Section 1





Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads
of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to
look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of
nothingness his being has come. A young man is walking down the
street, quite casually, with an empty mind and no set purpose; he
comes to a crossing, and for no reason that he could tell he takes
the right hand turn instead of the left; and so it happens that he
encounters a blue-eyed girl, who sets his heart to beating. He meets
the girl, marries her--and she became your mother. But now, suppose
the young man had taken the left hand turn instead of the right, and
had never met the blue-eyed girl; where would you be now, and what
would have become of those qualities of mind which you consider of
importance to the world, and those grave affairs of business to
which your time is devoted?

Something like that it was which befell Peter Gudge; just such an
accident, changing the whole current of his life, and making the
series of events with which this story deals. Peter was walking down
the street one afternoon, when a woman approached and held out to
him a printed leaflet. "Read this, please," she said.

And Peter, who was hungry, and at odds with the world, answered