He undressed and smoothed his ready-made suit on the
rocking-chair back. Sitting on the edge of his bed, quaint in
his cotton night-gown, like a rare little bird of dull plumage,
he rubbed his head sleepily. Um-m-m-m-m! How tired he was!
He went to open the window. Then his tamed heart leaped into a
waltz, and he forgot third-floor-fronts and sleepiness.

Through the window came the chorus of fog-horns on North River.
"Boom-m-m!" That must be a giant liner, battling up through the
fog. (It was a ferry.) A liner! She'd be roaring just like that
if she were off the Banks! If he were only off the Banks! "Toot!
Toot!" That was a tug. "Whawn-n-n!" Another liner. The tumultuous
chorus repeated to him all the adventures of the day.

He dropped upon the bed again and stared absently at his
clothes. Out of the inside coat pocket stuck the unopened
letter from Cousin John.

He read a paragraph of it. He sprang from the bed and danced a
tarantella, pranced in his cottony nightgown like a drunken
Yaqui. The letter announced that the flinty farm at Parthenon,
left to Mr. Wrenn by his father, had been sold. Its location on
a river bluff had made it valuable to the Parthenon Chautauqua
Association. There was now to his credit in the Parthenon
National Bank nine hundred and forty dollars!

He was wealthy, then. He had enough to stalk up and down the
earth for many venturesome (but economical) months, till he
should learn the trade of wandering, and its mysterious trick of