He was silent for a little while, and the comfort of the room, the quiet of the night, the pleasant sympathy of Stella Croyle, all wrought upon him.

"I don't know," he repeated slowly.
"I am waiting.

But out of my queer life something more has got to come--something more and something different.

I have always been sure of it, but I used to be afraid that the opportunity would come while I was still chained to the handles of the barrow." Hillyard's life, though within a short time its vicissitudes had been many and most divergent, had probably not been as strange as he imagined it to be.

He looked back upon it with too intense an interest to be its impartial judge.