This book-keeper, whose name was William Allbright, lived in Harlem, so far up that it seemed fairly in the country, and on the second floor of a small, ancient building which, indeed, belonged to the period when Harlem was country and which remained between two modern apartment houses. The book-keeper had a half-right in a little green backyard, wherein flourished with considerable energy an aged cherry-tree, from which the tenants always fondly hoped for cherries. The cherries never materialized, but the hope was something. The book-keeper's elder sister, who kept house for him, was fond of gazing at the cherry-tree, with its scanty spread of white blossoms, and dreaming of cherries. She was the fonder because she had almost no dreams left. It is rather sad that even dreams go, as well as actualities. However, the sister seemed not to mind so very much. Very little, except the pleasure which she took in watching the cherry-tree, gave evidence that she lamented anything that she had lost or merely missed in life. In general she had an air of such utter placidity and acquiescence that it almost amounted to numbness. The book-keeper at this time of year scratched away every evening with a hoe and trowel in his half of the backyard, where he was making a tiny garden-patch. The garden represented to him, as the tree did to his sister, his one ladder by which his earthly dreams might climb higher. One night he came home and there were three green spears of corn piercing the mould, and he fairly chuckled. "The corn has come up," said he. "So it has," said his sister. A widow woman and her son, who worked in one of the great retail stores, lived down-stairs in the building. The young man, rather consequential but interested, strolled out in the backyard and surveyed the corn. The widow, who was consumptive, thrust her head and shoulders, muffled in a white shawl, out of her kitchen window into the soft spring air. "So the corn has come up," said the son, throwing himself back on his heels with a lordly air. The mother smiled dimly at the green spears from between the woolly swaths of her shawl. She coughed, and pulled the white fleece closely over her mouth and nose. Then only her eyes were visible, which looked young as they gazed at the green spears of corn. The book-keeper nodded his elderly, distinctly commonplace, and unimportant head with the motion of a conqueror who marshals armies. After all, it is something for a man to be able to call into life, even if under the force which includes him also, the new life of the spring. It is a power like that of a child in leading-strings, but still power. After the mother and son had gone away and he and his sister were still out in the cool, and the great evening star had come out and it was too dark to work any longer, for the first time he said something about the queer accounts in his books in Captain Carroll's office.