"I have other dreams now, saner dreams." "Saner dreams? What are your saner dreams but less troublesome dreams,--lazier dreams? Dreams that fit into things as they are instead of demanding things as they should be? You sleep o' nights now; you sleep snugly, you tread safely about the cage they trapped you into." "Then let me alone there. Don't--don't poke me up." Donaldson snapped away his cigarette. "No. Why should I? But I 'll have none of it. That damned Barnum, 'Society,' shall not catch me and trim my claws and file my teeth." He laughed to himself, his lips drawn back a little, rubbing behind the pup's ears. The dog moved sleepily. "Barstow," he continued more calmly, "this is n't a whine. I 'm not discouraged--it is n't that. I 'm not frightened, nor despondent, nor worried, understand. I know that things will come out all right by the time I 'm fifty, but I shall then be fifty. I 'd like a taste of the jungle now--a week or two of roaming free, of sprawling in the sunshine, of drinking at the living river, of rolling under the blue sky. I 'd like to slash around uncurbed outside the pale a little. I 'd like to do it while I 'm young and strong,--I 'd like to do it now." "In brief," suggested Barstow, "you desire money." "Enough so that I might forget there was such a thing." "Well, you 'll have to sell something of yourself to get it." "Just so. I won't and there you are. You see I don't fit." Donaldson paused a moment and then went on. "You know something of my story, you alone of all this grinding city. You saw me in college and in the law school, where on a coolie diet I did a man's work. But even you don't know how close to hard pan I was during those seven years,--down to crackers and water for weeks at a time." "You don't mean to say you went hungry?" "Hungry?" laughed Donaldson. "Man dear, there were days when I was starving! I 've been to classes when I was so weak I could n't push my pencil. I was hungry, and cold, and lonesome, but at that time I had my good warm, well-fed dreams, so I did n't mind so much. And always I thought it would be better next year, but it was n't. None of the