things--what promise Warrington had shown in his youth, how clever he
was, and all that. Nothing succeeds like success, and nobody is so
interesting as the prophet who has shaken the dust of his own country
and found honor in another. Human nature can't help itself: the women
talked of his plays in the reading-clubs, the men speculated on the
backs of envelopes what his royalties were, and the newspaper that had
given him a bread-and-butter pittance for a man's work proudly took it
upon itself to say that its columns had fostered the genius in the
growing. This was not because the editors were really proud of their
townsman's success; rather it was because it made a neat little
advertisement of their own particular foresight, such as it was. In
fact, in his own town (because he had refused to live in it!)
Warrington was a lion of no small dimensions.

Warrington's novel (the only one he ever wrote) was known to few. To
tell the truth, the very critics that were now praising the dramatist
had slashed the novelist cruelly. And thereby hangs a tale. A New York
theatrical manager sent for Warrington one day and told him that he
had read the book, and if the author would attempt a dramatic version,
the manager would give it a fair chance. Warrington, the bitterness of
failure in his soul, undertook the work, and succeeded. Praise would
have made an indifferent novelist of him, for he was a born dramatist.

Regularly each year he visited his birthplace for a day or so, to pay
in person his taxes. For all that he labored in New York, he still
retained his right to vote in his native town.


A sudden desire seized him to-night to return to his home, to become a
citizen in fact and deed. It was now the time of year when the spring