Through the open door he could see Mr. Boner hunched up over his desk and as he watched, that gentleman suddenly plunged his head in a ducking motion toward the cuspidor on the floor and just as quickly bent down again over the desk. Like fire-flashes of consciousness all these things were. These were things going on outside of him. There was a world moving on outside of him, a world that took little count of the creatures in its path. All this--all this about him--was like a bit of stale, flat, slightly greenish backwater--the big wheels churning away just beyond and paying it no attention, letting it grow staler and staler. Some day there would come a change--as though the miller had opened up another sluice--and a few vigorous splashings and all would be changed even here. He viewed it speculatively, as one outside it all. He suddenly felt that for him it was all over. And he went into Mr. Boner's office. Mr. Boner looked up sidewise. "I've had a 'phone call from home." Mr. Boner's eyes rolled slightly, showing the whites. "There's some trouble there. I'll have to go." A moment's pause. Mr. Boner cleared his throat. "All right," he said. And then he bent back over his work. He went and got his hat. With his hand on the swinging door he paused and looked back. Not a head was raised. In the air there hovered a droning, a rustling. It was like a vast, drowsy, slothful thing, ignorant, dull, hateful. He pulled open the door. And then he left it. Three hours later he was standing in the "Golden Rule" at Bloomfield. Before him was a glass counter wherein were displayed knives and cleavers and scissors and other cutlery. Above the counter, peering at him rather anxiously over steel-rimmed spectacles, were the head and shoulders of Mr. Burrus. Burrus! It had come to him on the train. That was the name he had not caught. Burrus! Who else? "And you say that the last time you saw him was when he got into his buggy and drove away--last night? What makes you think he's gone away?" Mr. Burrus had been thoughtfully eyeing his stock of knives through the case and as Joe finished he cast a quick, sidewise glance up at him. Joe caught the flicker of it through the spectacles. "Well," he began, and hesitated a little, "it's what I woulda done--under the circumstances." Mr. Burrus' manner, usually so brisk and business-like, seemed suddenly to have changed. He scratched his head with a long and bony finger and looked up again at Joe. What he saw seemed not to reassure him, for Joe had all of a sudden grown beyond Bloomfield's conception of him. He towered above the cutlery case--seemed to fill out his clothes. There was a set look about his mouth and a steadiness about his eyes. Mr. Burrus paused again. "Circumstances?" said Joe. "Under what circumstances?"