in the cars. At Port Lenox he waited an hour for the down train on the main line, striding up and down the platform like a caged animal. When he left the car at Fisher’s Eddy, the short winter day was already at its close, and the summit of the hill range, through which the gap wound its sinuous way, was already all but indistinguishable against the western sky. He started across the street toward a livery stable to get a horse and sleigh, but, changing his mind suddenly, he struck out along the middle of the roadway toward the hillside. The thought of waiting for a team to be ready, of forcing a tired horse up the hill through the heavy snow, was too much for his nearly exhausted patience. Many and many a time, in other days, he had walked the road from Fisher’s Eddy to the Pickett’s Gap homestead in time that would have done credit to the best horse in Meredith County. He felt that he could do it to-night. Moreover he knew that he needed the exercise in order to work off, if possible, some of the surplus energy with which his veins and muscles were charged. Perhaps, when he arrived at his destination, he might not be so impetuous, he might be more considerate, more gentle, more patient under the provocation which was sure to come, more cautiously firm in his just demands. When he reached the place where his survey terminated, on that eventful September night, he stopped for a moment and looked down through the darkness to the twinkling lights of Fisher’s Eddy as he had looked that night. Then, pushing on through the snow-burdened glen, he recalled, as he walked, every word and tone and look of the boy who was his unwilling companion on that former journey; how they noted the location of the curve; how they halted at the graveyard; how they said good-by at the gate.