her father with an expression that David
could not fathom. He went into the hall,
picked up his hat, and walked out in
silence.

David wondered that night, walking the
chilly streets after he quitted the house, and
often, often afterward, if that comfortable
and prosperous gentleman, safe beyond the
perturbations of youth, had any idea of
what he had done. How COULD he know
anything of the black monotony of the life
of the man he turned from his door? The
"desk's dead wood" and all its hateful
slavery, the dull darkened rooms where his
mother prosed through endless evenings,
the bookless, joyless, hopeless existence
that had cramped him all his days rose up
before him, as a stretch of unbroken plain
may rise before a lost man till it maddens
him.

The bowed man in the car-seat remem-
bered with a flush of reminiscent misery
how the lad turned suddenly in his walk
and entered the door of a drinking-room
that stood open. It was very comfortable
within. The screens kept out the chill of
the autumn night, the sawdust-sprinkled
floor was clean, the tables placed near