In the morning Utterly continued the search which was the chief object of his visit to Waltonville. Passing the house of Dr. Green soon after breakfast, he beheld that gentleman sitting inside his window. Dr. Green looked up absent-mindedly and bowed. Utterly stopped short.

"I have had an amusing time hunting for my Basil Everman," said he in his high, clear voice.

Dr. Green laid his paper on his knee and looked over his spectacles.

"Did you find him?"

"I found he was Mrs. Lister's brother, but not much more. They seem singularly averse to answering questions about him, to say nothing of offering any information."

"Possibly there isn't anything to offer," said Dr. Green, returning to his paper.

Thus dismissed, Utterly departed, having taken a long and astonished stare into Dr. Green's chaotic office, and having decided that he never saw a spot better suited to the harboring of germs.

Now he sought the cemetery beside the college church, and there gave expression to a "By Jove!" The building copied exactly the old Colonial church first built on that spot, and was as beautiful in proportions and design as any Colonial building he had ever seen. Still looking up, he walked round it, gazing at the tall steeple with its fine lantern and at the high, narrow windows with their delicate, diamond-patterned old glass. Then with another "By Jove!" he began to search for the family plot of the Evermans.

Without difficulty he found the place where Richard Everman and his wife lay side by side under heavy slabs of marble. Of their son Basil there was no memorial. For a while he wandered about reading names and inscriptions, then, shaking his head in strong disapproval of death and all its emblems, he passed through the gate once more and out to the street. He decided that he would wander about and steep himself in Waltonville's primitive atmosphere. He grew more and more baffled and angry, and more certain that information was being kept from him. Descriptive sentences formed themselves tantalizingly in his mind. "Here in this quiet spot, surrounded by quiet influences, belonging to the family of a clergyman, growing up under the shadow of the old church, was developing one of the most somber geniuses to which our nation has given birth." Until noon, still constructing sentences, he wandered unhappily.

In the afternoon he returned to the Listers' for his magazines. Again Dr. Lister sat on the porch; Utterly said to himself angrily that his manner was as stolid as his mind was stupid.

Dr. Lister agreed with him that Basil Everman's contributions to "Willard's Magazine" were remarkable, that they gave extraordinary promise.

"Then it is certain that Basil Everman had extraordinary experience of life, and that that experience is the property of those interested in him."

"Not necessarily." Dr. Lister reversed the position of his knees as was his habit. He now made what was for him a long speech. "I have talked at length with Mrs. Lister about him. Even after these many years it is difficult for her to speak of him. There is apparently no foundation whatsoever for your supposition that he led a life in any way different from the ordinary life of a young man in this community. He was an omnivorous reader, and, I gather, a reader of most careful taste. It is my judgment that any one who carried about with him volumes of Euripides and Æschylus did not—"

"Did he do that?" Utterly took out his notebook.

"—Did not need any personal experience with the strange contrarieties of the human mind or the strange twists of fate in order to write either 'Roses of PÆstum' or 'Bitter Bread.' I am sorry for your disappointment, Mr. Utterly, but there really is nothing beside the simple facts which we have told you. If there were any possibility of establishing a posthumous fame for Basil, surely an affectionate sister would be the last to withhold information leading to such a result! I think—if you will allow a much older man to express an opinion—I think you are building upon entirely false premises. The constructive power of the human imagination is greater than you are willing to believe. What deep or wide experience could this young man have had? He could not have been much over twenty when he wrote these articles. They were published—at least two were published—before he died, and then he was less than twenty-five. He must have been living here at home when they were written. He had never been away from home except for occasional visits to Baltimore. His ability to imagine the heat, the blue sky, the loneliness of PÆstum without ever having been to Italy is proved beyond a doubt; why could he not picture the heat and the passion of the human heart of which each one of us has such conclusive proof within him?"

Utterly did not care for general speculations.

"How did he happen to die in Baltimore?" he asked.

"He happened to be there on business when he was smitten with malignant diphtheria," explained Dr. Lister again patiently. "His death occurred about the same time as that of his father. Mrs. Lister lost in a short period her father and her brother. She lost also in a sense her home, since her father's death made it necessary to call a new president to the college. She returned to this house upon her marriage. You will understand, I am sure, how gladly she would furnish you with information if it would in the slightest degree give her brother that fame for which he probably longed. You will understand also, I am sure, that your inquiry, since it is so unlikely to bear any profitable fruit, is trying to her."

"But it will be profitable."

"My dear sir, the world has moved too far and too fast for this small contribution, excellent as it is, to be of great account!" Dr. Lister spoke with politeness, but there had crept into his voice at last a note of impatience. He thought again of a nap. Mrs. Lister had accepted an invitation to Mrs. Scott's for the evening, and an evening at Mrs. Scott's was not to be endured without all possible physical and mental fortifying of one's self. He wished most earnestly that the young man would go.

"And he left nothing else?"

"Nothing."

"No notes?"

"Nothing."

Utterly bade his host farewell and went across the campus and out the gate. For a second he was convinced that his errand was a fool's errand. But "Bitter Bread" and "Roses of PÆstum" did exist—an account of their author was valuable, even if he had never written another line. Debating with himself whether he should now shake the dust of Waltonville from his feet or whether he should make another effort to shake from its stupid mind some of the recollections which in spite of all testimony to the contrary must exist, he walked back to the hotel. There, he discovered, the question had been decided for him. The four-o'clock train, which had gone, was the last train that day. He was almost as angry as he would have been if the B. & N. had arranged its schedule to try his patience and if Basil Everman had lived his brief life, had written his great works, and had died to spite him.

Then, as he turned away from questioning the landlord, he took heart once more. Above the damp, unpleasant bar with its dripping glasses, its show of tawdry bottles, hung, faded and fly-blown, the picture described in "Bitter Bread." Utterly set his lips and swung out his hands with a crack of the joints.

The Listers notwithstanding, the stolid landlord behind the bar notwithstanding, he would learn what was to be learned about Basil Everman. Even if Basil Everman had never written anything, he would still pursue his search.

At that moment he found before him and close to him a vessel of testimony more important than the old picture. This was one of the miserable sodden creatures whom he had seen in the bar-room and on the hotel porch, perhaps the most forlorn and disreputable of them all. It was afternoon; he had recovered from the morning's stupor and evening drowsiness was not yet upon him.

"You were asking yesterday about young Basil Everman," said he with a thick tongue. "I knew young Basil Everman."

Utterly's loathing of the bloated face, the soiled clutching hand, was not as keen as his pleasure.

"I was a good friend to him," said the drunkard.

Utterly drew the miserable creature across the hall to a dark little parlor where dampness and the odor of beer were only a shade less unpleasant, that same parlor where Margie Ginter had entertained her admiring friends. There he sat him down in the most comfortable chair.

"What is your name?"

"My name is Bates."

"What do you do for a living?"

Bates explained that he was a lawyer, but that business was poor and he could not really earn a living. It had not always been this way; when Basil Everman was young, things had been different, very different. He had associated with the best people then, he had had plenty of money. Now he had nothing. Contemplating his misery, Bates wept.

With leaping heart Utterly took his measure.

"I will give you five dollars if you will tell me everything you know about Basil Everman."

At this munificent offer Bates wept again and made an unsuccessful effort to stroke the hand of his benefactor, who realized that he might have purchased the commodity he was bargaining for with a quarter of a dollar.

Bates began making apologies for himself, to which Utterly listened impatiently and which he presently cut short.

"About Basil Everman," said he. "Did you know him when he was a boy?"

Bates said that he had known Basil always. Weeping he described Basil in his childhood.

"He would hold my hand, this one." He put out his hand palsied by dissipation. "I would tell him stories and stories."

"And then you knew him when he was a young man?" said Utterly briskly.

Bates blinked at him uncomprehendingly. The brief period of sobriety was passing. He was already, in anticipation, drunk upon Utterly's bounty. Then he mumbled something about a pretty girl. Utterly leaned forward, his soul crying Eureka! But the well was almost dry. Bates could only complain that Basil had got a girl away from him, that Mary Alcestis would never speak to him nowadays, and that he had had bad luck for thirty years. Utterly closed the door; he coaxed, he cajoled, he suggested. But Bates only wept or smiled in a maudlin way. Presently he began to whine for his five dollars in a loud tone, and angry, yet encouraged, Utterly gave him his easily earned fee and let him go.

Now, Utterly determined, he would shake Waltonville. He would go to Mrs. Scott's party and sit by the gilt table which he had seen through the window, and shake Waltonville well.