Oh, to be twenty-four! To feel that one has sounded all the chords of life, known every bitterness, to have become entirely disillusioned, wholly cynical, utterly reckless--and not to know that life and illusion have only just begun! The hard, bristling, painful thing in his insides which Nort couldn't identify, wrongly attributing it to certain things he had been eating and drinking now for several days past, was in fact his soul. How I love to think of Nort at that moment, that wonderful, fertile, despondent, hopeful, passionate moment. How I love to think of him, who is now so dear a friend, quite miserable, but with a half smile on his lips, his vigorous nature full of every conceivable possibility of good or evil, of success or failure, every capability of great love or great bitterness----Nort, arm in arm with Life, tugged at by both God and Satan, standing there, aimless, in the sunny street of Hempfield. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI A MAN TO HELP FERGUS It was really a moment of vast potentialities when Nort turned _down_ the street toward the town instead of _up_ toward the railroad station and the open road. For down the street was the way to the printing-office and the old Captain and Anthy and Fergus and me, and all the things, big and little, I am about to relate. I tremble sometimes when I think how narrowly this story escaped not coming into existence at all. It was upon this brief but historic journey that Ed Smith met Nort, and like any true newspaper man with a "nose for news," stopped to pass the time of day with the singular stranger. It took him not quite two seconds to "size up" Nort. It was easy for Ed to "size up" people, for he had just two classifications: those people whom he could use, and those who could use him. His problem of life thus became quite simple: it consisted in shifting as many as possible of those of the second classification into the first. "If you would not be done by a man, do him first," was one of Ed's treasured Ben Franklinisms. Nort was rather mistily in search of "something to do." Well, what could he do? It took some groping in his mind to discover any accomplishment whatever that was convertible into money, especially in a small town like Hempfield. Finally he said he knew "something about machinery"--he did not specify automobiles--and by some wild chance mentioned the fact that he had once worked in a newspaper office (two months--and was dreadfully tired of it).