"Ye'll consider it settled that I'm nadin' a tin days' vacation right away, an' must have it." "I can't do it, O'Meara; that's it. I would not give you your place again, and I won't pay you a cent of this quarter's salary." Judson's foolish temper was always his undoing. "You say you won't?" O'mie asked with a smile. "No, I won't. Hereafter you may beg your way or starve!" Judson fairly shouted. "Excuse me, Mr. Amos Judson, but I'm not to thim straits yit. Not yit. I've a little bank account an' a good name at Cris Mead's bank. Most as good as yours." The shot went home. Judson had but recently failed to get the bank's backing in a business dealing he had hoped to carry through on loans, and it had cut his vanity deeply. "Good-bye, Amos, I'll be back, but not any sooner than ye nade me," and he was gone. The next day Dever the stage driver told us O'mie was going up to Wyandotte on business. "Whose business?" I asked. "He doesn't know a soul in Wyandotte, except Tell and Jim, who were working up there the last I knew. Tell may be in Fort Scott now. Whose business was it?" "That's what I asked him," Dever answered with a grin, "and he said, his own." Whatever it was, O'mie was back again before the end of the week. But he idled about for the full ten days, until Judson grew frantic. The store could not be managed without him, and it was gratifying to O'mie's mischievous spirit to be solicited with pledge and courtesy to take his place again. After O'mie had left me in the courthouse yard, the evening after the party, I stopped on my way home to see Marjie a moment. She had gone with the Meads out to Red Range, her mother said, and might not be back till late, possibly not till to-morrow. Judson was sitting in the room when I came to the door. I had no especial reason to think Mrs. Whately was confused by my coming. She was always kind to everybody. But somehow the gray shadows of the clouded moon of the night before were chilling me still, and I was bitterly disappointed at missing my loved one's face in her home. It seemed ages since I had had her to myself; not since the night before my trip to Topeka. I stopped long enough to visit the "Rockport" letter-box for the answer to my letter I knew she would leave before she went out of town. There was no letter there. My heart grew heavy with a weight that was not to lift again for many a long day. Up on the street I met Dr. Hemingway. His kind eyes seemed to penetrate to my very soul. "Good-evening, Philip," he said pleasantly, grasping my hand with a firm pressure. "Your face isn't often clouded." I tried to look cheerful. "Oh, it's just the weather and some loss of sleep. Kansas Augusts are pretty trying." "They should not be to a young man," he replied. "All weathers suit us if we are at peace within. That's where the storm really begins." "Maybe so," I said. "But I'm all right, inside and out."