This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE VALLEY OF TITANS
97

sounds set him to thinking of his freshman days here when he was becoming the friend of Alice.

He turned over, uncomfortably, and tried to go back to sleep but failed. He got to thinking about Fidelia Netley, then drove his mind to figuring on business and considering Mr. Snelgrove. It came back to Fidelia Netley and Alice; to Fidelia again.

Dave got up and taking his clothes into the bathroom, so as not to waken Lan, he dressed, shaved and went down stairs. It was barely six, then, and still dark. No one else was about, not even the cook. The freshman, who had started up the furnace fire, had gone back to bed.

Dave went down and poked at the furnace; he took a bottle of milk from the ice-box, poured a glass and seized some crackers and went into the living-room to study. When dawn brightened, he raised the window shades and gazed out at the empty street.

He was still idle and restless when he heard the cook enter by the kitchen door and heard upstairs the slamming down of windows and talk and whistling.

It was seven o'clock and some one passed the house. Dave did not see her until she was by. He jumped up from the chair in which he had been lounging. The girl was Fidelia Netley.

He did not see her face; but her figure and her brown fur coat and her hair and her toque and, most especially, her vigor, were unmistakable. She seemed to him to be hurrying and he thought: "Something's happened!"

He pressed to the window and watched her till she was out of sight beyond the next houses. When he