methodically he used one in his nightly study.

The morning moved along. The yearning orange shipper went away. One mourner rose and passed inside. The other waited impatiently for his turn to do the same. Luncheon time came for John, and he ate it in the file room—ravenously; and while he ate he read—the Congressional Record; and reading, made notations on the margin, for John was preparing for what he was preparing, although he did not quite know what. The train of destiny was rumbling along, and when it stopped at his station, he proposed to swing on board.

His luncheon down swiftly, as much through hunger as through haste, he swung out of the door, bound for Charles Kenton, "actor—temporarily disengaged—Hotel Albemarle—terms reasonable," moving with such headlong speed that he was soon within that self-important presence.

"Hampstead is my name," he blurted, with clumsy directness, "John Hampstead," and the interview with Destiny was on.

"The first trouble with you," declared the white-haired actor critically, "is that your face doesn't fit."

John wet a lip and hitched a nervous leg, but sat awkwardly silent, his eyes boring hungrily, as if waiting for more. The actor, however, was slow to add more. Faces were his enthusiasm, as well as the raw material of his profession, but this face puzzled him, so that before committing himself further he paused to survey it again: the strong nose with its hump of energy, the well buttressed chin, and then the broad forehead with its unusually thick, bony ridge encircling the base of the brows like a bilge keel, proclaiming loudly that here was a man with racial dynamite in his system, one who, whatever else he might become, was now and always a first-class animal.

The eyebrows heightened this suggestion by being thick and yellow, and sweeping off to the temples in a scroll-like flare. The forehead itself was broad, but gathered a high look from that welter of tawny hair which was roached straight up and back, giving the effect of one who plunges headlong.

But the eyes completely modified the countenance. They did not plunge. They halted and beamed softly. Gray and deep-seated, they made all that face's force the force of tenderness, by burning with a light that was obviously inner and spiritual. The mouth, again, while as cleanly chiseled as if cut from marble,—sensitive, impressionistic, fine, was, alas! weak; or if not weak, advertising weakness by an habitual expression of lax amiability; although along with this the actor noted that the two lips, buttoning so loosely at the corners, could none the less collaborate in a most engaging smile.

Kenton concluded his second appraisal with a little gesture of impatience. The man's features gave each other the lie direct, and that was all there was to it. They said: This man is a beast, a great, roaring lion of a man; and then they said: No, this lion is a lamb, a mild, dreamy, sucking dove sort of person.

"That's it," he iterated. "Your face doesn't fit."

Hampstead did not wince.

"The question is," he proposed, in a voice husky with a mixture of embarrassment and determination, "how am I to make it fit? Or, failing that, how am I to get somewhere with a face that doesn't fit?"

The actor's reply was half sagacity, half "selling talk", mixed with some judicious flattery and tinged with inevitable gallery play, although there was no gallery.

"Elocution?" Kenton observed, with a little grimace of derision. "No! Oratory? Not at all!" The weight of his withering scorn was tremendous. "There are no such things. It is all acting! A man speaks with the whole of himself—his eyes, his mouth, his body, his walk, his pose—everything. That's what you need to learn. Self-expression! I can make your face fit. That's simple enough," and Kenton waved his hand as if the re-stamping of a man's features was the easiest thing he did. "I can make your body graceful. I can take that voice of yours and make it strong as the roar of a bull, and as soft as rich, brown velvet. Yes," and the actor leaped to his feet in growing enthusiasm, "I can make 'em all respond to every whim of what's passing inside. But," he asked suddenly, with a penetrating glance, "will that make an orator of you? Well, that depends on what's passing inside. It takes a great soul to make an orator—great imagination, mind, feelings, sentiments. Have you got 'em? I doubt it! I doubt it!"

The old man confirmed his dubiousness with the uncomplimentary emphasis of hesitating silence. In the sincerity of his critical analysis, he had forgotten that he was trying to secure a pupil. "And yet—and yet—" his eye began to kindle as he looked, "I tell you I don't know, boy—there's something—there might be something behind that face of yours. It might come out, you know, it might come out!"

Kenton drawled the last words out slowly in a deeply speculative tone, and then asked abruptly: "How old are you?"

"Twenty-four," admitted John, feeling suddenly as if he confessed the years of Methuselah.

But the dark eyes of the old actor sparkled, and his long, mobile lips parted in the ghost of a sigh which crept out through teeth stained yellow by years and tobacco, after which he ejaculated admiringly: "My God, but you are young!"

This came as an inspiring thought to John. He did feel young, all but his eyes. What was the matter with them that the lids were so woodeny of late? Yes; he was young, despite seven submerged years, and the wings of his soul were preening.

Back in the General Freight Office, John fell upon his work with happy vigor. Spat, spat, spat, and a letter was on its way from Dear Sir to Yours truly. But in the midst of these spattings, he paused to muse.

"Kenton said he could make me graceful," the big fellow was communing over his typewriter, when abruptly the outer door opened and, after a single glance, John appeared to forget both his communings and his work. Swinging about, he sat transfixed, his odd features turned eccentrically handsome by a light of adoration which began to glow upon them, as if an astral presence had entered.

Yet to the unprejudiced observer the newcomer was no heavenly being, but a mere schoolgirl, whose dress had not been long at the shoe-top stage. With a swish of skirts and an excited ripple of laughter, she had burst in like a breeze of youth itself. But to this breeziness of youth the young lady added the indefinable thing called charm, and the promise of greater charm to come. She was already tall and would be taller, fair to look upon and certain to be fairer. To a dress of some warm red color, a touch of piquancy was added by a Tam-o'-Shanter cap of plaid that was itself pushed jauntily to one side by a wealth of crinkly brown hair; while a bit of soft brown fur encircled the neck and cuddled affectionately as a kitten under the smooth, plump chin. The face was oval with a tendency to fullness, and the nose, while by no means retroussé, was as distinctively Irish as the sparkle in the blue of her laughing eyes. Irish, too, were the smiling lips, but the delicious dimples that flecked the white and red of her cheeks were entirely without nationality. They were just woman, budding, ravishing woman; and there is no doubt whatever that they helped to make the fascination of that merry face complete, when its spell was cast over the