PART II

After the two weeks’ rest which he thought he needed, and consequently promised himself, Halliday began to look about him for some means of making a start for that success in life which he felt so sure of winning.

With this end in view he returned to the town where he was born.  He had settled upon the law as a profession, and had studied it for a year or two while at college.  He would go back to Broughton now to pursue his studies, but of course, he needed money.  No difficulty, however, presented itself in the getting of this for he knew several fellows who had been able to go into offices, and by collecting and similar duties make something while they studied.  Webb Davis would have said, “but they were white,” but Halliday knew what his own reply would have been:  “What a white man can do, I can do.”

Even if he could not go to studying at once, he could go to work and save enough money to go on with his course in a year or two.  He had lots of time before him, and he only needed a little start.  What better place then, to go to than Broughton, where he had first seen the light?  Broughton, that had known him, boy and man.  Broughton that had watched him through the common school and the high school, and had seen him go off to college with some pride and a good deal of curiosity.  For even in middle west towns of such a size, that is, between seventy and eighty thousand souls, a “smart negro” was still a freak.

So Halliday went back home because the people knew him there and would respect his struggles and encourage his ambitions.

He had been home two days, and the old town had begun to take on its remembered aspect as he wandered through the streets and along the river banks.  On this second day he was going up Main street deep in a brown study when he heard his name called by a young man who was approaching him, and saw an outstretched hand.

“Why, how de do, Bert, how are you?  Glad to see you back.  I hear you have been astonishing them up at college.”

Halliday’s reverie had been so suddenly broken into that for a moment, the young fellow’s identity wavered elusively before his mind and then it materialized, and his consciousness took hold of it.  He remembered him, not as an intimate, but as an acquaintance whom he had often met upon the football and baseball fields.

“How do you do?  It’s Bob Dickson,” he said, shaking the proffered hand, which at the mention of the name, had grown unaccountably cold in his grasp.

“Yes, I’m Mr. Dickson,” said the young man, patronizingly.  “You seem to have developed wonderfully, you hardly seem like the same Bert Halliday I used to know.”

“Yes, but I’m the same Mr. Halliday.”

“Oh—­ah—­yes,” said the young man, “well, I’m glad to have seen you.  Ah—­good-bye, Bert.”

“Good-bye, Bob.”

“Presumptuous darky!” murmured Mr. Dickson.