always had time to listen to other people's troubles. Barry--
everyone admitted--had his points. But after all--

After all, he was lazy, and shiftless, and unambitious: he was
content to be assistant editor of the Mail; content to be bullied
and belittled by old Rogers; content to go on his own idle, sunny
way, playing with his small, chubby son, foraging the woods with a
dozen small boys at his heels, working patiently over a broken
gopher-trap or a rusty shotgun, for some small admirer. Worst of
all, Barry had been intemperate, years ago, and there were people
who believed that his occasional visits to San Francisco, now, were
merely excuses for revels with his old newspaper friends there.

And yet, he had been such a brilliant, such a fiery and ambitious
boy! All Santa Paloma had taken pride in the fact that Barry
Valentine, only twenty, had been offered the editorship of the one
newspaper of Plumas, a little town some twelve miles away, and had
prophesied a triumphant progress for him, to the newspapers of San
Francisco, of Chicago, of New York! But Barry had not been long in
Plumas when he suddenly married Miss Hetty Scott of that town, and
in the twelve years that had passed since then the golden dreams for
his future had vanished one by one, until to-day found him with no
one to believe in him--not even himself.

Hetty Scott was but seventeen when Barry met her, and already the
winner in two village contests for beauty and popularity. After
their marriage she and Barry went to San Francisco, and shrewd,
little, beautiful Hetty found herself more admired than ever, and
began to talk of the stage. After that, Santa Paloma heard only
occasional rumors: Barry had a position on a New York paper, and