he said after a while, out loud,
and then began to whistle softly to himself, shuffling with his feet
on the gravel in time to his whistling as he walked.

CHAPTER III

Joe Hooper was not a handsome man. He was of that type so often seen
in the South, tall, gangly, and very dark, with a sallow complexion
and a general air of inertness that always misleads the stranger to
the type. Insignificant looking, perhaps, but they will be found, on
later acquaintance, to be worming themselves into general regard
without effort. The law claims many of them and occasionally the
raising of stock and the tilling of soil, though usually as
proprietors only, it is true. Sometimes they are swept into strange
waters where, if they float about long enough, they manage by some
inherent mordant capacity to colour the entire complexion to their
own. There are exceptions, of course.

Joe's father had lost his farm through foreclosure. It killed him.
This fact and the presence of some alien strain sent Joe to Louisville
which had some of the elements of the melting pot and some traditional
elements of opportunity. He was twenty-four when he made this change.
For two years he had resisted fusion and escaped opportunity. He had
fallen into a job with the Bromley Plow Company and risen to the
exalted status of stock clerk when the war came. The war, or rather
the idea of the war, had proved a great relief to his imagination and
he had enlisted at once, as a matter of fact, on the second day. This
notion of service had been the one thing stronger than the influence
of Mary Louise, which had been, it must be confessed, the main reason
for his sticking as long as two years. The Plow Works had seemed a
rather tedious road to a _Restoration_ and the _Barebones Parliament_
that sat in the inner office had seemed inexorably determined to make
that road as devious and difficult as possible. He had escaped gladly.
But the war had come to an end with him still in service on this side
and he had at length returned with many things unsatisfied. One of
these had been his idea about Mary Louise. She, too, had been swept
into the vortex, into a mild eddy of it. The Red Cross had found her
useful in the maintenance of a tea room for the enjoyment of the men
at Camp Taylor. It had sounded innocent enough, but upon Joe's return
he had found that she had in some way been galvanized. She was one of
the war's changes; he, unfortunately, not so.

He did n