Hal chuckled with satisfaction at his chum's loyalty. "There you are, you see!" declared he. "You are every whit as rabid as I am when it comes to the scratch." "I'm afraid I'm more rabid when things hit you and Louise," murmured Carl. The two walked on without speaking, the mind of each busy with the problem in hand. Carl's imagination circled every mad avenue of escape from the Harlings' financial crisis. If only he were rich! If only somebody would suddenly leave him some money! If only--his brain halted in the midst of its absurd gyrations. If he were not rich; if he had no fairy fortune to pass over to Hal and Louise, what was to hinder him from performing for them a far more genuine service of friendship and affection? Instead of offering them money that was dropped into his hand why should he not test out his real regard for them by earning it? Many a boy his age, aye, younger than he, earned money. Why should he be free of responsibility when Hal, who was only a few years older, was weighed down with it? Just why it had never occurred to him that if he earned money he might with propriety hand it over to his own hard-working mother is a question. Often with eyes fixed on the clouds we lose sight of the things just beneath our noses. Perhaps that was the explanation of Carl's lack of thought. Be that as it may, certain it was that he parted from his chum afire with the generous impulse of making a personal effort to reinforce the Harlings' slender income. He was only a stone's throw from home and what led him to turn the other way, pass into Beaver Street, and go south toward Orient Avenue he could not have told. Possibly he was still thrilling with newly awakened altruism and was not yet ready to have his roseate dreams disturbed. Or he may have been pondering so deeply how to put his impulses into action that he failed to heed just where he was going. At any rate before he realized it there he was in the fashionable section of the village, walking along between rows of bare and stately elms and great rambling houses glimpsed from behind high brick walls. He had not been in this part of Baileyville for months. There was nothing to take him there. What connection had his life with those fortunate lives that made leisure and luxury things to be taken for granted? Even now he started at finding himself in a location so incongruous; or rather at finding so incongruous a person as himself in an environment so out of harmony with his thought and station. He whirled about to start homeward and it was just at this instant that a trim racing car drew up beside him and a man's voice inquired pleasantly: "Lost your way, youngster?" Carl glanced at the speaker.