My tame a Hiram Lane, he stated. I want to patent a certain contrivance, *k in the wr, ence that will eventvan) eat to aviation as distinguished from ....

There was no apoiogy in Lane's attitude, no defance. He was sure of himmel and indiferent to criticism. And womething of his quiet confidence worded the rising tumult of Hazeldean's brain, and enabled him to reply with answering composure, 'It is some thing I have always believed in.'

"'"Good," said Hiram Lane. Then w's get to work?

For an hour the two men busied themselves with drawings and blueprints, with technical terms and scientile computations. Hazeldean's chief entered, saw that he was in good vein, and refrained from interfering. Other orxa amzedd and got to work, other diente came and went, and Hazeldean and Hiram Lane were still at it.

At last the latter glanced at the offreebok, sprang to his feet, and rolled up his papers, with the same curt energy that characterized all his proCARR, mental or otherwise.

"Time's up," he declared. 'Shall you be here at the same hour to-morrow?' 'Yes,' said Hazeldean, with like brevity, which betrayed nothing of the tumult that was rising again. And, an instant later, his client's heels went ringing down the corridor.

Lane came again next morning, and after that at irregular intervals, al

ways eaving at the same bour. He was evidently not master of his own time. Fareicean was conscious of no eurosity about him, personally. There were so many people whose business and social status was all there was to them, that he had not the slightest wish to label and catalogue a shining exceptha like this. He cely thanked his stars that the man had crossed his path.

And it came about that as day by day his faith in Hiram Lane's enterprise grew, Hazeidean's faith in himseif grew also. He had not been an addle-pated visionary, after all, he told himself to-night: his idea had been sound. That he had lacked the skill, the originality, to put it into execution, that was a mere detail, which in no way affected the issue at stake. And besides, there were other ways of furthering a good cause than by actual leadership. We could n't all be captains, we could n't all be fighting men, even. But - and suddenly his mind was crossed by the familiar phrase, sinews of war.' He halted, there in the path, as if his name had been called. Sinews of war! Money! That money which he had despised, because Hester would none of it, — the money that had come to him by a caprice of fortune. Why, he was an able-bodied man, a competent bread-winner! He was as capable as his brothers of earning his own living. What should he want of a fortune? And with a firm step, he started off again, headed now for his goal, in more senses than one.

The stars were gathering fast. How quietly, almost imperceptibly, they appeared, -as quietly as a thought does. And yet, so constant were they in that flight of theirs, that by them. and by them alone the mariner was safe to steer his course. Well, here was a thought to steer by, and what a thought! Was ever such a use found for money? Some folks bought stocks

and bonds with theirs, and vegetated on the income. How stupid to do a thing like that with it!

Again he glanced skyward, where the constellations were already standing out in their ancient order. There was the moon, too, not yet at the full, just sailing clear of the housetops. And here was his grandmother's gate. He wished he had not timed his visit when Hester was almost sure to be there. She was tantalizing, distracting. He could n't keep his wits about him when she was by; he was too busy feeling things. Uncomfortable things, too. In some moods the very sight of her, the sound of her voice, was like a stab. What had a man with a good, working thought in his head to do with feelings, anyway? No, he did n't want to see Hester to-night.

And yet, when presently he stood on the threshold of the little sitting-room, and she was not there, a worse stab caught him than the sight of her could have dealt. Perhaps Old Lady Pratt suspected his discomfiture, though he got out his birthday congratulations very creditably; for,

'Hester's been and gone,' she remarked, as he took Aunt Betsy's hand, which felt like a pad of dough after his grandmother's claw-like grip.

'Has she?' he echoed vaguely.
'Yes; she has. You're too late.'

He knew better than to protest that he had come to see his grandmother. In face of those sharp eyes, indeed, he could not even in his own mind keep up the little fiction. So he let his case go by default.

'Do you calc❜late to go through life jest too late?' she persisted, with considerable animus.

"Too late or too early,' he amended, trying, not very successfully, to force his mind back from Hester to that other matter which required a long future to its unfolding.

He had seated himself and, picking up an unwieldy photograph album, he chanced upon a recent libel on his grandmother, wherein her keen physiognomy had been so ruthlessly denuded of the smallest modicum of character that he felt himself for once almost a match for her. Her actual voice, however, dispelled that pleasing illusion.

'Have you given her up?' she inquired.

'She has given me up.'

'What makes you let her?'

'I've asked her twice,' he smouldered. 'If I keep on nagging her, she'll get to hate me.'

'Well,' was the crisp rejoinder, 'I ain't so sure but that'd be a step in the right direction.' And, shrewdly studying the young man's countenance, she fell to wishing that there were more of the stout fibre of resistance in his composition, against which a robust hate might brace itself.

Old Lady Pratt desired this match ardently. She felt sure it would be the making of her grandson, and equally sure that all the girl needed was to be waked up about him. Hester had certainly begun by liking him; indeed, no one could be quite indifferent to Hazeldean at first blush. He was too individual for that, though his natural advantages were, to his grandmother's thinking, disastrously nullified in the general scheme of him. Even as his good looks were too frequently lost in a slack bearing and a tendency to stare at nothing, so his undeniable intelligence had hitherto missed fire. His ideas were rarely driven home. Morally too he lacked a healthy assertiveness. He could attract, but failed to hold, and Old Lady Pratt had watched, and understood, the flickering out of Hester's interest. A girl of her calibre might well demand something more definite to tie to than a pleasant disposition and a glancing intelligence.

sensation. It waked her up. Ah, wise Old Lady Pratt!

And Hazeldean strode along homeward, the little shawl buttoned tight under his coat, literally hugging himself over his ill-gotten booty.

Yet, arrived at last in his own room, which was squared off with patches of moonlight, he pulled out the little shawl and regarded it critically. After all, it was nothing but a shawl! He was afraid he should n't be able to make it 'do,' after all. With a rueful grimace, he tossed it upon his desk, which stood by one of the moonlit windows, and turned to light the gas. The match-box had been misplaced. Glancing about in search of it, his eye fell upon that bit of Scotch-plaid, which lay in a round heap, a small break in its contour suggesting that it had once framed a face.

With a choking sensation of fierce pain, he dropped into the chair by the desk and, gathering the soft folds in his hands, buried his face in them. So he remained for several minutes, motionless. But when, at sound of the supper-bell, he raised his head, his features were set in firm lines, and the moon, at gaze, found nothing there to gratify its romantic predilections.

Those firm lines were already beginning to feel very much at home in Hazeldean's mobile countenance when, the following Saturday, he made his offer to Hiram Lane. He had thought the matter out very soberly, and the proposition was couched in terms of business commonplace. If the young capitalist had never before experienced quite the sense of exultation that stirred his blood as he made the offer, neither had he ever been quite so completely master of himself.

'You know what you are about,' Lane had demurred. 'You know the chances of failure?'

'Yes.'

"That it must be a matter of years at best? That you and I may not live to see the end?'

'Yes; I know.'

They were in Lane's lodging, a great barn of a room in a cheap suburb, cluttered badly with grotesque contraptions of wire and cane, of canvas and oiled silk. A very fair apology for a chemist's laboratory, ranged on rough shelves in one corner, lent an air of scientific reality to the establishment, further emphasized by various workmanlike drawings and tabulations spread out upon a deal table. But in all the room was no faintest suggestion of creature comfort.

Lane was seated on a high stool, nursing his knee, and eying his pet model, a crude, but extremely ingenious affair, no more resembling the modern 'flyer,' to be sure, than the formless embryo resembles the plant in full flower. And yet - the germ was there, and both men knew it.

'It's a one-sided sort of partnership,' Lane observed. 'You'll never see your money again; you may never see any results at all. But the fact is, you're the only chap I've ever run across, who had the gumption to catch on, and I think you're entitled to lend a hand.'

True fanatic that he was, the man honestly believed himself to be conferring a favor; wherein Hazeldean, in the magnanimity of his soul, fully concurred.

'Very well,' he said. 'We'll call it a partnership, and some day—' 'Some day, we'll show 'em the way to Mars!'

With that, Lane jumped down off his stool, wrung Hazeldean's hand, severely but briefly, and then began, with technical exactitude, elucidating the advantage of a slight readjustment of the new model which he was contemplating. Neither of them dwelt