“I think I have told you fairly often that I do not like you to be late for your meals?” “Yes, sir,” assented Gordon wearily. “Exactly. It is now—hm—nearly eight o’clock. I think you had better go up to your room. You don’t deserve supper at this hour. And—hm—after this kindly give a little consideration to my wishes.” “Yes, sir.” Gordon wanted to tell him what had happened, but he was frightfully tired and the thought of getting upstairs and into his bed was very alluring. Mr. Merrick showed that the conversation was at an end by again hiding his face behind the newspaper and Gordon went indoors and quietly climbed the stairs, rather hoping that his mother would not hear him. But she did, and came out of her room with the secrecy of a conspirator. “Gordon, dear,” she whispered, “your father was very angry and said you were to have no supper, but I put a little something on a plate for you. It’s on your bureau. You shouldn’t stay out like this, though, dear. Your father doesn’t like it and—and it makes me worried, too.” “Yes’m, I won’t again,” replied Gordon. “I—I’m not very hungry, though. I’m going to bed.” “Aren’t you—don’t you feel well?” inquired Mrs. Merrick anxiously. “Yes’m, I’m all right. I just feel sort of tired. Good-night.” He kissed her and went on up the second flight. Half-way up, though, he paused and called down in a hoarse whisper: “Thanks for the eats, ma!” In spite of his weariness, sleep didn’t come readily. It was a hot, still night and, although his bed was drawn close to the two windows that looked out into the upper branches of the big elm, not much air penetrated to his room. He lay for a while staring out at the motionless leaves, intensely black in shadow and vividly green where the light from the big arc on the corner illumined them, reviewing the incidents of the day. He was awfully glad that Morris wasn’t dangerously hurt, grateful for his own escape from injury and sorry that Morris would have to lie abed for many weeks while his broken leg knit together again. Finally he dozed off only to awake in a terror, imagining that he was riding in an automobile that was just about to plunge down a cliff so steep and deep that the bottom was miles away! He awoke shaking and muttering and it took him several seconds to reassure himself and throw off the effects of the nightmare. After that he tossed and turned until he remembered the plate on the bureau. He got up and brought it back to bed with him, and leaned on one elbow and ate a little of the cold chicken and bread-and-butter his mother had placed on it. But he wasn’t really hungry and his appetite was soon satisfied. He put the plate on the floor beside him and settled down again. A clock downstairs struck nine and a moment later the town hall clock sounded the hour sonorously. Then the telephone in the first floor hall rang sharply and he heard his father’s chair scrape on the porch and his father’s feet across the hall.