His hat was a soft, wide-brimmed, weathered felt, and although he did not know it, he made a picturesque figure sitting like a bronze statue against the brilliant, changing sky.

As the girls’ voices rose, he turned and looked at them. He had scarcely noticed them when he sat down. They were brightly dressed—cheaply, too—although he did not know that, and their faces were startling in their makeup. When Gregory came west, nice girls didn’t paint their faces. Even indecent ones did not go to such an extreme as these girls. They looked to him like the girls who came at intervals to Jake’s Place and gave a show, and then danced and drank afterward with the clamoring cowboys who flocked to meet them. He had never cared much for that sort of thing. He had been too busy fighting for his land, too young when he first came west to feel the urge toward such brawls, and later too much in the habits of his hermitage to venture forth for an all-night party. Perhaps, too, the lingering memory of the clean, simple atmosphere with which his mother had surrounded his boyhood days was a strong element in protecting his life from such temptations.

So now as he turned a grave glance toward the three highly illuminated faces and took note of the impudent, intimate challenge of their lawless eyes, he judged them young women of no reputation and met their look with one of half-pitying contempt. He would have been surprised to know that they were simply common, ill-bred, hardworking girls out to have a good time and eager to imitate a brazen modern world whose glamour lured their souls.

The one in red began to laugh and suddenly addressed him mockingly: “Why n’t ya buy ya a haircut, buddie?” she called across to him. “It would improve ya a lot.”

Greg eyed her gravely an instant and then replied in a careless drawl:

“Thanks a lot! I was just thinking how much you girls needed a good face wash!”

Then he slowly straightened up, rose to his full height, and turned his gaze down the car. He made a really stunning figure, and the girls, catching their breath at his audacity, suddenly broke into embarrassed laughter mixed with a note of hilarity. But Greg did not look their way again. He picked up his paper bundle and walked slowly away from them down the aisle and out the car door.

Back through the other common cars he went, looking to neither right nor left, through club car and diner and Pullmans, studying the numbers of the cars as he made his slow progress, till at last he found the number he was looking for. As he paused beside it, the porter whom he had at first encountered came hurrying nervously toward him from the rear end of the car.

Greg eyed him amusedly as he puffed up assertively and seemed about to speak. Then he said in his slow, pleasant drawl: “Sorry to disturb you, brother, but this seems to be my seat,” and he handed out the magic bit of green paper that gave him right to that place and sat down.

The porter eyed him incredulously, studied the ticket a moment, and then looked at him sharply.

“Where’d you-all get this ticket? This yours?”

“Back there at the station where I got on,” said Greg, still in that calm, half-amused tone. “Isn’t it all right?” and he handed out a bill that made the porter stare and melt into smiles.

“Oh, yessah, yessah! It’s all right, sah! I wasn’t just shore where at this party was comin’ on, sah. Any bags, sah?” and he eyed Greg’s newspaper bundle questioningly.

“No bags!” said Greg, grinning and stowing his parcel beside him.

The poor, bewildered porter went on his way, staring down at the greenback and casting furtive glances around at the other passengers. And then, entrenched behind his own special narrow sanctum at the end of the car, he peered out and studied this strange, crude-looking passenger who dressed like a common workman and threw ten dollar bills around so casually.

And Greg sank into his comfortable seat and mused on the ways of the world to which he had come back. He could sense that the porter was still troubled in spite of the tip, and he realized that his appearance was against him. Even money didn’t count if one didn’t dress the part. Well, he could do it now, but would it pay? Would it get him the kind of friends he wanted? Of course he meant to buy some new clothes when he got to a city. Perhaps he would stop off in Chicago and shop. He didn’t want to go home looking like a wild man. But he registered a resolve never to dress conspicuously and never to judge a man merely by his clothes.

Presently, one came through the train announcing the last call for dinner, and Greg, with a furtive glance around, noting that most of his car companions were in their seats and had probably had their dinners, decided that it was late enough for him to venture into the diner. He found he was hungry enough to thoroughly enjoy the first well-cooked meal that he had eaten for several years.

Ten days later, Gregory Sterling stood at the front window of the luxurious room that had been assigned him in the great new apartment hotel in his hometown, looking out at the street that had been a meadow when he went away.

He had chosen the Whittall House from the list the taxicab driver had suggested, because it seemed to be located out on the edge of town, and his soul was weary for the quietness and peace of his wilderness lodge. He had spent several days in Chicago shopping, having acquired what seemed to him a ridiculously large supply of clothing and several quite correct pieces of baggage. Porters and hotel clerks no longer looked at him askance. He was as well turned out as any modern young man could be. The hometown had no need to be ashamed of him.

And now he stood at the window of his room looking out on the amazing changes that had come during his absence, identifying the bit of a park across the street as the very spot where his mother and he used to pick violets years ago on the rare occasions when she had time to take a walk with him.