He was awakened by the unaccustomed silence. As he lay with his eyes open, his first thought was that all things had stopped--the world had come to its end. Then remembrance came, and he stretched in lazy enjoyment of the stillness and the soft feather bed upon which he had slept. Finding himself too wide awake for more sleep, he went over to the little gable window and looked out. The unfermented wine of another spring day came to his eager nostrils. The little ball had made another turn. Its cheek was coming once more into the light. Already the east was flushing with a wondrous vague pink. The little animals in the city over there, he thought, would soon be tumbling out of their beds to begin another of their funny, serious days of trial and failure; to make ready for another night of forgetfulness, when their absurd little ant-hill should turn again away from the big blazing star. He sat a long time at the window, looking out to the east, where the light was showing; meditating on many idle, little matters, but conscious all the time of great power within himself. He felt ready now for any conflict. The need for some great immediate action pressed upon him. He did not identify it. Something he must do--he must have action--and that at once. He was glad to think how Uncle Peter would begin to rejoice in him--secretly at first, and then to praise him. He was equal to any work. He could not begin it quickly enough. That queer need to do something at once was still pressing, still unidentified. By five he was down-stairs. The girl, fresh as a dew-sprayed rose in the garden outside, brought him breakfast of fruit, bacon and eggs, coffee and waffles. He ate with relish, delighting meantime in the girl's florid freshness, and even in the assertive, triumphant whistle of the youth busy at his tasks outside. When he set out he meant to reach the car and go back to town at once. Yet when he came to the road over which he had loitered the day before, he turned off upon it with slower steps. There was a confusing whirl of ideas in his brain, a chaos that required all his energy to feed it, so that the spring went from his step.