may be said, indeed, that he never made the slightest attempt to understand him. No American small-town father ever understands boys like Gareth Johns, boys with imagination and the creative impulse; they are looked upon with vague distrust and suspicion, at best, with a certain condescension. It seems incredible, indeed, to most small-town minds that any boy should not grow up with the ideal of becoming a retail boot and shoe merchant. Gareth, from almost the moment he had begun to talk, had developed uncomfortably unconventional traits which his father had tried to deracinate. These attempts, it may be added, were entirely vain. Gareth's mother, so far as it lay in her power, saw to it that the boy should follow his own interests. They were allies these two, and had many secrets from Johns senior, more every year, as time passed. One of their secrets concerned the room in the barn. Mr. Johns, of course, was aware that Gareth spent a great deal of time in the barn, but he had never climbed the stairs to see how, and, indeed, only thought of the hay-loft, when he thought of it at all, which was seldom, as a sort of play-room for an underdeveloped boy. With Gareth's bed-chamber in the house he could have found no fault. That was entirely devoid of any personal character. Aside from a tennis racket and a mandolin, both of which had long since lost their interest for Gareth, this room was bare of adornment, save for a framed picture or two of a kind which might have
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