“He’ll hit the first saloon, if you don’t watch out,” Bob managed to whisper to Tally.

But the latter shook his head.  From long experience he knew the type.

His reasoning was correct.  Roaring Dick tramped doggedly down the length of the street to the little frame depot.  There he slumped into one of the hard seats in the waiting-room, where he promptly slept.  Tally sat down beside him and withdrew into himself.  The twilight fell.  After an apparently interminable interval a train rumbled in.  Tally shook his companion.  The latter awakened just long enough to stumble aboard the smoking car, where, his knees propped up, his chin on his breast, he relapsed into deep slumber.

They arrived at the boarding house late in the evening.  Mrs. Hallowell set out a cold supper, to which Bob was ready to do full justice.  Ten minutes later he found himself in a tiny box of a bedroom, furnished barely.  He pushed open the window and propped it up with a piece of kindling.  The earth had fallen into a very narrow silhouette, and the star-filled heavens usurped all space, crowding the world down.  Against the sky the outlines stood significant in what they suggested and concealed—­slumbering roof-tops, the satiated mill glowing vaguely somewhere from her banked fires, the blackness and mass of silent lumber yards, the mysterious, hushing fingers of the ships’ masts, and then low and vague, like a narrow strip of velvet dividing these men’s affairs from the star-strewn infinite, the wilderness.  As Bob leaned from the window the bigness of these things rushed into his office-starved spirit as air into a vacuum.  The cold of the lake breeze entered his lungs.  He drew a deep breath of it.  For the first time in his short business experience he looked forward eagerly to the morrow.

VIII

Bob was awakened before daylight by the unholy shriek of a great whistle.  He then realized that for some time he had been vaguely aware of kindling and stove sounds.  The bare little room had become bitterly cold.  A gray-blackness represented the world outside.  He lighted his glass lamp and took a hasty, shivering sponge bath in the crockery basin.  Then he felt better in the answering glow of his healthy, straight young body; and a few moments later was prepared to enjoy a fragrant, new-lit, somewhat smoky fire in the big stove outside his door.  The bell rang.  Men knocked ashes from their pipes and arose; other men stamped in from outside.  The dining room was filled.

Bob took his seat, nodding to the men.  A slightly grumpy silence reigned.  Collins and Fox had not yet appeared.  Bob saw Roaring Dick at the other table, rather whiter than the day before, but carrying himself boldly in spite of his poor head.  As he looked, Roaring Dick caught his eye.  The riverman evidently did not recognize having seen the young stranger the day before; but Bob was again conscious