DUSK was falling when David started down the mountain road. He did not walk rapidly; sometimes, in his weakness, he stumbled. Bad as his aches had been when he climbed the mountain hours before, they were worse now, and added to them was smart of soul. Every spot on his body upon which Katy had laid her hand burned; she was continually before his eyes in her kaleidoscopic motions, now running down the pike from school, now storming at him as he lay on the ground. He tried to hate her, but he could not. As he stumbled along, his feet kept time to a foolish wail, "I want her! I want her!" The glow of triumph had faded entirely; David was more morose, more sullen, more unhappy than ever. His anger with Alvin had changed to a sly intention to scheme against him until he could give him a greater punishment than a mere beating. He was not done with Alvin! His own father was a rich and powerful man; Alvin's father was a poor, half-witted thief. He thought for the first time with satisfaction of his father's wealth. The young moon overhead, the scent of spring in the air, the gentle breeze against his cheek, all deepened his misery and loneliness. He said to himself that he had no one in the world. In spite of his vague conclusions about his father, his father was still the same. There are persons whose success depends wholly upon their relations with the human beings nearest to them. Given affection, they expand; denied it, their souls contract, their powers fail. It is a weakness of the human creature, but it is none the less real. Resentment was rapidly becoming a settled attitude of David's mind; his father was postponing dangerously that opening of his heart to his son of which he thought day and night. David wished now that he need not go home; he wished--poor little David!--that he was dead. He would have his supper and he would go to bed, and to-morrow there would be another bitter day. He would sit in school and be conscious of Katy and Alvin and their knowing glances, and love and hate would tear him asunder once more. Then David stood still and looked down upon his house. Even though the trees about it were thickly leafed, he could see lights in unaccustomed places. The parlor was lighted; in that room David could not remember an illumination in his lifetime. There were lights also in bedrooms--David forgot his aches of body and soul in his astonishment. He slept over the kitchen in one of the little rooms his father had provided for the day when servants should attend upon the wants of his children; except for his father's and mother's room the front of the house was never opened. Had some great stranger come to visit--but that was unthinkable! Was some one ill--but that would be no reason for the opening of the house! David did not know what to make of the strange sight. He hurried down the road, almost falling as he ran.