Here at last I ended my journey, weary and lonely, without even Mr. Wemple to welcome me to the city where I had cast my fortunes. Before long I joined the solemn line and sat watching the street, and Broadway below Union Square at night, even in those times, was not an enlivening scene. My conquest was forgotten; my mind wandered back to the valley at home. Here I sat listlessly, in a hot, narrow canyon through which swept a thin, sluggish stream of life; above me was just a patch of sky; before me was a tall cliff of steel and stone, pierced by numberless dead windows. As I sat in the glare of electric lights, in smoke-charged air, my ears ringing with the harsh medley of the street, I fancied myself on the barn-bridge again. The moon would be rising over the ridges and the valley would lie at my feet with its checkered fields of brown and gray rolling away to the mountains, and the music of the valley would be no harsh clatter of bells and hoofs; I should hear the wind in the trees, the rustle of the ripening grain, the whippoorwill calling from the elm by the creek, and the restless bleating of sheep in the meadow. Thinking of these things, I asked myself if the life I had left was not far better than the one I had chosen; if the highest reward for my coming years of labor would not be the right to return to it. But for pride I could have abandoned all my mighty plans at that moment and gone back, even, as the Professor had said, to doze like the very dogs. I dared not. My parents' joy at my return might over-balance the loss of their high hopes for my fame, and had they alone been in my thoughts I should have taken the night train home. But I could not go back to Gladys Todd beaten before I had even come to blows with life. The last picture I had of her was the heroic one of a woman speeding her knight to battle. Gladys had an embarrassing way of calling me "her knight." She stood on the platform of the Harlansburg station, and I leaned from a window of the moving train. Beside her was Doctor Todd waving his hat, and behind her the three Miss Minnicks with handkerchiefs fluttering. She was very straight and very still, but I knew what was in her thoughts. She had faith in my strength; when she saw me again my feet would be firmly set on the ladder by which men climb above the heads of their herded fellows. In the hours of the long journey the picture of her was very clear to me; I seemed to be wearing her colors as I went to the conflict; with her spirit watching over me, I could strike no mean blow nor use my strength in any unworthy cause.