The sunlight was streaming in through the living-room of the barn back of the old Parmenter place. Outside the maple leaves were rustling gently. Through the quiet air came the slow booming of the First Presbyterian bell across the block. From greater distances came the higher pitched bell of the Baptist Church, down on Filbert Avenue, and the faint note from the Second Presbyterian over on the West Side, across the tracks. Humphrey had made coffee and toast. They sat at an end of the centre table. Humphrey in bath-robe and slippers, Henry fully dressed in his blue serge suit, neat silk four-in-hand tie, stiff white collar and carefully polished shoes. 'Where are you going with all that?' Humphrey asked. Henry hesitated; flushed a little. 'To church,' he finally replied. Humphrey's surprise was real. There had been a time, before they came to know each other, when the boy had sung bass in the quartet at the Second Presbyterian. But since that period he had not been a church-goer. Henry had been quiet all evening, and now this morning. He seemed all boxed up within himself. Preoccupied. As if the triumph over old Boice had merely opened up the way to new responsibilities. Which, for that matter, was just what it had done--done to both of them. Humphrey, not being given to prying, would have let the subject drop here, had not Henry surprised him by breaking hotly forth into words. 'It's my big fight, Hump!' he was saying now. 'Don't you see! This town. All they say. Look here!' He laid a rumpled bit of paper on the table. As if he had been holding it ready in his hand.' 'Oh, that letter,' said Humphrey. 'Yes. It's what I've got to fight. And I've got to win. Don't you see?' 'Yes,' Humphrey replied gravely, 'I see.' 'I think,' said Henry, 'it's being in love that's going to help me. We've got to hold our heads up, you and I. Build the _Gleaner_ into a real property. Win confidence. And there mustn't be any doubt. The way we step out and fight, you know. I've got to stand with you.' Humphrey's eyes strayed to the sunlit window. He suppressed a little sigh. 'This note's right enough, in a way,' Henry went on. 'It wouldn't be fair to compromise her.' He leaned earnestly over the table. 'It's really a hopeless love. I know that, Hump. But it isn't like the others.' It makes me feel ashamed of them. All of them. I've got to show her, or at least show myself, that it's this love that has made a man of me. Without asking anything, you know.' Humphrey listened in silence as the talk ran on. The boy was changing, no question about that. Even back of the romantic strain that was colouring his attitude, the suggestion of pose in it, there was real evidence of this change. At least his fighting blood was up. And he was taking punishment.