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bells on!" He
took up the photograph. "Doesn't look much older, does she? It's a queer
world."
    Louis Bassett, star reporter and feature writer of the Times-Republican,
smiled reminiscently.
    "She was a wonder," he said. "I interviewed her once, and I was crazy
about her. She had the stage set for me, all right. The papers had been
full of the incident of Jud Clark and the night he lined up fifteen
Johnnies in the lobby, each with a bouquet as big as a tub, all of them
in top hats and Inverness coats, and standing in a row. So she played up
the heavy domestic for me; knitting or sewing, I forget."
    "Fell for her, did you?"
    "Did I? That was ten years ago, and I'm not sure I'm over it yet."
    "Probably that's the reason," said the city editor, drily. "Go and see
her, and get over it. Get her views on the flapper and bobbed hair, for
next Sunday. Smith would be crazy about it."
    He finished his coffee.
    "You might ask, too, what she thinks has become of Judson Clark," he
added. "I have an idea she knows, if any one does." Bassett stared at
him.
    "You're joking, aren't you?"
    "Yes. But it would make a darned good story."

V
*
    When he finished medical college Dick Livingstone had found, like other
men, that the two paths of ambition and duty were parallel and did not
meet. Along one lay his desire to focus all his energy in one direction,
to follow disease into the laboratory instead of the sick room, and
there to fight its unsung battles. And win. He felt that he would win.
    Along the other lay David.
    It was not until he had completed his course and had come home that he
had realized that David was growing old. Even then he might have felt
that, by the time David was compelled to relinquish his hold on his
practice, he himself would be sufficiently established in his specialty
to take over the support of the household. But here there was interposed
a new element, one he had not counted on. David was fiercely jealous of
his practice; the thought that it might pass into new and alien hands
was bitter to him. To hand it down to his adopted son was one thing; to
pass it over to "some young whipper-snapper" was another.
    Nor were David's motives selfish or unworthy. His patients were his
friends. He had a sense of responsibility to them, and very little
faith in the new modern methods. He thought there was a great deal of
tomfoolery about them, and he viewed the gradual loss of faith in drugs
with alarm. When Dick wore rubber gloves during their first obstetric
case together he snorted.
    "I've delivered about half the population of this town," he said, "and
slapped 'em to make 'em breathe with my own bare hands. And I'm still
here and so are they."
    For by that time Dick had made his decision. He could not abandon
David. For him then and hereafter the routine of a general practice in a
suburban town, the long hours, the varied responsibilities, the feeling
he had sometimes that by doing many things passably he was doing none of
them well. But for compensation he had old David's content and greater
leisure, and Lucy Crosby's gratitude and love.
    Now and then he chafed a little when he read some article in a medical
journal by one of his fellow enthusiasts, or when, in France, he saw
men younger than himself obtaining an experience in their several
specialties that would enable them to reach wide fields at home. But
mostly he was content, or at least resigned. He was building up the
Livingstone practice, and his one anxiety was lest the time should come
when more patients asked for Doctor Dick than for Doctor David. He did
not want David hurt.
    After ten years the strangeness of his situation had ceased to be
strange. Always he meant some time to go back to Norada, and there to
clear up certain things, but it was a long journey, and he had very
little time. And, as the years went on, the past seemed unimportant
compared with the present. He gave little thought to the future.
    Then, suddenly, his entire attention became focused on the