elongated vision, and he realized sight to its uttermost.  Yet it did not dawn on him that he was in love with this girl.  He would have laughed at the idea.  He had seen her only twice; he had spoken to her only once.  He knew nothing of her except that she had given him a worthless check to cash.  Love could not come to him in this wise, and it had not, in fact.  He had only attained to the comprehension of love.  He had gotten faith, he had seen the present world and the world to come in the light of it, but not as yet his own soul.  Yet always he saw the girl’s head under the pink roses under the brim of the dark-red hat.  It was evidently a favorite headgear of hers.  She had worn it with a white dress when she had come to the store to get the check cashed.  But he had not seen her so fully then.  His little doubt and bewilderment over the check had clouded his vision.  Now, since he had seen her in the church-pew, his last thrifty scruple as to ignoring the matter of the check left him.  He felt that he could not put his doubt of her father to the proof.  Suppose that the account had not been carelessly overdrawn—­ Suppose—­ He never for one instant suspected the girl.  As soon suspect a rosebud of foregoing its own sweet personality, and of being in reality something else, say a stinging nettle.  The girl carried her patent royal of youth and innocence on her face.  He made up his mind to say nothing about the check, to lose the ten dollars, and, since dollars were so far from plenty with him, to sacrifice some luxury for the luxury of the loss.  He made up his mind that he could very well do without the book with colored plates of South American butterflies which he had thought of purchasing.  Much better live without that than rub the bloom off a better than butterfly’s wing.  Better anything than disturb that look of innocent ignorance on that girl’s little face.

Chapter VI

It was the next day that Randolph Anderson, on his way home at noon, saw ahead of him, just as he turned the corner from Main to Elm street, where his own house was, a knot of boys engaged in what he at first thought was a fight or its preliminaries.  There was a great clamor, too.  In the boughs of a maple in the near-by yard were two robins wrangling; underneath were the boys.  The air was full of the sweet jangle of birds and boyish trebles, for all the boys were young.  Anderson, as he came up, glanced indifferently at the turbulent group and saw one boy who seemed to be the centre of contention.  He was backed up against the fence, an ornate iron affair backed by a thick hedge, the green leaves of which pricked through the slender iron uprights.  In front of this green, iron-grated wall, which was higher than his head, for he was a little fellow, stood a boy, who Anderson saw at a glance was the same one whom he had seen with the Carrolls in church the day before.  His hair was rather long and a toss of