As he stood in the darkness something caught at Will’s throat. He was fighting again but what was he fighting? A fellow like himself did not move out of one house and into another. There was a house in which one lived, and then suddenly and unexpectedly, it fell apart. One stood on the rim of the nest and looked about, and a hand reached out from the warmth of the nest and pushed one off into space. There was no place for a fellow to put down his feet. He was one swinging in space. What—a great fellow, nearly six feet tall now, and crying in the darkness, in the shadow of a ship, like a child! He walked, filled with determination, out of the darkness, along many streets of factories and came into a street of houses. He passed a store where groceries were sold and looking in saw, by a clock on the wall, that it was already ten o’clock. Two drunken men came out at the door of a house and stood on a little porch. One of them clung to a railing about the porch, and the other pulled at his arm. “Let me alone. It’s settled. I want you to let me alone,” grumbled the man clinging to the railing. * * * * * Will went to his boarding house and climbed the stairs wearily. The devil—one might face anything if one but knew what was to be faced! He turned on a light and sat down in his room on the edge of the bed, and the old cornet player pounced upon him, pounced like a little animal, lying under a bush along a path in a forest, and waiting for food. He came into Will’s room carrying his cornet, and there was an almost bold look in his eyes. Standing firmly on his old legs in the centre of the room, he made a declaration. “I’m going to play it. I don’t care what she says, I’m going to play it,” he said. He put the cornet to his lips and blew two or three notes—so softly that even Will, sitting so closely, could barely hear. Then his eyes wavered. “My lip’s no good,” he said. He thrust the cornet at Will. “You blow it,” he said. Will sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. There was a notion floating in his mind now. Was there something, a thought in which one could find comfort. There was now, before him, standing before him in the room, a man who was after all not a man. He was a child as Will was too really, had always been such a child, would always be such a child. One need not be too afraid. Children were all about, everywhere. If one were a child and lost in a vast, empty space, one could at least talk to some other child. One could have conversations, understand perhaps something of the eternal childishness of oneself and others. Will’s thoughts were not very definite. He only felt suddenly warm and comfortable in the little room at the top of the boarding house.