the contemplation of one whole dollar a week. Under the inspiration of this good news, his interest in the store was suddenly and rapturously quickened. He saw himself, after a time, receiving two dollars a week, then five dollars, then ten dollars. He built castles in the air with all the reckless ardor of an imaginative boy.
But he learned, before another week was out, that it was one thing to plan a reawakening of interest, and another thing to live it. By the time his first dollar had been earned and paid, the store had again become an uninspiring and dry exhibit of ties on their racks, shirts under polished glass cases, and collars in neatly stacked wooden boxes. The day the dummy had been knocked over something spontaneous had gone from him and could not be called back. He had grown accustomed to being out of the place, and the old charm of family possession could not be revived.
And he had grown accustomed to spending his evenings with Dolf and Bill, and no longer missed his father. Nights when there was nothing to deliver he and his friends would roam the town, speaking boastfully of the things that they would do when they were men, keeping to the dark or the lighted streets as the spirit moved them. Sometimes they went out to Camel-back Hill and saw the construction gangs, the pick and shovel men, rushing the work of laying the network of tracks that would form the spider web of a rail-
