Wilson Jacobs sat in his study, gazing across the room at a clock. It "tick-tocked" as it always had. The minute hand slipped from notch to notch. There was nothing whatever wrong with it. It was a good clock. As he gazed at it, he recalled that in the years it had stuck to the wall there, it had never stopped; it had never varied from standard city time more than a minute or two during those years. And yet he watched the clock as though it were something strange; something uncanny; something that spelled his end. For it was, and it marked the failure of his great effort. In a few hours now that clock would show another year, for it was the night of December thirty-first. In a few hours, it would tell him, as it had told him before, that a new year had come. Yes. But this year it would tell him more. How much more? It was hard to estimate. He made no effort to do so. He had already done that in the past few days--the days he would always remember as the darkest in his life of hope. A noise in the other room came to his ears. It was a sigh. It was Constance, and he was sorry for her. Yes, Constance had hoped until the last minute that he would succeed. But he had failed.... Vainly he struggled in the great northeast, to secure those thousands to complete the amount necessary. He had gone from town to town. The people were kind; they were considerate, and they listened patiently; while he waxed eloquent and forceful in his appeal for this great purpose. He met the nicest people he had ever met--he knew that. So refined, and how much they appreciated his great cause, was shown in every town, large or small. They took him through many of the buildings. They were perfect pictures, and the management was the best. The per cent of people who could not read or write in those parts, did not include any of the native born. He had never, he recalled this now strangely, met people who were so courteous. He had been so long in Dixie, and, therefore, accustomed to the country there, that he found it hard to believe that white people could be so courteous to a Negro. True, but they held to their money. They shook their heads and pointed across the water--and he knew. He had raised less than three thousand dollars. He lacked almost twenty-five thousand of having the proper amount when he returned home. His sister met him with a kiss. She looked hopefully into his eyes at the same moment, and knew he had failed. So they had said nothing about it. Others came in as soon as they learned he had returned, and it was with a heavy heart that he told them the result. "Well," said the professor of the colored high school, "you made a brave fight, Reverend. Yes, you made a brave fight. More than ten thousand dollars in such a short time is going some. You beat Grantville by twice the amount, and did it in one-third the time."