As Milford hastened over the road that led to the Professor's house, a picture thrust itself into his mind, to shorten his stride, to make him slow. He saw the girl's hand held out to him, and he wondered why he had not dared to touch it. Surely, there was no labor mark upon it, pink and soft-looking, a hand for the pressure of love and not for work in a field. She had said that she liked him. But any one might have said that. She had said it with a frankness which showed that she had not told more than the truth. But why should she have told more than the truth? Why have had more than truth to tell? He put it all aside and strode onward toward the Professor's house. A light gleamed feebly through the mist.

He unwound the chain from about the gate-post. A dog barked. The door opened and the Professor stepped out, gowned and slippered. He seized his visitor warmly by the hand and led him into the sitting-room, dim with faded furnishings. His fingers were ink-stained, and his red hair was awry as if he had raked his head for thought. Mrs. Dolihide came into the room.

"My dear," said the Professor, "permit me to present to you, and to the humble hospitality of our home, our neighbor and my friend, Mr. Milford, the so-called mysterious, but, indeed, the plain and straightforward. Mrs. Dolihide, Mr. Milford."

She smiled pleasantly, drew back with a bow, stepped forward and held out her hand. She said that she was delighted to meet him. She had heard her husband speak of him so often. Milford breathed a new atmosphere. He saw that there was to be no allusion to the dust that was kicked up in front of the house. From the dining-room there came a stimulating sniff of coffee. A cat came in with a limber walk and stiffened herself to rub against Milford's chair.

"A fine cat," he said, stroking her.

"A marvelous animal," replied the Professor. "We have had her now going on—how long have we had her, my dear?"

"Oh, she's only been here about two weeks," his wife answered.

"Ah, I was thinking of her predecessor, a most wonderful cat, with a keen sense of propriety, never disturbing the loose ends of thought that a student suffers to lie upon his table."

Mrs. Dolihide agreed that the other cat was good enough, but that she had fits, and in his way Milford acknowledged that fits, while not necessarily arguing a want of merit, could not avoid giving an erratic cast even to most pronounced worth. This was all the Professor needed, and he forthwith launched a ship of disquisition, but when he had fully rigged it and neatly trimmed its sails, his wife broke in with the remark that the country was overrun with common people from the city. One would naturally expect noisy uncouthness, and a lack in many instances of refined reading, but—

"My dear," the Professor interrupted, "you must bear in mind that the minor summer resort is a kind of Castle Garden, with now and then a shining exception. Here we have the drudges of trade. Am I right, Mr. Milford?"

"Yes, the experiments, the hagglers and the failures."

The Professor slapped his leg. "A goodly remark, sir; upon my soul, a worthy illustration."

"And I have a good deal of fault to find with the home society," said Mrs. Dolihide. "It is jagged and raw, with a constant scuffle after the dollar—"

"The necessary dollar," observed the Professor.

"The scarce dollar," she replied.

"And therefore necessary, my dear. But you are right as to society. There are many good people here, excellent families, but the rank and file are common scratchers of the soil. But they thrive, a reproach to men of more intelligence. And now, sir," he added, turning to Milford, "upon what does success depend? Mind? Oh, no. Industry? No. What then? Temperament. Temperament is of itself a success. It—"

"Supper," said a young woman appearing in the door.

At the table Milford was presented to Miss Katherine Dolihide, slim, cold and prettyish. She might have had a respect for her father's learning, but it was evident that she held his failure in contempt. With her, a mind that gathered the trinkets of knowledge and fell short of providing luxuries for the body could not be reckoned among the virtues. Wisdom's reflected light was dimmer than an earring. She looked at Milford, and he felt that he failed to reach her mark. She gave him, he thought, the dry and narrow smile of ironic pity. She asked him if he liked the country. He answered that he did, and she remarked that it was a crude picture daubed with green. There were no old mills. She loved old mills; no country was beautiful without them. Had she seen old mills? No, she had not, but she had read of them and had found them scattered throughout the pages of art. She acknowledged after a time that the lakes were charming, the woods replete with sweet dreaming, the lanes full of a vagabond fancy, tinkers of imagination sleeping under the leaves; but without a ruined mill there could be no perfect rest for the mind. Milford knew that this was a pretense, not from any psychological reasoning, but because she was so unlike the Norwegian girl. To him there was more of conviction in silent opposites than in noisy arguments.

"I heard of you the other night over at the honey sociable," she said.

"Honey sociable?"

"Yes, honey and biscuit for the benefit of the church. Quite a unique affair, and wholly new to me, I assure you. A Mrs. Blakemore was present and spoke of you; she said it was a pity that you hadn't come to tell stories of the West. A very intelligent woman, don't you think?"

"Yes, I guess she is."

"But the most intelligent woman over there," said the Professor, "is Mrs. Goodwin."

"Over where?" his wife asked.

"Why, over at Mrs. Stuvic's."

"When did you meet her?"

"Why—er—let me see. I was passing, stepped in to get a drink of water, and was presented to the lady by Mrs. Stuvic. I didn't stay long, mind you, but long enough to discover the lady's intelligence. Mr. Milford, it may take years to discover a comet, sir, but intelligence, brighter in quality, shines out at once. Pass your cup."

"You didn't tell me you'd met her," said Mrs. Dolihide.

"Didn't I mention it? I thought I did. Speaking of this part of the country, Mr. Milford, is like discussing a new picture with old spots on it; but all great pictures were once new. Take the view, for instance, from our veranda. Nothing could be more charming. The grass land, with scattered trees, trim and graceful in their individuality, the cattle beneath them, the woods beyond, and—"

"No, you didn't mention meeting her," said Mrs. Dolihide.

"But what difference does it make, mother?" the daughter spoke up. "By this time you ought to know that he meets many intelligent persons that we never see. Stuck here all the time," she added under her breath.

"Ah," said the Professor, "man may be walking pleasantly with prosperity hooked upon his arm, talking of the deeds they are to perform in common, when up gallops misfortune on a horse, and that is the end. I was going to take my family to Europe, but there came a galloping down the road and overtook me. Since then my hands have been tied."

"When I look around," said Mrs. Dolihide, "and see ordinary people living on the best in the land, it makes me mad to think that as smart a man as the Professor—"

"My dear, like you I could question fate, but—"

"Fate nothing; I don't know what it is, but it does seem strange to me. I don't understand why a man as well educated as you are has to struggle with the world when the commonest sort of a person can buy property. I don't understand it."

"Easy enough," the Professor replied. "The commonest sort of a person may have money, and having money, buys property. Nut-shell argument, Milford," he added, slapping his hand flat upon the table.

"Failure has always been easier to understand than success," said Milford. "Failure is natural, it seems to me. It comes from the weakness of man and nothing is more natural than weakness. I am arguing from my own case, and don't mean to reflect on any one else. I have thrown away many an opportunity, but that was in keeping with my weakness."

"But I hear that you are anything but weak," said the Professor's daughter. "They call you a mystery, and a mystery is a success until it is solved."

"But an unsolved conundrum might starve to death," he replied.

"Not so long as it remained unsolved," the Professor declared. "We feed the performer till he explains the trick."

"Then I suppose Mr. Milford will not explain his trick," said the girl.

"I'd be foolish to shut off my supplies, wouldn't I?"

"Yes," she admitted, "but if you have a mystery you ought to let your friends share it."

"Ha," said the Professor, "that would mean the disposition of all the shares. But I don't see why they call my friend a mystery. A man comes into the neighborhood and goes to work. Is there anything so mysterious about that? It would be more of a mystery if he lived without work."

"Father sometimes fails to catch the atmosphere of a situation," said the girl, giving Milford a smile not so narrow and not so dry with irony. "One's appearance might have something to do with the estimate formed of him," she continued.

"The hired man marches from the east to the west and back again," said Milford. "And I am a hired man—hired by myself to do something, and I am going to do it," he added with a tightening of his face.

"But that mysterious something?" queried the girl. "What is it?"

"To make money," he answered. "Simmer it down and that's all there is to life."

In her heart she agreed with him, but she took issue. She said that there was something better than money. He asked if it were an old mill, and they laughed themselves into better acquaintance.

"It would be well to sit here," said the Professor to Milford, "but I want you to go up to my work shop with me. I wish to show you something."

As Milford arose to follow him, he thought that on the woman's face he saw a sneer at "work shop," and he felt that she and her daughter had learned to look upon it as an idle corner, full of useless lumber. The schemes of this ducking failure of a man were not of serious interest to them. His readiness to talk made him seem light of purpose, and a sigh that came from his heart might have been an unuttered word breathed upon the air, a word in excuse of his poverty.

Milford was conducted to an upper room, furnished with two chairs, a worn carpet and a table. But the Professor entered it reverently, as if it were the joss-house of hope. He turned down his light to steady the flame, placed the lamp upon the table, motioned his visitor to a chair, sat down, drew a pile of papers toward him, and said: "My dear fellow, I think I have something here that will tide me over the quarterly rapids. I believe that among these sheets lie a life insurance premium of ninety-seven dollars and forty cents. I want you to hear it, and then I will steal it forth to that woman. Now, in writing for a professional man, a physician, we will say, you must of all things employ sky-scraping terms. Medicine has no use for the simple. I wanted to start off with a cloud-capped sentence, a quotation, and here is one I found in Hazlett, referring to old Sir Thomas Brown: 'He scooped an antithesis from fabulous antiquity and raked up an epithet from the sweepings of chaos.' Isn't that a wild pigeon with the sun on its back?"

"Yes, I know, but what has it to do with an article on medicine?"

"Everything. Now let me tell you something. In a paper of this sort you must take a text, and with sophistry draw your deductions. You must never be clear. In the opinion of the world involution is depth. It takes a simple book a hundred years to become a classic. The writer has starved to death. He sleeps under marble. And who is it that is lost out there among the briars? The man who wrote the pampered fad. Yes, sir; let contemporaneous man seek to untangle your skein and you flatter him. Now, listen."

He read his paper, making alterations from time to time, marking out small words and writing in larger ones; and when he was done he looked at his visitor with a smile.

"It catches me," said Milford. "I don't know anything about it, but I'm caught all the same. Have you read it to the ladies?"

"What!" gasped the Professor. "Read it to them? They would scoff at me, not because they would catch its pretentious weakness, but because I wrote it—because I am a failure. And now, sir, do you know I begin to fall down, as the idiomatics would have it? Yes, sir, I am weakening."

"How so?"

"Why, I've hardly got the nerve to take it to that woman. She hasn't said so, but I know she wants it. When do you expect to see her again?"

"I don't know."

"Now let me see. Would you mind taking this thing along and handing it to her the next time you see her? It would be one of the greatest favors you could do me. You can explain; I'll trust you for that. It is my only recourse; my hope has been built on it, and if I fail I swear I—but I must not fail. You remember I told you that I did something once to help out the amount, something that would cause you to hate me. I will tell you what it was. It was a mean trick—dastardly—but I had to do it. A dog came to my house, a handsome dog with a brass collar. And what did I do? I sneaked that dog off and sold him for six dollars. Now you'll hate me."

"Give me the paper," said Milford, reaching for it. "Don't say another word. Give it to me. I don't know you very well as knowing men goes, but you are kind to me, and I want to put my arm around you. I said down there that money was everything. But it isn't. There's something better—to find a kinsman in the wilderness. She shall take this thing. She's got to. If she doesn't, I'll take it to her husband." He put his arm about the Professor. Tears streamed from the old man's eyes. "There, it's all right. I'll go over there now. If she won't have it, I'll take the train for town. I'm going now."

"Wait a moment," said the Professor, wiping his eyes. "I must not go down this way. Let me recover myself. You have touched my heart, and, poor withered thing, it is fluttering. Just a moment. Now we'll go."

He led the way down the stairs. "I wish you could stay longer," he said cheerily, "but you know your own affairs. My dear, Mr. Milford is going. We hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again soon. Our latch-string is out. Katherine, shake hands with Mr. Milford. I will light him out."

He stood on the veranda holding the lamp. "It is a dark night, and I wish we had a lantern. But the road is straight to your house. Good-night, and God bless you."

"They have struck up a warm friendship," said the girl.

"Astonishing," her mother replied.

The Professor put the lamp on the mantel-piece. "Is he your lost brother?" his wife asked.

"He is more than that," the Professor answered, sinking into a chair. "He is a man."