“You are a ridiculous boy, Noll,” she said. Noll held her out at arms’ length and looked at her keenly: “What _are_ you sniffing about, Julia? Anyone been annoying you?” Caroline had stolen back to the room. She walked over to Julia and put her hand on her shoulder: “It’s all right, Julia,” she said gently--“no one will be any the worse for it. It’s always darkest before the dawn.” “Of course,” said the boy Noll, straddling his legs and peering at the coming years--“every great man begins in an attic.” CHAPTER IV _Wherein it would appear that the most respectable Stucco Architecture may be but a Screen for Gnawing Secrets_ The boy Noll shut the door that gave on to the narrow landing from the two large attics which were now his home, pushed back the silk hat on his head, and thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets, and whistling an air, he glanced up at the skylight above him to see whether the weather held. He tramped slowly down a few steps of the top flight of carpetless stairs that proclaim the attic heights, and halted aimlessly. It was more than vaguely borne in upon him that a great change had come over his life since, a month ago, he had taken down his prints from the walls of his empty home, and, with them tucked in a bundle under his arm, had walked into the twilight, trudging it on foot after the cart that contained the few pieces of furniture and such belongings as had not been sold, and, at the solemn journey’s end, skipping up three or four whitened steps, had entered the doors of this stucco well-to-do house that was let in apartments, standing, one of a row of like houses, glued together along the length of a long winding street--a “street with a good address,” the advertisement had it. The cushioned and unthinking ease of childhood was gone, buried in that empty house he had left behind him--the door was shut on that for ever. The rougher, hardier period of boyhood was upon him. It now came to the boy, who had never even wondered where everything came from, that each such everything had always had to be won by the sweat of toil. He had wondered more than once why that for which he had asked had sometimes been refused. But he now realized that the lucky-bag from which childhood gets all it wants was empty--sold at a tap of the hammer with the other things in that dead house, by an auctioneer fellow--gone--vanished. He tramped down some half-dozen bare board steps that resounded to his boots, and halted again.