generous imagination. He found something worth while in every mile he
traversed in these long and solitary tramps, and he covered no fewer
than twenty of them between breakfast and dinner unless ordered by
circumstance to loiter along the way.

Each succeeding spring he set out from his "diggings" in New York
without having the remotest idea where his peregrinations would carry
him. It was his habit to select a starting point in advance, approach
that spot by train or ship or motor, and then divest himself of all
purpose except to fare forward until he came upon some haven for the
night. He went east or west, north or south, even as the winds of
heaven blow; indeed, he not infrequently followed them.

For five or six weeks in the early spring it was his custom to forge
his daily chain of miles and, when the end was reached, climb
contentedly aboard a train and be transported, often by arduous means,
to the city where millions of men walk with a definite aim in view. He
liked the spring of the year. He liked the rains and the winds of
early spring. They meant the beginning of things to him.

He was rich. Perhaps not as riches are measured in these Midas-like
days, but rich beyond the demands of avarice. His legacy had been an
ample one. The fact that he worked hard at his profession from one
year's end to the other,--not excluding the six weeks devoted to these
mentally productive jaunts,--is proof sufficient that he was not
content to subsist on the fruits of another man's enterprise. He was a
worker. He was a creator, a builder and a destroyer. It was part of
his ambition to destroy in order that he might build the better.

The first fortnight of a proposed six weeks' jaunt through Upper New