dropped in had a half-shamed air at being there and got out as quickly
as possible. He could go to Hallsboro, but Hallsboro no longer bore
even a semblance to the little town in which he had been born--had,
indeed, become something of a big city, bustling, busy, and new, and
offensively up-to-date; and nowhere else did he feel so much a
stranger as in the place he had once called home. He was but twelve
when his parents moved away, and eight months later died within a week
of each other, and for years he had not been back. Had there been
brothers and sisters--Well, there were no brothers and sisters, and by
this time he should be used to the fact that he was very much alone in
the world.

Hands in his pockets, Stephen Van Landing leaned back in his chair and
looked across the room at a picture on the wall. He did not see the
picture; he saw, instead, certain things that were not pleasant to
see. No, he would not go to Hallsboro for Christmas.

Turning off the light in his office and closing the door with
unnecessary energy, Van Landing walked down the hall to the elevator,
then turned away and toward the steps. Reaching the street, he
hesitated as to the car he should take, whether one up-town to his
club or one across to his apartment, and as he waited he watched the
hurrying crowd with eyes in which were baffled impatience and
perplexity. It was incomprehensible, the shopping craze at this season
of the year. He wished there was no such season. Save for his very
young childhood there were few happy memories connected with it, but
only of late, only during the past few years, had the recurrence
awakened within him a sort of horror, its approach a sense of
loneliness that was demoralizing, and its celebration an emptiness in
life that chilled and depressed beyond all reason. Why was it that as