“Perfectly—and disquietingly. I am to understand that if you give a man a demand note he may drop in on you casually whenever the notion seizes him and make you—er—in the undignified language of the soap salesman, come across? Is that it?” Mr. Grierson nodded, frowned, peered anxiously at his ledger as if he feared a figure or two might sneak away from him while his attention was distracted. “Can you say anything cheerful about one of them?” Jim persisted. “The only cheerful thing about a demand note, Mr. Ashe, is to know you are able to pay it whenever it turns up—which most people are not.” “That,” said Jim, “is an observation made from great depths of wisdom.” “I hope, Mr. Ashe, you have not been making any demand paper.” “Your hope is vain, Grierson. The thing is done. The sword is suspended over my head. I am now speculating on the possibility of certain gentlemen cutting the hair that holds it.” He went back to his desk again with the intention of boring into the inwardness of the situation, but, strangely, his mind showed a disposition to wander. It skipped offishly away from demand notes and speculations regarding Michael Moran; was drawn again and again where Jim did not want it to go—and where it would not be welcome. Of the latter he was sure. For it was Marie Ducharme who obtruded and elbowed aside more serious matters. Jim moved to the Widow Stickney’s that night. He wondered how Miss Ducharme would regard his coming. Doubtless it would not decrease the ill will she felt toward him. Doubtless she would regard it as an impertinent intrusion. What did it matter how she regarded it? He said that to himself, but somehow he could not quite convince himself that he said it with all sincerity. CHAPTER VII The rural individual, riding for the first time on a descending elevator, experiences a sensation that leads to a fixed preference for stairs. It is a peculiar sensation. It may be reproduced in less degree psychologically. For instance, the boy on his way to the woodshed with his father and a razor-strop knows it; the young man about to announce to her father his ambition to become a son-in-law is acquainted with it. It comes to many people as they approach the unknown, the dreaded, the long-sought-after. It is a mingling of excitement, apprehension, anticipation, and the three of them do not mingle in peace. They seem, indeed, to have a most lively and troublesome time of it in the region known as the pit of the stomach.