Mr. Sprague did not like pets and was often cruel to Jim’s charges, refusing food for them. Then Jim would deny himself and save the food from his plate for his protégés. His father grew angry at this, regarding it as disobedience to the spirit of his commands, and one day ordered Jim to turn the pets loose, in his rage kicking a little puppy. Jim rebelled and, as was usual on such occasions, was whipped. As soon as his father released him Jim gathered up the hurt puppy tenderly. After this he tried to keep his pets out of his father’s sight. At school John was, as a rule, the head of his class, but Jim always had to help him with his mathematical problems. Jim never obtained more than fair marks except in mental arithmetic, in which study he rapidly became the pride of all his teachers. Although Jim took the initiative and led in all their games and expeditions it was tacitly understood that John was, in some way, the superior of the two. This tradition dated from their earliest memories. It was not founded solely on the fact that John had a mother, for John’s father, too, was a cultured man and wrote for a religious review, while Jim’s only sold hardware. Even in later years when Jim faced life and weighed values this attitude never quite left him. During their high school days John fell in love with Gertie Pierce, who had red cheeks and yellow hair. This lifted him still higher in Jim’s opinion. John wrote poetry about Gertie, which he read to Jim. In these poems he called her a “dryad,” explaining to Jim what the word meant, and pointing out how beautifully it rhymed with “sad.” As a rule Jim paid scant attention to his girl acquaintances and schoolmates. They made him uneasy with their giggling and whispering, and he always imagined that they were talking about him and making fun of him. After his graduation from high school Jim entered his father’s store. It had been decided that John was to go to college and he left the following autumn. Jim, robbed of the old companionship, felt his isolation more than ever before in his life. He wanted something, he hardly knew what. It seemed to him that life was cheating him, but he looked in vain for understanding from the boys and girls with whom he had grown up. Occasional enthusiastic letters from John in which college life was described to the stay-at-home, not without a note of condescension, added to Jim’s dissatisfaction and unrest. * * * * *