Lyman walked out, not feeling so humorous as when he went in. He looked up and down the dingy, drowsy street. At first he might have been half amused at his failure, tickled with the idea of describing it to Caruthers and the newspaper man, but a sense of humiliation came to him. He knew that in the warfare of business his operation was but a guerrilla's dash, and he was ashamed of himself; and yet he reflected that his great enemy might have been gentler to him. He walked slowly down the street, without an objective point; he passed the group of village jokers, sitting in front of the drug store, with their chairs tipped back against the wall; he passed the planing mill, with its rasping noise, and in his whimsical fancy it sounded like the Town Council snoring. He loitered near a garden where plum trees were in bloom; he looked over at a solemn child digging in the dirt; he caught sight of a pale man with the mark of death upon him, lying near a window, slowly fanning himself. He spoke to the child and the wretched little one looked up and said: "I am digging a grave for my pa." Lyman leaned heavily upon the fence; his heart was touched, and taking out a small piece of money he tossed it to the boy. The grave digger took it up, looked at it a moment in sad astonishment, put it aside and returned to his work. The office was deserted when Lyman returned. Caruthers had not hung a hope on the result of the attempted negotiations. CHAPTER IV. A FOG BETWEEN THEM. The following afternoon when Lyman went to the office, having spent the earlier hours in the court house, to assure the Judge that he had no motions to make, and no case to be passed over to the next term--he found Caruthers with his feet on the table. "Getting hot," said Caruthers. "Is it? I thought we had been playing freeze-out," Lyman replied, throwing his hat upon the table and sitting down. "Then you didn't do anything with his Royal Flush?" "Brother McElwin? No. He fenced with his astonishment until he could find words, and then he granted me the privilege to retire." "Wouldn't take a mortgage on the library?" "No; he said it wasn't worth a hundred." "But you assured him that it was." "No; I had to acknowledge that it wasn't." "You are a fool." "Yes, perhaps; but I'm not a thief." "No! But it's more respectable to be a thief than a pauper." "It is not very comforting to be both--to know that you are one and to feel that you are the other." "Lyman, that sort of doctrine may suit a long-tailed coat, a white necktie and a countenance pinched by piety, but it doesn't suit me." "It suits me," Lyman replied. "I was brought up on it. I think mother baked it in with the beans." "Watercolor nonsense!" said Caruthers. "My people were as honest as anybody, but they didn't teach me to look for the worst of it." "But didn't they teach you that without a certain moral force there can be no real and lasting achievement?"