Once more the aging Wilbur Cowan stood alone by night thrillingly to watch the arched splendour of stars above and muse upon the fleeting years that carried off his youth. The moment marked another tremendous epoch, for he was done with school. Now for all the years to come he could hear the bell sound its warning and feel no qualm; never again need sit confined in a stuffy room, breathing chalk dust, and compel his errant mind to bookish abstractions. He had graduated from the Newbern High School, respectably if not with distinguished honour, and the superintendent had said, in conferring his rolled and neatly tied diploma, that he was facing the battle of life and must acquit himself with credit to Newbern.

The superintendent had seemed to believe it was a great moment; there had been a tremor in his voice as he addressed the class, each in turn. He was a small, nervous, intent man whose daily worries showed plainly through the uplift of the moment, and Wilbur had wondered what he found to be so thrilled about. His own battle with life—he must have gone out to the fight years ago under much the same circumstances—had apparently brought him none of the glory he was now urging his young charges to strive for. He had to stay in a schoolroom and breathe chalk dust.

Whatever the battle of life might be, he was going to fight it out-of-doors; not like imprisoned school-teachers and clerks and bookkeepers in First National banks. Only when alone under that splatter of stars did he feel the moment big with more than a mere release from textbooks. Then at last he knew that he had become a man and must put away childish things, and his mind floated on the thought, off to those distant stars where other boys had that night, perhaps unwittingly, become men.

He wished that people would not pester him with solemn questions about what he now meant to make of himself. They seemed to believe that he should be concerned about this. Winona was especially insistent. She said he stood at the parting of the ways; that all his future hung upon his making a seemly choice; and she said it gloomily, with frank foreboding, as one more than half expecting him to choose amiss.

Judge Penniman was another who warned him heavily that it was time to quit being a Jack-of-all-trades. The judge spoke as from a topless tower of achievement, relating anecdotes of his own persistence under difficulties at the beginning of a career which he allowed his hearer to infer had been of shining merit, hampered, it is true, by the most trying ill health. Even Mrs. Penniman said that they were expecting great things of him, now that he had become a man.

The boy dimly felt that there was something false in all this urgency. The superintendent of schools and Winona and the judge and Mrs. Penniman seemed to be tightly wound up with expectancy about him, yet lived their own lives not too tensely. The superintendent of schools was not inspiring as a model; the judge, for all his talk, lived a life of fat idleness, with convenient maladies when the Penniman lawn needed mowing. Mrs. Penniman, it is true, fought the battle of life steadily with her plain and fancy dressmaking, but with no visible glory; and Winona herself was becoming a drab, sedate spinster, troubled about many things. He wondered why they should all conceive him to be meant for so much more than they had achieved. Why couldn't he relax into a life such as they led, without all this talk of effort and planning? It seemed to him that people pretty much allowed life to make itself for them, and lived it as it came. He was not going to bother about it. Let it come. He would find a way to live it. People managed. Judge Penniman was never so ailing that he couldn't reach the harness shop for his game of checkers. The only person he knew who had really worked hard to make something of himself was Spike Brennon.

So he resorted to the golf links that summer, heedless and happy. "Without ideals so far as one can read him," wrote Winona in her journal, underlining the indictment and closing it with three bold exclamation points. He was welcomed effusively to the golf course by John Knox McTavish.

"Good!" said John on the morning of his appearance, which was effusive for any McTavish.

He liked the boy, not only because he drove a sweet ball, but because you could talk to him in a way you couldn't to par-r-r-rties you was teaching to hold a club proper-r-r-r and to quit callin' it a stick.

He caddied that summer only for golfers of the better sort, and for Sharon Whipple, choosing his employ with nice discrimination. John had said golf was a grand game, because more than any other game it showed how many kinds of fool a man could be betwixt his mind and his muscles. His apprentice was already sensitive to the grosser kinds. In addition to caddying he taught the secrets of the game when pupils came too plenteously for John. But he lacked John's tried patience, and for the ideal teacher was too likely to utter brutal truths instead of polite and meandering diplomacies. He had caught perhaps a bit too much of Spike Brennon's manner of instruction, a certain strained brusquerie, out of pace with people who are willing to pay largely for instruction which they ignore in spite of its monotonous repetition. John warned him that he must soften his clients—butter-r-r 'em up with nice words—or they wouldn't come back. He must say they was doing gr-r-rand. He did say it now and then, but with no ring of conviction.

Still it was a good summer. Especially good, because all the time he knew he was waiting for that morning in early September when the school bell would ring and he would laugh carelessly at what had once been the imperious summons. He thought that after this high moment he might be able to plan his life at least a little—not too minutely.

Late that summer Merle and Patricia Whipple came by appointment to play the course with him. Merle, too, had become a man—he would enter college that fall. Apparently no one was bothering about the plan of his life. And Patricia had become, if not a woman, at least less of a girl, though she was still bony and utterly freckled. They drove off, Patricia not far but straight, and Merle, after impressive preliminaries that should have intimidated any golf ball, far but not straight. After his shot he lectured instructively upon its faults. When he had done they knew why he had sliced into the miry fen on the right. Then with an expert eye he studied his brother's stance and swing. The ball of Wilbur went low and straight and far, but the shot was prefaced, apparently, by no nice adjustment of the feet or by any preliminary waggles of the club.

"No form," said Merle. "You ought to have form by this time, but you don't show any; and you put no force into your swing. Now let me show you just one little thing about your stance."

With generous enthusiasm he showed his brother not only one little thing, but two or three that should be a buckler to him in time of need; and his brother thanked him, and so authoritative was the platform manner of Merle that he nearly said "Yes, sir." After which Patricia played a brassy shot, and they all went to find Merle's ball among the oaks. After that they went on to Wilbur's ball, which—still without a trace of form—he dropped on the green with a mashie, in spite of Merle's warning that he would need a mid-iron to reach it.

They drove, and again Merle lectured upon the three reasons why his ball came to rest in a sand trap that flanked the fairway. He seemed to feel this information was expected from him, nor did he neglect a generous exposition of his brother's failure to exhibit form commensurate with his far, straight drive. His brother was this time less effusive in his thanks, and in no danger whatever of replying "Yes, sir!" He merely retorted, "Don't lunge—keep down!" advice which the lecturer received with a frowning, "I know—I know!" as if he had lunged intentionally, with a secret purpose that would some day become known, to the confusion of so-called golf experts. Wilbur and Patricia waited while Merle went to retrieve his ball. They saw repeated sand showers rise over the top of a bunker. From where they stood the player seemed to be inventing a new kind of golf, to be played without a ball. A pale mist hung over the scene.

"I know just what he's saying," Patricia told Wilbur.

"Shame on you!" said he, and they both laughed, after which Patricia glanced at him oftener.

It should be said that he was now arrayed as Winona would have him, in summer sports attire of careless but expensive appearance, including a silk shirt alleged by the maker to be snappy, and a cap of real character. The instinct of the male for noticeable plumage had at last worked the reform that not all of Winona's pleading had sufficed for. Wilbur Cowan at the moment might, but for his excellent golf, have been mistaken for a genuine Whipple.

Merle's homilies continued after each shot. He subjected his own drives to a masterly analysis, and strove to incite his brother to correct form, illustrating this for his instruction with practice swings that were marvels of nicety, and learnedly quoting Braid and Vardon.

It was after one of these informative intervals, succeeding a brilliantly topped drive by the lecturer, that Patricia Whipple, full in the flooding current of Merle's discourse, turned her speckled face aside and flagrantly winked a greenish eye at Wilbur Cowan; whereupon Wilbur Cowan winked his own left eye, that one being farthest from the speaker. The latter, having concluded his remarks for the moment, went to find his ball, and the two walked on.

"He just ought to be taken down," suggested Patricia, malevolently.

"Think so?" demanded Wilbur.

"Know so!" declared the girl. "'Tisn't only golf. He's that way about everything—telling people things—how to do it and everything. Only no one at our house dares come down on him. Harvey D. and Ella and even grandfather—they all jump through hoops for him, the cowards! I give him a jolt now and then, but I get talked to for it."

"The boy needs some golf talk—he certainly does," conceded the other.

"Too bad you're afraid to do it," Patricia said, resignedly.

She looked sadly away, then quickly back at him to see if it had taken. She thought it hadn't. He was merely looking as if he also considered it too bad. But on the next tee he astonishingly asserted himself as---comparatively—a golfing expert. He wasn't going to have this splendid brother, truly his brother for all the change of name, making a fool of himself before a girl. Full in the tide of Merle's jaunty discourse he blazed out with an authority of his own, and in tones so arrogant that the importance of the other oozed almost pitiably from him.

"Quit that! Listen! We've played ten holes, and you haven't made one clean drive, and I've got off every one clean. I make this course in seventy-three, and you'd never make it in one hundred and twenty the way you're going. But every time you stand there and tell me things about your drive and about mine as if you could really play golf."

"Well, but my dear chap—" Merle paused, trying to regain some lost spiritual value—"I'm merely telling you some little things about form."

"Forget it!" commanded the other. "You haven't any form yourself; you don't have form until you can play the game, and then you don't think about it. Maybe my form doesn't stick out, but you bet it must be tucked in there somewhere or I couldn't hit the ball. You don't want to think I haven't any just because I don't stand there and make a long speech to the ball before swatting it."

"Well, I was only saying——" Merle began again, but in meekness such as Patricia had never observed in him.

Hearing a sound in the background Wilbur turned. She was staging a pantomime of excessive delight, noiselessly clapping her thin brown hands. He frowned at her—he was not going to have any girl laughing at his brother—and returned his attention to the late exponent of Braid and Vardon.

"Here"—he teed a ball—"you do about every wrong thing you could. You don't overlook a single one. Now I'll show you. Take your stance, address the ball!"

He had forgotten, in the heat of his real affection, all the difference in their stations. He was talking crisply to this Whipple as if he were merely a Cowan twin. Merle, silent, dazed, meek, did as he was directed.

"Now take your back swing slower. You've been going up too quick—go up slow—stay there! Wait—bend that left wrist under your club—not out but under—here"—he adjusted the limp wrist. "Now keep your weight on the left foot and come down easy. Don't try to knock the ball a mile—it can't be done. Now up again and swing—easy!"

Merle swung and the topped ball went a dozen feet.

"There, now I suppose you're satisfied!" he said, sulkily, but his instructor was not, it seemed, satisfied.

"Don't be silly! You lifted your head. You have to do more than one thing right to hit that ball. You have to stay down to it. Here"—he teed another ball—"take your stance and see if you can't keep down. I'll hold you down." In front of the player he grasped his own driver and rested it lightly upon the other's head. "Just think that club weighs a hundred pounds, and you couldn't lift your head if you wanted to. Now swing again, turn the left wrist under, swing easy—there!"

They watched the ball go high and straight, even if not far.

"A Texas leaguer," said Wilbur, "but it's all right. It's the first time this afternoon you've stayed in the fairway. Now again!"

He teed another ball, and the threesomes had become a mere golf lesson, plus a clash of personalities. Wilbur Cowan did all the talking; he was grim, steely eyed, imperious. His splendid brother was mute and submissive, after a few feeble essays at assertion that were brutally stifled. Patricia danced disrespectfully in the background when neither brother observed her. She had no wish to incur again the tightly drawn scowl of Wilbur. The venom of that had made her uncomfortable.

"See now how you hit 'em out when you do what I tell you!" said the instructor at last, when Merle had a dozen clean drives to his credit. But the sun had fallen low and the lesson must end.

"Awfully obliged, old chap—thanks a heap!" said Merle, recovering slightly from his abjectness. "I dare say I shall be able to smack the little pill after this."

The old chap hurled a last grenade.

"You won't if you keep thinking about form," he warned. "Best way to forget that—quit talking so much about it. After you make a shot, keep still, or talk to yourself."

"Awfully good of you," Merle responded, graciously, for he was no longer swinging at a ball, but merely walking back to the clubhouse, where one man was as good as another. "There may be something in what you say."

"There is," said Wilbur.

He waved them a curt farewell as they entered the latest Whipple car.

"But, you know, the poor kid after all hasn't any form," the convalescent Merle announced to Patricia when they were seated.

"He has nice hair and teeth," said the girl, looking far ahead as the car moved off.

"Oh, hair—teeth!" murmured Merle, loftily careless, as one possessing hair and teeth of his own. "I'm talking about golf."

"He lines 'em out," said Patricia, cattishly.

"Too much like a professional." Merle lifted a hand from the wheel to wave deprecation. "That's what the poor kid gets for hanging about that clubhouse all the time."

"The poor kid!" murmured Patricia. "I never noticed him much before."

"Beastly overbearing sort of chap," said Merle.

"Isn't he?" said Patricia. "I couldn't help but notice that." She shifted her eyes sidewise at Merle. "I do wish some of the folks could have been there," she added, listlessly.

"Is that so?" he demanded, remembering then that this girl was never to be trusted, even in moods seemingly honeyed. He spurted the new roadster in rank defiance of Newbern's lately enacted ordinance regulating the speed of motor vehicles.

Yet the night must have brought him counsel, for he appeared the next afternoon—though without Patricia—to beseech further instruction from the competent brother. He did this rather humbly for one of his station.

"I know my game must be pretty rotten," he said. "Maybe you can show me one or two more little things."

"I'll show you the same old things over again," said Wilbur, overjoyed at this friendly advance, and forthwith he did.

For a week they played the course together, not only to the betterment of Merle's technic, but to the promotion of a real friendliness between this Whipple and a mere Cowan. They became as brothers again, seeming to have leaped the span of years during which they had been alien. During those years Wilbur had kept secret his pride in his brother, his exultation that Merle should have been called for this high eminence and not found wanting. There had been no one to whom he could reveal it, except to Winona, perhaps in little flashes. Now that they were alone in a curious renewal of their old intimacy, he permitted it to shine forth in all its fullness, and Merle became pleasantly aware that this sharp-speaking brother—where golf was concerned—felt for him something much like worship. The glow warmed them both as they loitered over the course, stopping at leisure to recall ancient happenings of their boyhood together. Far apart now in their points of view, the expensively nurtured Merle, and Wilbur, who had grown as he would, whose education was of the street and the open, they found a common ground and rejoiced in their contact.

"I don't understand why we haven't seen more of each other all these years," said Merle on a late day of this renewed companionship. "Of course I've been away a lot—school and trips and all that."

"And I'm still a small-towner," said Wilbur, though delightedly. It was worth being a small-towner to have a brother so splendid.

"We must see a lot of each other from now on," insisted Merle. "We must get together this way every time I come back."

"We must," said Wilbur. "I hope we do, anyway," he added, reflecting that this would be one of those things too good to come true.

"What I don't understand," went on Merle, "you haven't had the advantages I have, not gone off to school or met lots of people, as I'm always doing, not seen the world, you know, but you seem so much older than I am. I guess you seem at least ten years older."

"Well, I don't know." Wilbur pondered this. "You do seem younger some way. Maybe a small town makes people old quicker, knocking round one the way I have, bumping up against things here and there. I don't know at all. Sharon Whipple says the whole world is made up mostly of small towns; if you know one through and through you come pretty near knowing the world. Maybe that's just his talk."

"Surly old beggar. Somehow I never hit it off well with him. Too sarcastic, thinking he's funny all the time; uncouth, too."

"Well, perhaps so." Wilbur was willing to let this go. He did not consider Sharon Whipple surly or uncouth or sarcastic, but he was not going to dispute with this curiously restored brother. "Try a brassy on that," he suggested, to drop the character of Sharon Whipple.

Merle tried the brassy, and they played out the hole. Merle made an eight.

"I should have had a six at most," he protested, "after that lovely long brassy shot."

Wilbur grinned.

"John McTavish says the should-have-had score for this course is a mar-r-rvel. He says if these people could count their should-have-hads they'd all be playing under par. He's got a wicked tongue, that John."

"Well, anyway," insisted Merle, "you should have had a four, because you were talking to me when you flubbed that approach shot; that cost you a couple."

"John says the cards should have another column added to write in excuses; after each hole you could put down just why you didn't get it in two less. He says that would be gr-r-r-and f'r th' dubs."

"The hole is four hundred and eighty yards, and you were thirty yards from the green in two," said Merle. "You should have had—"

"I guess I should have had what I got. Sharon Whipple says that's the way with a lot of people in this life—make fine starts, and then flub their short game, fall down on easy putts and all that, after they get on the lawn. He calls the fair greens lawns."

"Awful old liar when he counts his own score," said Merle. "I played with him just once."

Wilbur grinned again. He would cheerfully permit this one slander of his friend.

"You certainly can't trust him out of sight in a sand trap," he conceded. "You'll say, 'How many, Mr. Whipple?' and he'll say, 'Well, let me see—eight and a short tote—that's it, eight and a tote.' He means that he made eight, or about eight, by lifting it from the rough about ten feet on to the fairway."

"Rotten sportsmanship," declared Merle.

"No, no, he's a good sport, all right! He'd expect you to do the same, or tee up a little bit for a mid-iron shot. He says he won't read the rules, because they're too fine print. I like the old boy a lot," he concluded, firmly. He wanted no misunderstanding about that, even if Merle should esteem him less for it.

They drove from the next tee. One hundred and fifty yards ahead the fairway was intersected by a ditch. It was deep, and its cruel maw yawned hungrily for golf balls. These it was fed in abundance daily.

"Rottenly placed, that ditch!" complained Merle as he prepared to drive.

"Only because you think so," replied his brother. "Forget it's there, and you'll carry it every time. That's what Sharon Whipple does. It's what they call psychology. It's a mental hazard. Sharon Whipple says that's another thing about golf that's like real life. He says most all things that scare us are just mental hazards."

"Stuff!" said Merle. "Stuffy stuffness! The ditch is there, isn't it, psychology or no psychology? You might ignore a hungry tiger, but calling him a mental hazard wouldn't stop him from eating you, would it? Sharon Whipple makes me tired." He placed a drive neatly in the ditch. "There!" he exploded, triumphantly. "I guess that shows you what the old gas bag knows about it."

"Oh, you'll soon learn to carry that hole!" his brother soothed. "Now let's see what you can do with that niblick." He grinned again as they went on to the ditch. "Sharon Whipple calls his niblick his 'gitter'." Merle, however, would not join in the grin. Sharon Whipple still made him tired.

In the course of their desultory playing they discussed the other Whipples.

"Of course they're awfully fond of me," said Merle.

"Of course," said Wilbur.

"I guess Harvey D.—Father—would give me anything in the world I asked for, ever since I was a kid. Horses, dogs, guns, motor cars—notice the swell little roadster I'm driving? Birthday! You'd almost think he looks up to me. Says he expects great things of me."

"Why wouldn't he?" demanded the other.

"Oh, of course, of course!" Merle waved this aside. "And Grandfather Gideon, he's an old brick. College man himself—class of sixty-five. Think of that, way back in the last century! Sharon Whipple never got to college. Ran off to fight in the Civil War or something. That's why he's so countrified, I s'pose. You take Gideon now—he's a gentleman. Any one could see that. Not like Sharon. Polished old boy you'd meet in a club. And Mrs. Harvey D.—Mother—say, she can't do enough for me! Bores me stiff lots of times about whether I'm not going to be sick or something. And money—Lord! I'm supposed to have an allowance, but they all hand me money and tell me not to say anything about it to the others. Of course I don't. And Harvey D. himself—he tries to let on he's very strict about the allowance, then he'll pretend he didn't pay me the last quarter and hand me two quarters at once. He knows he's a liar, and he knows I know it, too. I guess I couldn't have fallen in with a nicer bunch. Even that funny daughter of Sharon's, Cousin Juliana, she warms up now and then—slips me a couple of twenties or so. You should have seen the hit I made at prep! Fellows there owe me money now that I bet I never do get paid back. But no matter, of course."

"That Juliana always makes me kind of shiver," admitted Wilbur. "She looks so kind of—well, kind of lemonish."

"She's all of that, that old girl. She's the only one I never do get close to. Soured old maid, I guess. Looks at you a lot, but doesn't say much, like she was sizing you up. That nose of hers certainly does stand out like a peak or something. You wouldn't think it, either, but she reads poetry—mushiest kind—awful stuff. Say, I looked into a book of hers one day over at the Old Place—Something-or-Other Love Lyrics was the title—murder! I caught two or three things—talk about raw stuff—you know, fellows and girls and all that! What she gets out of it beats me, with that frozen face of hers."

A little later he portrayed the character of Patricia Whipple in terms that would have incensed her but that moved Wilbur to little but mild interest.

"You never know when you got your thumb on that kid," he said. "She's the shifty one, all right. Talk along to you sweet as honey, but all the time she's watching for some chance to throw the harpoon into you. Venomous—regular vixen. No sense of humour—laughs at almost anything a fellow says or does. Trim you in a minute with that tongue of hers. And mushy! Reads stories about a young girl falling in love with strange men that come along when her car busts down on a lonely road. Got that bug now. Drives round a whole lot all alone looking for the car to go blooey and a lovely stranger to happen along and fix it for her that turns out to be a duke or something in disguise. Sickening!

"Two years ago she got confidential one night and told me she was going to Italy some day and get carried off to a cave by a handsome bandit in spite of her struggles. Yes, she would struggle—not! Talk about mental hazards, she's one, all right! She'll make it lively for that family some day. With Harvey D. depending on me a lot, I'm expecting to have no end of trouble with her when she gets to going good. Of course she's only a kid now, but you can plot her curve easy. One of these kind that'll say one thing and mean another. And wild? Like that time when she started to run off and found us in the graveyard---remember?"

They laughed about this, rehearsing that far-off day with its vicissitudes and sudden fall of wealth.

"That was the first day the Whipples noticed me," said Merle. "I made such a good impression on them they decided to take me."

At another time they talked of their future. Wilbur was hazy about his own. He was going to wait and see. Merle was happily definite.

"I'll tell you," said he when they had played out the last hole one day, "it's like this. I feel the need to express my best thoughts in writing, so I've decided to become a great writer—you know, take up literature. I don't mean poetry or muck of that sort—serious literature. Of course Harvey D. talks about my taking charge of the Whipple interests, but I'll work him round. Big writers are somebody—not bankers and things like that. You could be the biggest kind of a banker, and people would never know it or think much about it. Writers are different. They get all kinds of notice. I don't know just what branch of writing I'll take up first, but I'll find out at college. Anyway, not mucky stories about a handsome stranger coming along just because a girl's car busts down. I'll pick out something dignified, you bet!"

"I bet you will," said his admiring brother. "I bet you'll get a lot of notice."

"Oh"—Merle waved an assenting hand—"naturally, after I get started good."