Jimmy Torrance was out of a job a week this time, and once more he was
indebted to the Lizard for a position, the latter knowing a politician
who was heavily interested in a dairy company, with the result that
Jimmy presently found himself driving a milk-wagon. Jimmy's route was on
the north side, which he regretted, as it was in the district where a
number of the friends of his former life resided. His delivery schedule,
however, and the fact that his point of contact with the homes of his
customers was at the back door relieved him of any considerable
apprehension of being discovered by an acquaintance.

His letters home were infrequent, for he found that his powers of
invention were being rapidly depleted. It was difficult to write glowing
accounts of the business success he was upon the point of achieving on
the strength of any of the positions he so far had held, and doubly so
during the far greater period that he had been jobless and hungry. But
he had not been able to bring himself to the point of admitting to his
family his long weeks of consistent and unrelieved failure.

Recently he had abandoned his futile attempts to obtain positions
through the medium of the Help Wanted columns.

"It is no use," he thought. "There must be something inherently wrong
with me that in a city full of jobs I am unable to land anything without
some sort of a pull and then only work that any unskilled laborer could
perform."

The truth of the matter was that Jimmy Torrance was slowly approaching
that mental condition that is aptly described by the phrase, "losing
your grip," one of the symptoms of which was the fact that he was almost