resumed his seat.

"Why don't they give the ward? I never heard such a fool way of ringing for a fire!" he said.

They were silent, intent and listening. Now the wind was driving the sound clamorously across the town.

"They ain't give the ward yet!" said Custer at length, in a tone of great disgust. "I could ring for a fire better than that!"

"I wish your pa was to home!" said Mrs. Shrimplin.

As she spoke they caught the muffled sound of hurrying feet, then the clamor of voices, eager and excited; but presently these died away in the distance, and again they heard only the bell, which rang on and on and on.

CHAPTER TWO

THE PRICE OF FOLLY

John North occupied the front rooms on the first floor of the three-story brick structure that stood at the corner of Main Street and the Square. The only other tenant on the floor with him was Andy Gilmore, who had apartments at the back of the building. Until quite recently Mr. North and Mr. Gilmore had been friends and boon companions, but of late North had rather avoided this neighbor of his.

Mount Hope said that North had parted with the major portion of his small fortune to Gilmore. Mount Hope also said and believed, and with most excellent justification for so doing, that North was a fool—a truth he had told himself so many times within the last month that it had become the utter weariness of iteration.

He was a muscular young fellow of twenty-six, with a handsome face, and, when he chose, a kindly charming manner. He had been—and he was fully aware of this—as idle and as worthless as any young fellow could possibly be; he was even aware that the worst Mount Hope said of him was much better than he deserved. In those hours that were such a new experience to him, when he denied himself other companionship than his own accusing conscience; when the contemplation of the naked shape of his folly absorbed him to the exclusion of all else, he would sit before his fire with the poker clutched in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees, poking between the bars of the grate, poking moodily, while under his breath he cursed the weakness that had made him what he was.

With his hair in disorder on his handsome shapely head, he would sit thus hours together, not wholly insensible to a certain grim sense of humor, since in all his schemes of life he had made no provision for the very thing that had happened. He wondered mightily what a fellow could do with his last thousand dollars, especially when a fellow chanced to be in love and meditated nothing less than marriage; for North's day-dream, coming like the sun through a rift in the clouds to light up the somberness of his solitary musings, was all of love and Elizabeth Herbert. He wondered what she had heard of him—little that was good, he told himself, and probably much that was to his discredit. Yet as he sat there he was slowly shaping plans for the future. One point was clear: he must leave Mount Hope, where he had run his course, where he was involved and committed in ways he could not bear to think of. To go meant that he would be forsaking much that was evil; a situation from which he could not extricate himself otherwise. It also meant that he would be leaving Elizabeth Herbert; but perhaps she had not even guessed his secret, for he had not spoken of love; or perhaps having divined it, she cared nothing for him. Even so, his regeneration seemed in itself a thing worth while. What he was to do, how make a place for himself, he had scarcely considered; but his inheritance was wasted, and of the comfortable thousands that had come to him, next to nothing remained.

In the intervals between his musings Mr. North got together such of his personal belongings as he deemed worth the removal; he was surprised to find how few were the things he really valued. On the grounds of a chastened taste in such matters he threw aside most of his clothes; he told himself that he did not care to be judged by such mere externals as the shade of a tie or the color of a pair of hose. Under his hands—for the spirit of reform was strong upon him—his rooms took on a sober appearance. He amused himself by making sundry penitential offerings to the flames; numerous evidences of his unrighteous bachelorhood disappearing from walls and book-shelves. Coincident with this he owned to a feeling of intense satisfaction. What remained he would have his friend Marshall Langham sell after he was gone, his finances having suddenly become of paramount importance.

But the days passed, and though he was not able to bring himself to leave Mount Hope, his purpose in its final aspect underwent no change. He lived to himself, and his old haunts and his old friends saw nothing of him. Evelyn Langham, whom he had known before she married his friend Marshall, was fortunately absent from town. Her letters to him remained unanswered; the last one he had burned unread. He was sick of the devious crooked paths he had trodden; he might not be just the stuff of which saints are made, but there was the hope in his heart of better things than he had yet known.

At about the time Mr. Shrimplin was attacking his Thanksgiving turkey, North, from his window, watched the leaden clouds that overhung the housetops. From the frozen dirt of the unpaved streets the keen wind whipped up scanty dust clouds, mingling them with sudden flurries of fine snow. Save for the passing of an occasional pedestrian who breasted the gale with lowered head, the Square was deserted. Staring down on it, North drummed idly on the window-pane. What an unspeakable fool he had been, and what a price his folly was costing him! As he stood there, heavy-hearted and bitter in spirit, he saw Marshall Langham crossing the Square in the direction of his office. He watched his friend's wind-driven progress for a moment, then slipped into his overcoat and, snatching up his hat, hurried from the room.

Langham, with Moxlow, his law partner, occupied two handsomely furnished rooms on the first floor, of the one building in Mount Hope that was distinctly an office building, since its sky-scraping five stories were reached by an elevator. Here North found Langham—a man only three or four years older than himself, tall, broad-shouldered, with an oratorical air of distinction and a manner that proclaimed him the leading young lawyer at the local bar.

He greeted North cordially, and the latter observed that his friend's face was unusually flushed, and that beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead, which he frequently wiped with a large linen handkerchief.

"What have you been doing with yourself, Jack?" he demanded, sliding his chair back from the desk at which he was seated. "I haven't had a glimpse of you in days."

"I have been keeping rather quiet."

"What's the matter? Liver out of whack?" Langham smiled complacently.

"Worse than that!" North rejoined moodily.

"That's saying a good deal? What is it, Jack?"

But North was not inclined to lay bare his heart; he doubted if Langham could be made to comprehend any part of his suffering.

"I am getting down to my last dollar, Marsh. I don't know where the money went, but it's gone," he finally said.

Langham nodded.

"You have certainly had your little time, Jack, and it's been a perfectly good little time, too! What are you going to do when you are cleaned out?"

"That's part of the puzzle, Marsh, that's the very hell and all of it."

"Well, you have had your fun—lots of it!" said Langham, swabbing his face.

North noticed the embroidered initial in the corner of the handkerchief.

"Fun! Was it fun?" he demanded with sudden heat.

"You took it for fun. Personally I think it was a pretty fair imitation."

"Yes, I took it for fun, or mistook it; that's the pity of it! I can forgive myself for almost everything but having been a fool!"

"That's always a hard dose to swallow," agreed Langham. He