The puzzled manufacturer went down out of the upstairs room and along a branch of the railroad that led into the shop to the main tracks along which he walked toward the more inhabited part of town. “It must be almost noon,” he thought. Usually he had lunch at a place near his factory and his employees brought their lunches in packages and tin pails. He thought now he would go to his own home. He would not be expected but thought he would like to look at his wife and daughter. A passenger train came rushing down along the tracks and although the whistle blew madly he was unaware of it. Then when it was almost upon him a young negro, a tramp perhaps, at any rate a black man in ragged clothes who was also walking on the tracks, ran to him and taking hold of his coat jerked him violently to one side. The train rushed past and he stood staring after it. He and the young negro also looked into each other’s eyes. He put his hand into his pocket, instinctively feeling that he should pay the man for the service done him. And then a kind of shudder ran through his body. He was very tired. “My mind was far away,” he said. “Yes, boss. I’m sometimes that way myself,” the young negro said, smiling and walking away along the tracks. II John Webster rode to his house on a street car. It was half-past twelve o’clock when he arrived and, as he had anticipated, he was not expected. Behind his house, a rather commonplace looking frame affair, there was a little garden with two apple trees. He walked around the house and saw his daughter, Jane Webster, lying in a hammock hung between the trees. There was an old rocking-chair under one of the trees near the hammock and he went and sat in it. His daughter was surprised at his coming upon her so, at the noon hour when he so seldom appeared. “Well, hello Dad,” she said listlessly, sitting up and dropping on the grass at his feet a book she had been reading. “Is there anything wrong?” she asked. He shook his head. Picking up the book he began to read and her head dropped again to the cushion in the hammock. The book was a modern novel of the period. It concerned life in the old city of New Orleans. He read a few pages. It was no doubt the sort of thing that might take one out of oneself, take one away from the dullness of life. A young man was stealing along a street in the darkness and had a cloak wrapped about his shoulders. Overhead the moon shone. The magnolia trees were in blossom filling the air with perfume. The young man was very handsome. The scene of the novel was laid in the time before the Civil War and he owned a great many slaves. John Webster closed the book. There was no need of reading. When he was still a young man he had sometimes read such books himself. They took one out of oneself, made the dullness of everyday existence seem less terrible.