She had noted only that the creature's costume consisted of the flags of the United States and Ireland tastefully combined to form a simple loin cloth.

Had she raised the boy for this?
* * * * * The deplored intimacy had begun on a morning when Wilbur was early abroad salvaging golf balls from certain obscure nooks of the course where Newbern's minor players were too likely to abandon the search for them on account of tall grass, snakes, poison ivy, and other deterrents.
Along the course at a brisk trot had come a sweatered figure, with cap pulled low, a man of lined and battered visage, who seemed to trot with a purpose, and yet with a purpose not to be discerned, for none pursued him and he appeared to pursue no one.
[Illustration: "THE MALIGN EYE WAS WORN SO PROUDLY THAT THE WEARER BUBBLED VAINGLORIOUSLY OF HOW HE HAD ACHIEVED THE STIGMA BY STEPPING INTO ONE OF SPIKE BRENNON'S STRAIGHT LEFTS."] He had stopped amiably to chat with the boy.

He was sweating profusely, and chewed gum.

It may be said that he was not the proud young Spike Brennon of the photograph.

He was all of twenty-five, and his later years had told.