before he had gone, a mere boy, to meet her, a mere girl, and looked with
wonder at the lighted way before him.

Sam crossed the street and, from the front of Sawyer's barber shop, looked
into Wildman's. He felt like a spy looking into the camp of an enemy.
There before him sat the men into whose midst he had it in his power to
cast a thunderbolt. He might walk to the door and say, truthfully enough,
"Here before you is a boy that by the flutter of a white hand has been
made into a man; here is one who has wrung the heart of womankind and
eaten his fill at the tree of the knowledge of life."

In the grocery the talk still continued among the men upon the cracker
barrels who seemed unconscious of the boy's slinking entrance. Indeed,
their talk had sunk. From talking of love and of poets they talked of corn
and of steers. Banker Walker, his packages of groceries lying on the
counter, smoked a cigar.

"You can fairly hear the corn growing to-night," he said. "It wants but
another shower or two and we shall have a record crop. I plan to feed a
hundred steers at my farm out Rabbit Road this winter."

The boy climbed again upon a cracker barrel and tried to look unconcerned
and interested in the talk. Still his heart thumped; still a throbbing
went on in his wrists. He turned and looked at the floor hoping his
agitation would pass unnoticed.

The banker, taking up the packages, walked out at the door. Valmore and
Freedom Smith went over to the livery barn for a game of pinochle. And
John Telfer, twirling his cane and calling to a troup of dogs that
loitered in an alley back of the store, took Sam for a walk into the