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powdery doughnuts with a cup of over-sweetened coffee, he had sauntered forth to his bench in the Common. At once the air and the wind had excited him to an extravagant happiness.

Thus alone on his bench, sprawling happily in his isolation, Albert Bean regarded the sparrow before him, and tapping a tune on the side-walk with the sole of a dusty and battered shoe, he made chirping noises to the bird. And he watched the wind sweep along the long lanes milling the dust and leaves together in sudden whirlwinds. He contemplated the bare trees, and he watched the dust rise in brief gestures and the quick, strange dances of dead leaves. Calmed by the petulant boisterousness of the wind, he communed with nature.

But in his contemplation he did not see up the lane at a distance that a paper, tortured into an ecstasy by the wind, was sweeping down toward him. Dipping, cavorting, pivoting, its flatness leaping and folding, it staggered quickly along the surface of the walk. Driven by the wind it was about to skid by him, when it lunged, struck him savagely in the face, and with a soft crash wrapped itself around his head.

Knocked into a sudden fright, Albert Bean sat rigid in terror. He snatched at the paper and tore it from him.

For a moment he rested bewildered, unable to do anything more than clutch the paper tightly in his fist. He was shocked by the insolence of the wind, hurt, bruised, and insulted by the calamity; but still slightly afraid that some spectator had witnessed the in- decency. He stared at the newspaper thickly. Suddenly his brain tightened with a snap that hurt.

With the newspaper squeezed between his two fists, he leaned over it and with bulging eyes re-read the title of the page and the date, for he felt that destiny had made too horrible a mistake. But destiny makes no mistakes, his first bewildered glance had told him the cold truth, and his eyes, as if bent and dragged by some imponderable weight, read the first item in the first column.

Albert Bean placed the newspaper on his knees. His thoughts had been split and jolted into new successions. The wind had quickly flipped him into a new eternity and he felt he must regain control of himself or be doomed. The world was herding in upon him, smashing through the tranquillity of his morning as easily as if it had been made of glass. Placing the newspaper under his arm, he