"You are a pessimist, then," said Bradley, feeling that there was an undercurrent of dark philosophy in Cargill's voice. "I am. The whole damned thing is a botch, in my opinion. You may find it different," he said, with a mocking gleam in his eyes as he rose and walked away. Bradley did not believe the man meant half he said, and yet his bitterness had thrown a sombre shadow over his heart. The vista ahead was not quite so bright as it had been except where Miss Wilbur seemed to walk. He longed to go out and find her, and tried to content himself with walking up and down the street, which seemed incredibly brilliant with its lighted windows and streams of gay young people coming and going. At last he came to a corner where he saw the name of her street upon the lamp post, and the hunger to see her was irresistible. He rushed up the street with desperate haste. He wished he had started sooner. It was eight o'clock and there was danger that she might be gone out. The electric cars hardly diverted him as they came floating weirdly down the line--the trolley invisible, the wheels emitting green sheets of light at the crossings. The street grew more quiet as it climbed the hill, and at last became quite like Rock River, with its rows of small wooden houses on each side of the maple-lined streets, through which the keen wind went hissing. The stars glittered through the clear cold air like crystals of green and gold and white fire. As he walked along, his newly acquired honors fell away from him, together with his war for the grange, and his ambitious plans displayed their warmer side. He began to feel that all he was and was to do must be shared with a woman in order that he could enjoy it himself, and he had known for a long time that Ida was that woman. His face lifted to the stars as he implored their aid in a vast and dangerous enterprise. It meant all or nothing to him. He was in the mood to risk all his life and plans that night if she had been with him. The strangeness of the city had exalted him to the mood where his timidity was gone. When he came to the house, he found it all dark save a dim light in the rear, and it made him shiver with a premonition of failure. A servant girl answered his ring. He had the hope that this was the wrong house after all. "Can you tell me if Miss Wilbur lives here?" "Yassir, but she nat haar," answered the girl, with the Norwegian accent. "Where is she?" "Ay nat know. Ay tank she ees good ways off; her moder she ees gawn to churtz." Bradley no longer looked at the stars as he walked along the street. All his doubts and fears and his timidity and his reticence came back upon him, and something warm and sweet seemed to go out of the far vista of his life. He felt that he had lost her. XIX. CARGILL TAKES BRADLEY IN HAND. Cargill was not at the table the next morning, but he came in later, and greeted Bradley brusquely, as he flung his rag of a hat on the floor.