reforms were. A soft glow pervaded the room, and he suddenly became
aware of it. What could cause it? He looked out of the window. The
setting sun was slanting its long rays against low-hanging masses of
summer clouds, turning them to warm scarlet and rosy red; and it was
from them that the red light, mellow and glowing, was flung earthward.

His gaze dropped from the clouds to the bay beneath. The sea-breeze was
dying down with the day, and off Fort Point a fishing-boat was creeping
into port before the last light breeze. A little beyond, a tug was
sending up a twisted pillar of smoke as it towed a three-masted schooner
to sea. His eyes wandered over toward the Marin County shore. The line
where land and water met was already in darkness, and long shadows were
creeping up the hills toward Mount Tamalpais, which was sharply
silhouetted against the western sky.

Oh, if he, Joe Bronson, were only on that fishing-boat and sailing in
with a deep-sea catch! Or if he were on that schooner, heading out into
the sunset, into the world! That was life, that was living, doing
something and being something in the world. And, instead, here he was,
pent up in a close room, racking his brains about people dead and gone
thousands of years before he was born.

He jerked himself away from the window as though held there by some
physical force, and resolutely carried his chair and history into the
farthest corner of the room, where he sat down with his back to the
window.

An instant later, so it seemed to him, he found himself again staring
out of the window and dreaming. How he had got there he did not know.
His last recollection was the finding of a subheading on a page on the