The glimmer dawned to a great light. He jumped down and hurried along the remaining mile or two as fast as his weary legs would go. There was no crowd awaiting him on the out-skirts of Framingham, and for a few minutes he hoped that he was going to at least finish in peace. Vain hope! As he approached the public square he saw it crowded with people and heard the strains of a brass band. On turning the corner he was received with a great shout. Then he saw a sight that explained it all, and caused him to exclaim, "The three-year-old idiots!" In front of the town-hall was drawn up a barge with four plumed horses. In it were a band of music and a full delegation of Steve's devoted friends. Ned Burleigh was up on the box haranguing the populace. "What sort of a fool circus are you children trying to make of yourselves," asked Hudson, as he came up. "A grand one, old man, and you have been the elephant, the shining star of the whole show," replied Burleigh. "You will find beer in the ambulance." "You have won the money handsomely, Steve," acknowledged Stoughton, "and we all accept with pleasure your kind invitation to dinner." A RAMBLING DISCUSSION AND AN ADVENTURE, PERHAPS UNCONNECTED. Dick Stoughton came to lunch that day in a decidedly bad humor, cause unknown. He was late, and all the other members of the club table were there, including the two dogs. A "Gray baiting" was going on. This sport consisted in working up the poetic feelings of Ernest Gray, and then ruthlessly harrowing the same. Gray was a fiery, imaginative little man, whose soul compassed far more than his body. His impulsive nature drove him constantly into the net spread by his friends, but he had become used to the process, and perhaps it did him good. Whether or not he had in him the stuff for a true poet, he was at least in no danger among those men of becoming a false one. He was just then stirred to a fine condition on the subject of Philistinism, was violently supporting the famous professor of the Humanities, and had almost got to the point of quoting poetry. "It makes me laugh a low, sad laugh," remarked Stoughton, gloomily buttering a muffin, "when I think what Gray will be doing thirty years from now." "We have arranged all that," said Burleigh. "Ernest is going to marry a strong-minded woman four times as big as himself, who will take him out shopping and make him carry the bundles and the twins."