then put him on space. That means that he will make anywhere from forty to
a hundred a week, or perhaps more at times. The average for the best is
about eighty."

"Eighty dollars a week," thought Howard. "Fifty-two times eighty is
forty-one hundred and sixty. Four thousand a year, counting out two weeks
for vacation." To Howard it seemed wealth at the limit of imagination. If
he could make so much as that!--he who had grave doubts whether, no matter
how hard he worked, he would ever wrench a living from the world.

Just then a seedy young man with red hair and a red beard came through the
gate in the railing, nodded to Kittredge and went to a desk well up toward
the daylight end of the room.

"That's the best of 'em all," said Kittredge in a low tone. "His name is
Sewell. He's a Harvard man--Harvard and Heidelberg. But drink! Ye gods, how
he does drink! His wife died last Christmas--practically starvation. Sewell
disappeared--frightful bust. A month afterward they found him under an
assumed name over on Blackwell's Island, doing three months for disorderly
conduct. He wrote a Christmas carol while his wife was dying. It began
"Merrily over the Snow" and went on about light hearts and youth and joy
and all that--you know, the usual thing. When he got the money, she didn't
need it or anything else in her nice quiet grave over in Long Island City.
So he 'blew in' the money on a wake."

Sewell was coming toward them. Kittredge called out: "Was it a good story,
Sam?"

"Simply great! You ought to have seen the room. Only the bed and the
cook-stove and a few dishes on a shelf--everything else gone to the