But he opened them again almost at once. During that very brief interval of darkness there had flashed before his mind a picture of a small park in New York as he had once seen it upon a summer Sunday afternoon. The park walks had been bordered with rows of benches and upon each bench slumbered at least one human derelict who, apparently, realized his worthlessness and had given up the fight. Captain Kendrick sat upright on the settee, beneath the locust tree. Was he, too, giving up--surrendering to Fate? No, by the Lord, he was not! And he was not going to drop off to sleep on that settee like one of those tramps on a park bench. He rose to his feet, picked up his cane, and started to walk--somewhere. Direction made little difference, so long as he kept awake and kept going. There was a path leading off between the raspberry and currant bushes, and slowly, but stubbornly, he limped along that path. The path ended at a gate in a white picket fence. The gate was unlatched and there was an orchard on the other side of it. Captain Sears opened the gate and limped on under the apple trees. They were old trees and large and the shade they cast was cool and pleasant. The soft green slope beneath them tempted him strongly. He was beginning to realize that those shaky legs of his were tiring in this, the longest walk they had attempted since the accident. He had a mind to sit down upon the bank beneath the apple trees and rest. Then he remembered the mental picture of the tramps on the park benches and stubbornly refused to yield. Leaning more heavily upon his cane, he limped on. The path emerged from beneath the apple trees, ascended a little rise and disappeared around the shoulder of a high thick clump of lilacs. Kendrick, tiring more and more rapidly, plodded on. His suffering limbs were, so to speak, shrieking for mercy but he would not give it to them. He set himself a "stint"; he would see what was beyond the clump of lilacs, then he would rest, and then he would hobble back to the Minot yard. Incidentally he realized that he had been a fool ever to leave it. His teeth grimly set and each step a labor, he plodded up the little rise and turned the corner of the lilac bushes. There he stopped, not entirely because his "stint" was done, but because what he saw surprised him.