His heart beat wildly at the thought! It was not new. He had harbored it ever since his first visit to the alley. It was his great secret, his much hoped for experiment. If he might be able to do it sometime. This bit of a farm would open the way. There would be money needed of course, and where was it to come from? But he could work. He was strong. He would give his young life for his people—save them from their ignorance and despair. At least he could save some; even one would be worth while. So he mused as he hurried on, eyes and mind open to all he saw. There was no fence in front of Old Orchard farm. A white road bordered with golden rod and wild asters met the scraggly grass that matted and tangled itself beneath the gnarled apple trees. A grassy rutted wagon track curved itself in vistas between the trees up to the house which was set far back from the road. A man passing identified the place for Michael, and looked him over apprizingly, wondering as did all who saw him, at the power and strength of his beauty. The house was weather-beaten unpainted clapboards, its roof of curled and mossy shingles possessing undoubted leakable qualities, patched here and there. A crazy veranda ambled across the front. It contained a long low room with a queer old-fashioned chimney place wide enough to sit in, a square south room that must have been a dining-room because of the painted cupboard whose empty shelves gazed ghastly between half-open doors, and a small kitchen, not much more than a shed. In the long low room a staircase twisted itself up oddly to the four rooms under the leaky roof. It was all empty and desolate, save for an old cot bed and a broken chair. The floors had a sagged, shaky appearance. The doors quaked when they were opened. The windows were cobwebby and dreary, yet it looked to the eyes of the new householder like a palace. He saw it in the light of future possibilities and gloried in it. That chimney place now. How would it look with a great log burning in it, and a rug and rocking chair before it. What would—Aunt Sally—perhaps—say to it when he got it fixed up? Could he ever coax her to leave her dirty doorstep and her drink and come out here to live? And how would he manage it all if he could? There would have to be something to feed her with, and to buy the rug and the rocking chair. And first of all there would have to be a bath-tub. Aunt Sally would need to be purified before she could enter the portals of this ideal cottage, when he had made it as he wanted it to be. Paint and paper would make wonderful transformations he knew, for he had often helped at remodelling the rooms at college during summer vacations. He had watched and been with the workmen and finally taken a hand. This habit of watching and helping had taught him many things. But where were paper and paint and time to use it coming from? Ah, well, leave that to the future. He would find a way. Yesterday he did not have the house