The boy was holding the book in both hands. As the judge laughed he
flushed nervously and turned towards the door.

The judge leaned back in his chair, watching the small figure cross the
room and disappear into the hall. He saw the tracks of dust which the
boy's feet left upon the smooth, bare floor, but he was not thinking of
them. Then, as the child went out upon the porch, he started up.

"Nicholas!" he called, "don't turn down the leaves!"




II


A facetious stranger once remarked that Kingsborough dozed through the
present to dream of the past and found the future a nightmare. Had he
been other than a stranger, he would, perhaps, have added that
Kingsborough's proudest boast was that she had been and was not--a
distinction giving her preëminence over certain cities whose charters
were not received from royal grants--cities priding themselves not only
upon a multiplicity of streets, but upon the more plebeian fact that the
feet of their young men followed the offending thoroughfares to the
undignified music of the march of progress.

But, whatever might be said of places that shall be nameless, it was
otherwise with Kingsborough. Kingsborough was the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever. She who had feasted royal governors, staked and