neck relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.

Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and, saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.

The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the horse standing sauntered over to the bench.

"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is, are you all right?"

She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.

"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.

"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of similar caste at ease with one another.

"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and clothing."

He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few remaining hair pegs.

"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched beast bruise you?"

"Oh, no----"

"You limped!"

"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"

"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once-- if you would put me up----"

"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you spurred?"

She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her polished boot heels.

"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit in teeth."

"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.

"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat, lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.

"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"

"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter of course."

"But not at the risk you took----"

"No risk at all," he said hastily.

She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse, haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the gatherings of his own kind.

"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.

"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."

She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.

"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"

"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.

"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay with me?"

"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."

"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.

"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up. There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Perfectly."

They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.

"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks, awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.

Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive, dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle, conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.

Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim, leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.

II

THE IDLER

Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It

Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash; everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He was learning.

So he solicited aid from nobody whom he had known in former days; neither from those who had aided him when he needed no aid, nor those who owed their comfortable position to the generosity of his father--a gentleman notorious for making fortunes for his friends.

Therefore he wrote to strangers on a purely business basis--to amazing types lately emerged from the submerged, bulging with coal money, steel money, copper money, wheat money, stockyard money--types that galloped for Fifth Avenue to build town