for his boots. ``Oh, that's all right,'' he said. ``I wasn't
asleep, I was just--'' he lowered his voice that Langham might
not hear him through the canvas partitions--``I was just lying
awake playing duets with the President, and racing for the
International Cup in my new centre-board yacht, that's all!''

MacWilliams buttoned a waterproof coat over his pajamas and
stamped his bare feet into his boots. ``Oh, I tell you, Clay,''
he said with a grim chuckle, ``we're mixing right in with the
four hundred, we are! I'm substitute and understudy when anybody
gets ill. We're right in our own class at last! Pure amateurs
with no professional record against us. Me and President
Langham, I guess!'' He struck a match and lit the smoky wick in a
tin lantern.

``But now,'' he said, cheerfully, ``my time being too valuable
for me to sleep, I will go wake up that nigger engine-driver and
set his alarm clock at five-thirty. Five-thirty, I believe you
said. All right; good-night.'' And whistling cheerfully to
himself MacWilliams disappeared up the hill, his body hidden in
the darkness and his legs showing fantastically in the light
of the swinging lantern.

Clay walked out upon the veranda and stood with his back to one
of the pillars. MacWilliams and his pleasantries disturbed and
troubled him. Perhaps, after all, the boy was right. It seemed
absurd, but it was true. They were only employees of Langham--
two of the thousands of young men who were working all over the
United States to please him, to make him richer, to whom he was
only a name and a power, which meant an increase of salary or the