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Fifty Candles

at the windows. Need washing, don’t they? Or is it the heavy yellow fog from the tule-fields, pressing close against the panes, trying to get in? Quict—oppressively quiet—what has become of everybody? No sound save the slow deliberate clicking of the big clock in the hallway. The voice of Time, who had conquered all these people on the wall. “I’ll-get—you-too. “I’ll-get—you-too.” Was the clock really saying that? All right—some day, perhaps—but not yet. Now I had youth. “My boy, you don’t know what you’ve got.” Oh, yes, I do. Youth—and Mary Will. She, too, must be mine. She had looked wonderful. Where was she? Was I to be left alone forever with the confounded clock?

Suddenly from across the hall came a cry, sharp, uncanny, terrible. I ran out in the direction from which it had come and stood on the threshold of the Drew dining-room. Another room of many memories, of stern faces on the wall. A

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