"Do you know, the finest days, the ripping ones, were those back in the old school, when I used to be carried off the field on the shoulders of a mob. That was something real! I loved it! We used to sing about shedding our blood, and all that funny rot, for the glory of the red and black--and I believed it, too. Lord bless that queer cuss. Good days! I used to play the game like a raging little devil, ready to fling my life away! The Lindaberry boys--they haven't forgot us yet! It was so at college, only not quite the same. But at school, four hundred fellows, and to be king! Ambition? I was chock-full of it then. But they took it away from me! That's what knocked me out! And who did it? The one who loved us best--the governor! "Out of college, forty thousand a year, and told to have a good time! Put that down for my epitaph! The dad, poor old fellow, didn't know any better! He'd worked like a pirate; said he'd never been young; wanted us to live! Forty thousand a year each, and let her go! I remember the day we started, with a whoop! Wonder is, we lasted a year! Tom, the young one, didn't!" "Dead?" "To the world, yes; asylum. Killed the governor. He tried to stop us, but it was too late! Now the race is between Jock and me. My lord, if they'd only packed us off--started us in a construction gang, anywhere, temperature a hundred in the shade--might have owned a state to-day! Remember what I said about the feeling you get out here alone--the awaking into something new? If Jock would go, I'd cut to-morrow--ship before the mast, and God take the rudder! He won't. But, by jove, to get into a new life, a new chance! You'll understand--or, no. I hope you never will!" She could see but a faint blurred mass at her side. Under the goblin shadows of autumn trees, a brook sunk in the field told its hidden story to piping crickets and rovers of the night. She felt in her a great need of compassion, a yearning emptiness in her arms, a desire to lay her comforting touch across his eyes, as once she had put into slumberland the tear-stained cheeks of Snyder's little child. No other sentiment came to mingle with this pure stream of maternal longing; but all about her and all within her so impelled her to follow the instinct of the ages that she drew back with a sigh. "Here! Don't do that for me!" he said, straightening up ashamed. She could not tell him what in her had called forth that sigh, so she said hurriedly: "No, no. Then, of course, there was a woman?"