“Object lesson, I should have said. I should like to exhibit you as a warning to the youth of this country.”
“What!”
“From the look of your frame I should imagine that you were once a man of some physique. Your shoulders are good. Even now a rigorous course of physical training might save you. I have known more helpless cases saved by firm treatment. You have allowed yourself to deteriorate much as did a man named Pennicut who used to be employed here by Mr. Winfield. I saved him. I dare say I could make something of you. I can see at a glance that you eat, drink, and smoke too much. You could not hold out your hand now, at this minute, without it trembling.”
“I could,” said Mr. Penway indignantly.
He held it out, and it quivered like a tuning-fork.
“There!” said Mrs. Porter calmly. “What do you expect? You know your own business best, I suppose, but I should like to tell you that if you do not become a teetotaller instantly, and begin taking exercise, you will probably die suddenly within a very few years. Personally I shall bear the calamity with fortitude. Good evening, Mr. Penway.”
For some moments after she had gone Mr. Penway sat staring before him. His eyes wore a glassy look. His mouth was still ajar.
“Damn woman!” he said at length.
He turned to his meditations.
“Damn impertinent woman!”
Another interval for reflection, and he spoke again.
“Damn impertinent, interfering woman that!”
He reached out for the bottle of Bourbon and filled his glass. He put it to his lips, then slowly withdrew it.
“Damn impertinent, inter—I wonder!”
There was a small mirror on the opposite wall. He walked unsteadily toward it and put out his tongue. He continued in this attitude for a time, then, with increased dejection, turned away.
He placed a hand over his heart. This seemed to depress him still further. Finally he went to the table, took up the glass, poured its contents carefully back into the bottle, which he corked and replaced on the shelf.
On the floor against the wall was a pair of Indian clubs. He picked these up and examined them owlishly. He gave them little tentative jerks. Finally, with the air of a man carrying out a great resolution, he began to swing them. He swung them in slow, irregular sweeps, his eyes the while, still glassy, staring fixedly at the ceiling.
Ruth had not seen Bailey since the afternoon when he had called to warn her against Basil Milbank. Whether it was offended dignity that kept him away, or merely pressure of business, she did not know.
That pressure of business existed, she was aware. The papers were full, and had been full for several days, of wars and rumours of wars down in Wall Street; and, though she understood nothing of finance, she knew that Bailey was in the forefront of the battle. Her knowledge was based partly on occasional references in the papers to the firm of Bannister &Co. and partly on what she heard in society.
She did not hear all that was said in society about Bailey's financial operations—which, as Bailey had the control of her money, was unfortunate for her. The manipulation of money bored her, and she had left the investing of her legacy entirely to Bailey. Her father, she knew, had always had a high opinion of Bailey's business instincts, and that was good enough for her.
She could not know how completely revolutionized the latter's mind had become since the old man's death, and how freedom had turned him from a steady young man of business to a frenzied financier.
It was common report now that Bailey was taking big chances. Some went so far as to say that he was “asking for it,” “it” in his case being presumably the Nemesis which waits on those who take big chances in an uncertain market. It was in the air that he was “going up against” the Pinkey-Dowd group and the Norman-Graham combination, and everybody knew that the cemeteries of Wall Street were full of the unhonoured graves of others who in years past had attempted to do the same.
Pinkey, that sinister buccaneer, could have eaten a dozen Baileys. Devouring aspiring young men of the Bailey type was Norman's chief diversion.
Ruth knew nothing of these things. She told herself that it was her abruptness that had driven Bailey away.
Weariness and depression had settled on Ruth since that afternoon of the storm. It was as if the storm had wrought an awakening in her. It had marked a definite point of change in her outlook. She felt as if she had been roused from a trance by a sharp blow.
If Steve had but known, she had had the “jolt” by which he set such store. She knew now that she had thrown away the substance for the shadow.
Kirk's anger, so unlike him, so foreign to the weak, easy-going person she had always thought him, had brought her to herself. But it was too late. There could be no going back and picking up the threads. She had lost him, and must bear the consequences.
The withdrawal of Bailey was a small thing by comparison, a submotive in the greater tragedy. But she had always been fond of Bailey, and it hurt her to think that she should have driven him out of her life.
It seemed to her that she was very much alone now. She was marooned on a desert island of froth and laughter. Everything that mattered she had lost.
Even Bill had gone from her. The bitter justice of Kirk's words came home to her now in her time of clear thinking. It was all true. In the first excitement of the new life he had bored her. She had looked upon Mrs. Porter as a saviour who brought her freedom together with an easy conscience. It had been so simple to deceive herself, to cheat herself into the comfortable belief that all that could be done for him was being done, when, as concerned the essential thing, as Kirk had said, there was no child of the streets who was not better off.
She tramped her round of social duties mechanically. Everything bored her now. The joy of life had gone out of her. She ate the bread of sorrow in captivity.
And then, this morning, had come a voice from the world she had lost—little Mrs. Bailey's voice, small and tearful.
Could she possibly come out by the next train? Bailey was very ill. Bailey was dying. Bailey had come home last night looking ghastly. He had not slept. In the early morning he had begun to babble—Mrs. Bailey's voice had risen and broken on the word, and Ruth at the other end of the wire had heard her frightened sobs. The doctor had come. The doctor had looked awfully grave. The doctor had telephoned to New York for another doctor. They were both upstairs now. It was awful, and Ruth must come at once.
This was the bad news which had brought about the pallor which had impressed Mr. Keggs as he helped Ruth into her cab.
Little Mrs. Bailey was waiting for her on the platform when she got out of the train. Her face was drawn and miserable. She looked like a beaten kitten. She hugged Ruth hysterically.
 He's better, but it has been awful. The doctors have had to fight him to keep him in bed. He was crazy to get to town. He kept saying over and over again that he must be at the office. They gave him something, and he was asleep when I left the house.”
She began to cry helplessly. The fates had not bestowed upon Sybil Bannister the same care in the matter of education for times of crisis which they had accorded to Steve's Mamie. Her life till now had been sheltered and unruffled, and disaster, swooping upon her, had found her an easy victim.
She was trying to be brave, but her powers of resistance were small like her body. She clung to Ruth as a child clings to its mother. Ruth, as she tried to comfort her, felt curiously old. It occurred to her with a suggestion almost of grotesqueness that she and Sybil had been debutantes in the same season.
They walked up to the house. The summer cottage which Bailey had taken was not far from the station. On the way, in the intervals of her sobs, Sybil told Ruth the disjointed story of what had happened.
Bailey had not been looking well for some days. She had thought it must be the heat or business worries or something. He had not eaten very much, and he had seemed too tired to talk when he got home each evening. She had begged him to take a few days' rest.
He had said that if he stayed away from the office for some time to come it would mean love in a cottage for them for the rest of their lives—and not a summer cottage at Tuxedo at that. “'My dear child,'“ he had gone on, “and you know when Bailey calls me that,” said Sybil, “it means that there is something the matter; for, as a rule, he never calls me anything but my name, or baby, or something like that.”
Which gave Ruth a little shock of surprise. Somehow the idea of the dignified Bailey addressing his wife as baby startled her. She was certainly learning these days that she did not know people as completely as she had supposed. There seemed to be endless sides to people's characters which had never come under her notice. A sudden memory of Kirk on that fateful afternoon came to her and made her wince.
Mrs. Bailey continued: “'My dear child,' he went on, 'this week is about the most important week you and I are ever likely to live through. It's the show-down. We either come out on top or we blow up. It's one thing or the other. And if I take a few days' holiday just now you had better start looking about for the best place to sell your jewellery.'
“Those were his very words,” she said tearfully. “I remember them all. It was so unlike his usual way of talking.”
Ruth acknowledged that it was.
“He was probably exaggerating,” she said for the sake of saying something.
Sybil was silent for a moment.
“It isn't that that's worrying me,” she went on then. “Somehow I don't seem to care at all whether we come out right or not, so long as he gets well. Last night, when I thought he was going to die, I made up my mind that I couldn't go on living without him. I wouldn't have, either.”
This time the shock of surprise which came to Ruth was greater by a hundred-fold than the first had been. She gave a quick glance at Sybil.  It was the face, for one brief instant, of a fanatic. The sight of it affected Ruth extraordinarily. It was as if she had seen a naked soul where she had never imagined a soul to be.
She had weighed Sybil in the same calm, complacent almost patronizing fashion in which she had weighed Bailey, Kirk, everybody. She had set her down as a delightful child, an undeveloped, feather-brained little thing, pleasant to spend an afternoon with, but not to be taken seriously by any one as magnificent and superior as Ruth Winfield. And what manner of a man must Bailey be, Bailey whom she had always looked on as a dear, but as quite a joke, something to be chaffed and made to look foolish, if he was capable of inspiring love like this?
A wave of humility swept over her. The pygmies of her world were springing up as giants, dwarfing her. The pinnacle of superiority on which she had stood so long was crumbling into dust.
She was finding herself. She winced again as the thought stabbed her that she was finding herself too late.
They reached the house in silence, each occupied with her own thoughts. The defiant look had died out of Sybil's face and she was once more a child, crying because unknown forces had hurt it. But Ruth was not looking at her now.
She was too busy examining this new world into which she had been abruptly cast, this world where dolls had souls and jokes lost their point.
At the cottage good news awaited them. The crisis was past. Bailey was definitely out of danger. He was still asleep, and sleeping easily. It had just been an ordinary breakdown, due to worrying and overwork, said the doctor, the bigger of the doctors, the one who had been summoned from New York.
“All your husband needs now, Mrs. Bannister, is rest. See that he is kept quiet. That's all there is to it.”
As if by way of a commentary on his words, a small boy on a bicycle rode up with a telegram.
Sybil opened it. She read it, and looked at Ruth with large eyes.
“From the office,” she said, handing it to her.
Ruth read it. It was a C. D. Q., an S.O.S. from the front; an appeal for help from the forefront of the battle. She did not understand the details of it, but the purport was clear. The battle had begun, and Bailey was needed. But Bailey lay sleeping in his tent.
She handed it back in silence. There was nothing to be done.
The second telegram arrived half an hour after the first. It differed from the first only in its greater emphasis. Panic seemed to be growing in the army of the lost leader.
The ringing of the telephone began almost simultaneously with the arrival of the second telegram. Ruth went to the receiver. A frantic voice was inquiring for Mr. Bannister even as she put it to her ear.
“This is Mrs. Winfield speaking,” she said steadily, “Mr. Bannister's sister. Mr. Bannister is very ill and cannot possibly attend to any business.”
There was a silence at the other end of the wire. Then a voice, with the calm of desperation, said: “Thank you.” There was a pause. “Thank you,” said the voice again in a crushed sort of way, and the receiver was hung up. Ruth went back to Sybil.
The hours passed. How she got through them Ruth hardly knew. Time seemed to have stopped. For the most part they sat in silence. In the afternoon Sybil was allowed to see Bailey for a few minutes. She returned thoughtful. She kissed Ruth before she sat down, and once or twice after that Ruth, looking up, found her eyes fixed upon her. It seemed to Ruth that there was something which she was trying to say, but she asked no questions.
After dinner they sat out on the porch. It was a perfect night. The cool dusk was soothing.
Ruth broke a long silence.
“Sybil!”
“Yes, dear?”
“May I tell you something?”
“Well?”
“I'm afraid it's bad news.”
Sybil turned quickly.
“You called up the office while I was with Bailey?”
Ruth started.
“How did you know?”
“I guessed. I have been trying to do it all day, but I hadn't the pluck. Well?”
“I'm afraid things are about as bad as they can be. A Mr. Meadows spoke to me. He was very gloomy. He told me a lot of things which I couldn't follow, details of what had happened, but I understood all that was necessary, I'm afraid——”
“Bailey's ruined?” said Sybil quietly.
“Mr. Meadows seemed to think so. He may have exaggerated.”
Sybil shook her head.
“No. Bailey was talking to me upstairs. I expected it.”
There was a long silence.
“Ruth.”
“Yes?”
“I'm afraid—”
Sybil stopped.
“Yes?”
A sudden light of understanding came to Ruth. She knew what it was that Sybil was trying to say, had been trying to say ever since she spoke with Bailey.
“My money has gone, too? Is that it?”
Sybil did not answer. Ruth went quickly to her and took her in her arms.
“You poor baby,” she cried. “Was that what was on your mind, wondering how you should tell me? I knew there was something troubling you.”
Sybil began to sob.
“I didn't know how to tell you,” she whispered.
Ruth laughed excitedly. She felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders—a weight which had been crushing the life out of her. In the last few days the scales had fallen from her eyes and she had seen clearly.
She realized now what Kirk had realized from the first, that what had forced his life apart from hers had been the golden wedge of her father's money. It was the burden of wealth that had weighed her down without her knowing it. She felt as if she had been suddenly set free.
“I'm dreadfully sorry,” said Sybil feebly.
Ruth laughed again.
“I'm not,” she said. “If you knew how glad I was you would be congratulating me instead of looking as if you thought I was going to bite you.”
“Glad!”
“Of course I'm glad. Everything's going to be all right again now. Sybil dear, Kirk and I had the most awful quarrel the other day. We—we actually decided it would be better for us to separate. It was all my fault. I had neglected Kirk, and I had neglected Bill, and Kirk couldn't stand it any longer. But now that this has happened, don't you see that it will be all right again? You can't stand on your dignity when you're up against real trouble. If this had not happened, neither of us would have had the pluck to make the first move; but now, you see, we shall just naturally fall into each other's arms and be happy again, he and I and Bill, just as we were before.”
“It must be lovely for you having Bill,” said little Mrs. Bailey wistfully. “I wish—”
She stopped. There was a corner of her mind into which she could not admit any one, even Ruth.
“Having him ought to have been enough for any woman.” Ruth's voice was serious. “It was enough for me in the old days when we were at the studio. What fools women are sometimes! I suppose I lost my head, coming suddenly into all that money—I don't know why; for it was not as if I had not had plenty of time, when father was alive, to get used to the idea of being rich. I think it must have been the unexpectedness of it. I certainly did behave as if I had gone mad. Goodness! I'm glad it's over and that we can make a fresh start.”
“What is it like being poor, Ruth? Of course, we were never very well off at home, but we weren't really poor.”
“It's heaven if you're with the right man.”
Mrs. Bailey sighed.
“Bailey's the right man, as far as I'm concerned. But I'm wondering how he will bear it, poor dear.”
Ruth was feeling too happy herself to allow any one else to be unhappy if she could help it.
“Why, of course he will be splendid about it,” she said. “You're letting your imagination run away with you. You have got the idea of Bailey and yourself as two broken creatures begging in the streets. I don't know how badly Bailey will be off after this smash, but I do know that he will have all his brains and his energy left.”
Ruth was conscious of a momentary feeling of surprise that she should be eulogizing Bailey in this fashion, and—stranger still—that she should be really sincere in what she said. But to-day seemed to have changed everything, and she was regarding her brother with a new-born respect. She could still see Sybil's face as it had appeared in that memorable moment of self-revelation. It had made a deep impression upon her.
“A man like Bailey is worth a large salary to any one, even if he may not be able to start out for himself again immediately. I'm not worrying about you and Bailey. You will have forgotten all about this crash this time next year.” Sybil brightened up. She was by nature easily moved, and Ruth's words had stimulated her imagination.
“He is awfully clever,” she said, her eyes shining.
“Why, this sort of thing happens every six months to anybody who has anything to do with Wall Street,” proceeded Ruth, fired by her own optimism. “You read about it in the papers every day. Nobody thinks anything of it.”
Sybil, though anxious to look on the bright side, could not quite rise to these heights of scorn for the earthquake which had shaken her world.
“I hope not. It would be awful to go through a time like this again.”
Ruth reassured her, though it entailed a certain inconsistency on her part. She had a true woman's contempt for consistency.
“Of course you won't have to go through it again. Bailey will be careful in future not to—not to do whatever it is that he has done.”
She felt that the end of her inspiring speech was a little weak, but she did not see how she could mend it. Her talk with Mr. Meadows on the telephone had left her as vague as before as to the actual details of what had been happening that day in Wall Street. She remembered stray remarks of his about bulls, and she had gathered that something had happened to something which Mr. Meadows called G.R.D.'s, which had evidently been at the root of the trouble; but there her grasp of high finance ended.
Sybil, however, was not exigent. She brightened at Ruth's words as if they had been an authoritative pronouncement from an expert.
“Bailey is sure to do right,” she said. “I think I'll creep in and see if he's still asleep.”
Ruth, left alone on the porch, fell into a pleasant train of thought.  She wondered if anybody had ever received the announcement of financial ruin in quite the same way before. Yet to her this attitude seemed the only one possible.
How simple everything was now! She could go to Kirk and, as she had said to Sybil, start again. The golden barrier between them had vanished. One day had wiped out all the wretchedness of the last year. They were back where they had started, with all the accumulated experience of those twelve months to help them steer their little ship clear of the rocks on its new voyage.
* * * * *
She was roused from her dream by the sound of an automobile drawing up at the door. A voice that she recognised called her name. She went quickly down the steps.
“Is that you, Aunt Lora?”
Mrs. Porter, masterly woman, never wasted time in useless chatter.
“Jump in, my dear,” she said crisply. “Your husband has stolen William and eloped with that girl Mamie (whom I never trusted) to Connecticut.”
Steve had arrived at the Connecticut shack in the early dawn of the day which had been so eventful to most of his friends and acquaintances. William Bannister's interest in the drive, at first acute, had ceased after the first five miles, and he had passed the remainder of the journey in a sound sleep from which the stopping of the car did not awaken him.
Steve jumped down and stretched himself. There was a wonderful freshness in the air which made him forget for a moment his desire for repose. He looked about him, breathing deep draughts of its coolness. The robins which, though not so well advertised, rise just as punctually as the lark, were beginning to sing as they made their simple toilets before setting out to attend to the early worm. The sky to the east was a delicate blend of pinks and greens and yellows, with a hint of blue behind the grey which was still the prevailing note.
A vaguely sentimental mood came upon Steve. In his heart he knew perfectly well that he could never be happy for any length of time out of sight and hearing of Broadway cars; but at that moment, such was the magic of the dawn, he felt a longing to settle down in the country and pass the rest of his days a simple farmer with beard unchecked by razor. He saw himself feeding the chickens and addressing the pigs by their pet names, while Mamie, in a cotton frock, called cheerfully to him to come in because breakfast was ready and getting cold.
Mamie! Ah!
His sigh turned into a yawn. He realized with the abruptness which comes to a man who stands alone with nature in the small hours that he was very sleepy. The excitement which had sustained him till now had begun to ebb. The free life of the bearded farmer seemed suddenly less attractive. Bed was what he wanted now, not nature.
He opened the door of the car and lifted William Bannister out, swathed in rugs. The White Hope gurgled drowsily, but did not wake. Steve carried him on to the porch and laid him down. Then he turned his attention to the problem of effecting an entry.
Once an honest man has taken to amateur burgling he soon picks up the tricks of it. To open his knife and shoot back the catch of the nearest window was with Steve the work, if not of a moment, of a very few minutes. He climbed in and unlocked the front door. Then he carried his young charge into the sitting-room and laid him down on a chair, a step nearer his ultimate destination—bed.
Steve's faculties were rapidly becoming numb with approaching sleep, but he roused himself to face certain details of the country life which till now had escaped him. His earnest concentration on the main plank of his platform, the spiriting away of William Bannister, had caused him to overlook the fact that no preparations had been made to welcome him on his arrival at his destination. He had treated the shack as if it had been a summer hotel, where he could walk in and engage a room. It now struck him that there was much to be attended to before he could, as he put it to himself, hit the hay. There was the White Hope's bed to be made, and, by the way of a preliminary to that, sheets must be found and blankets, not to mention pillows.
Yawning wearily he set out on his search.
He found sheets, but mistrusted them. They might or might not be perfectly dry. He did not care to risk his godson's valuable health in the experiment. A hazy notion that blankets were always safe restored his spirits, and he became cheerful on reflecting that a child with William Bannister's gift for sleep would not be likely to notice the absence of linen in his bed.
The couch which he finally passed adequate would have caused Lora Delane Porter's hair to stand erect, but it satisfied Steve. He went downstairs, and, returning with William Bannister, placed him carefully on it and tucked him in. The White Hope slept on.
Having assured himself that all was well, Steve made up a similar nest for himself, and, removing his coat and shoes, crawled under the blankets. Five minutes later rhythmical snores proclaimed the fact that nature had triumphed over all the discomforts of one of the worst-made beds in Connecticut.
* * * * *
The sun was high when Steve woke. He rose stiffly and went into the other room. William Bannister still slept.
Steve regarded him admiringly.
“For the dormouse act,” he mused, “that kid certainly stands alone. You got to hand it to him.”
An aching void within him called his mind to the question of breakfast. It began to come home to him that he had not planned out this expedition with that thoroughness which marks the great general.
“I guess I'll have to get out to the nearest village in the bubble,” he said. “And while I'm there maybe I'd better send Kirk a wire. And I reckon I'll have to take the kid. If he wakes up and finds me gone he'll throw fits. Up you get, squire.”
He kneaded the recumbent form of his godson with a large hand until he had massaged out of him the last remains of his great sleep. It took some time, but it was effective. The White Hope sat up, full of life and energy. He inspected Steve gravely for a moment, endeavouring to place him.
“Hello, Steve,” he said at length.
“Hello, kid.”
“Where am I?”
“In the country. In Connecticut.”
“What's 'Necticut?”
“This is. Where we are.”
“Where are we?”
“Here. In Connecticut.”
“Why?”
Steve raised a protesting hand.
“Not so early in the day, kid; not before breakfast,” he pleaded. “Honest, I'm not strong enough. It ain't as if we was a vaudeville team that had got to rehearse.”
“What's rehearse?”
Steve changed the subject.
“Say, kid, ain't you feeling like you could bite into something? I got an emptiness inside me as big as all outdoors. How about a mouthful of cereal and a shirred egg? Now, for the love of Mike,” he went on quickly, as his godson opened his mouth to speak, “don't say 'What's shirred?' It's something you do to eggs. It's one way of fixing 'em.”
“What's fixing?” inquired William Bannister brightly.
Steve sighed. When he spoke he was calm, but determined.
“That'll be all the dialogue for the present,” he said.  Get a move on you, and I'll take you out in the bubble—the automobile, the car, the chug-chug wagon, the thing we came here in, if you want to know what bubble is—and we'll scare up some breakfast.”
Steve's ignorance of the locality in which he found himself was complete; but he had a general impression that farmers as a class were people who delighted in providing breakfasts for the needy, if the needy possessed the necessary price. Acting on this assumption, he postponed his trip to the nearest town and drove slowly along the roads with his eyes open for signs of life.
He found a suitable farm and, applying the brakes, gathered up William Bannister and knocked at the door.
His surmise as to the hospitality of farmers proved correct, and presently they were sitting down to a breakfast which it did his famished soul good to contemplate.
William Bannister seemed less enthusiastic. Steve, having disposed of two eggs in quick succession, turned to see how his young charge was progressing with his repast, and found him eyeing a bowl of bread-and-milk in a sort of frozen horror.
“What's the matter, kid?” he asked. “Get busy.”
“No paper,” said William Bannister.
“For the love of Pete! Do you expect your morning paper out in the woods?”
“No paper,” repeated the White Hope firmly.
Steve regarded him thoughtfully.
“I didn't have this trip planned out right,” he said regretfully. “I ought to have got Mamie to come along. I bet a hundred dollars she would have got next to your meanings in a second. I pass. What's your kick, anyway? What's all this about paper?”
“Aunty Lora says not to eat bread that doesn't come wrapped up in paper,” said the White Hope, becoming surprisingly lucid. “Mamie undoes it out of crinkly paper.”
“I get you. They feed you rolls at home wrapped up in tissue-paper, is that it?”
“What's tissue?”
“Same as crinkly. Well, see here. You remember what we was talking about last night about germs?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that's one thing germs never do, eat bread out of crinkly paper. You want to forget all the dope they shot into you back in New York and start fresh.  If you're going to be a regular germ, what you've got to do is to wrap yourself round that bread-and-milk the quickest you can. Get me? Till you do that we can't begin to start out to have a good time.”
William Bannister made no more objections. He attacked his meal with an easy conscience, and about a quarter of an hour later leaned back with a deep sigh of repletion.
Steve, meanwhile had entered into conversation with the lady of the house.
“Say, I guess you ain't got a kid of your own anywheres, have you?”
“Sure I have,” said the hostess proudly. “He's out in the field with his pop this minute. His name's Jim.”
“Fine. I want to get hold of a kid to play with this kid here. Jim sounds pretty good to me. About the same age as this one?”
“For the Lord's sake! Jim's eighteen and weighs two hundred pounds.”
“Cut out Jim. I thought from the way you spoke he was a regular kid. Know any one in these parts who's got something about the same weight as this one?”
The farmer's wife reflected.
“Kids is pretty scarce round here,” she said. “I reckon you won't get one that I knows of. There's that Tom Whiting, but he's a bad boy. He ain't been raised right.”
“What's the matter with him?”
“I don't want to speak harm of no one, but his father used to be a low prize-fighter, and you know what they are.”
Steve nodded sympathetically.
“Regular plug-uglies,” he said. “A friend of mine used to have to mix with them quite a lot, poor fellah! He used to say they was none of them truly refined. And this kid takes after his pop, eh? Kind of scrappy kid, is that it?”
“He's a bad boy.”
“Well, maybe I'd better look him over, just in case. Where's he to be found?”
“They live in the cottage by the big house you can see through them trees. His pop looks after Mr. Wilson's prize dawgs. That's his job.”
“What's Wilson?” asked the White Hope, coming out of his stupor.
“You beat me to it by a second, kid. I was just going to ask it myself.”
“He's one of them rich New Yawkers. He has his summer place here, and this Whiting looks after his prize dawgs.”
“Well, I guess I'll give him a call. It's going to be lonesome for my kid if he ain't got some one to show him how to hit it up. He's not used to country life. Come along. We'll get into the bubble and go and send your pop a telegram.”
“What's telegram?” asked William Bannister.
“I got you placed now,” said Steve, regarding him with interest. “You're not going to turn into an ambassador or an artist or any of them things.
It was past seven o'clock when Kirk, bending over the wheel, with Mamie at his side came in sight of the shack. The journey had been checked just outside the city by a blow-out in one of the back tyres. Kirk had spent the time, while the shirt-sleeved rescuer from the garage toiled over the injured wheel, walking up and down with a cigar. Neither he nor Mamie had shown much tendency towards conversation. Mamie was habitually of a silent disposition, and Kirk's mind was too full of his thoughts to admit of speech.
Ever since he had read Steve's telegram he had been in the grip of a wild exhilaration. He had not stopped to ask himself what this mad freak of Steve's could possibly lead to in the end—he was satisfied to feel that its immediate result would be that for a brief while, at any rate, he would have his son to himself, away from all the chilling surroundings which had curbed him and frozen his natural feelings in the past.
He tried to keep his mind from dwelling upon Ruth. He had thought too much of her of late for his comfort. Since they had parted that day of the thunder-storm the thought that he had lost her had stabbed him incessantly. He had tried to tell himself that it was the best thing they could do, to separate, since it was so plain that their love had died; but he could not cheat himself into believing it.
It might be true in her case—it must be, or why had she let him go that afternoon?—but, for himself, the separation had taught him that he loved her as much as ever, more than ever. Absence had purified him of that dull anger which had been his so short a while before. He looked back and marvelled that he could ever have imagined for a moment that he had ceased to love her.
Now, as he drove along the empty country roads, he forced his mind to dwell, as far as he could, only upon his son. There was a mist before his eyes as he thought of him. What a bully lad he had been! What fun they had had in the old days! But that brought his mind back to Ruth, and he turned his mind resolutely to the future again.
He chuckled silently as he thought of Steve. Of all the mad things to do! What had made him think of it? How had such a wild scheme ever entered his head? This, he supposed, was what Steve called punching instead of sparring. But he had never given him credit for the imagination that could conceive a punch of this magnitude.
And how had he carried it out? He could hardly have broken into the house. Yet that seemed the only way in which it could have been done.
From Steve his thoughts returned to William Bannister. He smiled again.  The worst of it was, it could not last long. To-morrow, he supposed, he would have to take the child back to his home. He could not be a party to this kidnapping raid for any length of time. This must be looked on as a brief holiday, not as a permanent relief.
That was the only flaw in his happiness as he stopped the car at the door of the shack, for by now he had succeeded at last in thrusting the image of Ruth from his mind.
There was a light in the ground-floor window. He raised his head and shouted:
“Steve!”
The door opened.
“Hello, Kirk. That you? Come along in. You're just in time for the main performance.”
He caught sight of Mamie standing beside Kirk.
“Who's that?” he cried. For a moment he thought it was Ruth, and his honest heart leaped at the thought that his scheme had worked already and brought Kirk and her together again.
“It's me, Steve,” said Mamie in her small voice. And Steve, as he heard it, was seized with the first real qualm he had had since he had embarked upon his great adventure.
As Kirk had endeavoured temporarily to forget Ruth, so had he tried not to think of Mamie. It was the only thing he was ashamed of in the whole affair, the shock he must have given her.
“Hello, Mamie,” he said sheepishly, and paused. Words did not come readily to him.
Mamie entered the house without speaking. It seemed to Steve that invective would have been better than this ominous silence. He looked ruefully at her retreating back and turned to greet Kirk.
“You're mighty late,” he said.
“I only got your telegram toward the end of the afternoon. I had been away all day. I came here as fast as I could hit it up directly I read it. We had a blow-out, and that delayed us.”
Steve ventured a question.
“Say, Kirk, why 'us,' while we're talking of it? How does Mamie come to be here?”
“She insisted on coming. It seems that everybody in the house was away to-day, so she tells me, so she came round to me with your note.”
“I guess this has put me in pretty bad with Mamie,” observed Steve regretfully. “Has she been knocking me on the trip?”
“Not a word.”
Steve brightened, but became subdued again next moment.
“I guess she's just saving it,” he said resignedly.
“Steve, what made you do it?”
“Oh, I reckoned you could do with having the kid to yourself for a spell,” said Steve awkwardly.
“You're all right, Steve. But how did you manage it? I shouldn't have thought it possible.”
“Oh, it wasn't so hard, that part. I just hid in the house, and—but say, let's forget it; it makes me feel kind of mean, somehow. It seems to me I may have lost Mamie her job. It's mighty hard to do the right thing by every one in this world, ain't it? Come along in and see the kid. He's great. Are you feeling ready for supper? Him and me was just going to start.”
It occurred to Kirk for the first time that he was hungry.
“Have you got anything to eat, Steve?”
Steve brightened again.
“Have we?” he said. “We've got everything there is in Connecticut! Why, say, we're celebrating. This is our big day. Know what's happened? Why—”
He stopped short, as if somebody had choked him. They had gone into the sitting-room while he was speaking. The table was laid for supper. A chafing-dish stood at one end, and the remainder of the available space was filled with a collection of foods, from cold chicken to candy, which did credit to Steve's imagination.
But it was not the sight of these that checked his flow of speech. It was the look on Mamie's face as he caught sight of it in the lamplight. The White Hope was sitting at the table in the attitude of one who has heard the gong and is anxious to begin; while Mamie, bending over him, raised her head as the two men entered and fixed Steve with a baleful stare.

There was no doubt about the scratch. It was a long, angry red line running from temple to chin. The White Hope, becoming conscious of the fact that the attention of the public was upon him, and diagnosing the cause, volunteered an explanation.
“Bad boy,” he said, and looked meaningly again at the candy.
“What does he mean by 'bad boy'?”
“Just what he says, Mamie, honest.
Steve's enthusiasm overcame his sense of guilt. He uttered a whoop.
“Letting him! Gee! Listen to her! Why, say, that kid don't have to be let! He's a scrapper from Swatville-on-the-Bingle. Honest! That's what all this food is about. We're celebrating. This is a little supper given in his honour by a few of his admirers and backers, meaning me. Why, say, Kirk, that kid of yours is just the greatest thing that ever happened. Get that chafing-dish going and I'll tell you all about it.”
“How did he come by that scratch?” said Mamie, coldly sticking to her point.
“I'll tell you quick enough. But let's start in on the eats first. You wouldn't keep a coming champ waiting for his grub, would you? Look how he's lamping that candy.”
“Were you going to let the poor mite stuff himself with candy, Steve Dingle?”
“Sure. Whatever he says goes. He owns the joint after this afternoon.”
Mamie swiftly removed the unwholesome delicacy.
“The idea!”
Kirk was busying himself with the chafing-dish.
“What have you got in here, Steve?”
“Lobster, colonel. I had to do thirty miles to get it, too.”
Mamie looked at him fixedly.
“Were you going to feed lobster to this child?” she asked with ominous calm. “Were you intending to put him to bed full of broiled lobster and marshmallows?”
“Nix on the rough stuff, Mamie,” pleaded the embarrassed pugilist. “How was I to know what kids feed on? And maybe he would have passed up the lobster at that and stuck to the sardines.”
“Sardines!”
“Ain't kids allowed sardines?” said Steve anxiously. “The guy at the store told me they were wholesome and nourishing. It looked to me as if that ought to hit young Fitzsimmons about right. What's the matter with them?”
“A little bread-and-milk is all that he ever has before he goes to bed.”
Steve detected a flaw in this and hastened to make his point.
“Sure,” he said, “but he don't win the bantam-weight champeenship of Connecticut every night.”
“Is that what he's done to-day, Steve?” asked Kirk.
“It certainly is. Ain't I telling you?”
“That's the trouble. You're not. You and Mamie seem to be having a discussion about the nourishing properties of sardines and lobster. What has been happening this afternoon?”
“Bad boy,” remarked William Bannister with his mouth full.
“That's right,” said Steve. “That's it in a nutshell. Say, it was this way. It seemed to me that, having no kid of his own age to play around with, his nibs was apt to get lonesome, so I asked about and found that there was a guy of the name of Whiting living near here who had a kid of the same age or thereabouts. Maybe you remember him? He used to fight at the feather-weight limit some time back. Called himself Young O'Brien. He was a pretty good scrapper in his time, and now he's up here looking after some gent's prize dogs.
“Well, I goes to him and borrows his kid. He's a scrappy sort of kid at that and weighs ten pounds more than his nibs; but I reckoned he'd have to do, and I thought I could stay around and part 'em if they got to mixing it.”
Mamie uttered an indignant exclamation, but Kirk's eyes were gleaming proudly.
“Well?” he said.
Steve swallowed lobster and resumed.
“Well, you know how it is. You meet a guy who's been in the same line of business as yourself and you find you've got a heap to talk about. I'd never happened across the gink Whiting, but I knew of him, and, of course, he'd heard of me, and we got to discussing things. I seen him lose on a foul to Tommy King in the eighteenth round out in Los Angeles, and that kept us busy talking, him having it that he hadn't gone within a mile of fouling Tommy and me saying I'd been in a ring-seat and had the goods on him same as if I'd taken a snap-shot. Well, we was both getting pretty hot under the collar about it when suddenly there's the blazes of a noise behind us, and there's the two kids scrapping all over the lot. The Whiting kid had started it, mind you, and him ten pounds heavier than Bill, and tough, too.”
The White Hope confirmed this.
“Bad boy,” he remarked, and with a deep breath resumed excavating work on a grapefruit.
“Well, I was just making a jump to separate them when this Whiting gook says, 'Betcha a dollar my kid wins!' and before I knew what I was doing I'd taken him. It wasn't that that stopped me, though. It was his saying that his kid took after his dad and could eat up anything of his own age in America. Well, darn it, could I take that from a slob of a mixed-ale scrapper when it was handed out at the finest kid that ever came from New York?”
“Of course not,” said Kirk indignantly, and even Mamie forbore to criticize. She bent over the White Hope and gave his grapefruit-stained cheek a kiss.
“Well, I should say not!” cried Steve. “I just hollered to his nibs, 'Soak it to him, kid! for the honour of No. 99'; and, believe me, the young bear-cat sort of gathered himself together, winked at me, and began to hammer the stuffing out of the scrappy kid. Say, there wasn't no sterilized stuff about his work. You were a regular germ, all right, weren't you squire?”
“Germ,” agreed the White Hope. He spoke drowsily.
“Gee!” Steve resumed his saga in a whirl of enthusiasm. “Gee! if they're right to start with, if they're born right, if they've got the grit in them, you can't sterilize it out of 'em if you use up half the germ-killer in the country. From the way that kid acted you'd have thought he'd been spending the last year in a training-camp. The other kid rolled him over, but he come up again as if that was just the sort of stuff he liked, and pretty soon I see that he's uncovered a yellow streak in the Whiting kid as big as a barn door. You were on it, weren't you, colonel?”
But the White Hope had no remarks to offer this time. His head had fallen forward and was resting peacefully in his grapefruit.
“He's asleep,” said Mamie.
She picked him up gently and carried him out.
“He's a champeen at that too,” said Steve. “I had to pull him out of the hay this morning. Well, I guess he's earned it. He's had a busy day.”
“What happened then, Steve?”
“Why, after that there wasn't a thing to it. Whiting, poor simp, couldn't see it. 'Betcha ten dollars my kid wins,' he hollers. 'He's got him going.' 'Take you,' I shouts; and at that moment the scrappy kid sees it's all over, so he does the old business of fouling, same as his pop done when he fought Tommy King. It's in the blood, I guess. He takes and scratches poor Bill on the cheek.”
“That was enough for me. I jumps in. 'All over,' I says. 'My kid wins on a foul.' 'Foul nothing,' says Whiting. 'It was an accident, and you lose because you jumped into the fight, same as Connie McVey did when Corbett fought Sharkey. Think you can get away with it, pulling that old-time stuff?' I didn't trouble to argue with him. 'Oh,' I says, 'is that it? Say, just take a slant at your man. If you don't stop him quick he'll be in Texas.'
“For the scrappy kid was beating it while the going was good and was half a mile away, running hard. Well, that was enough even for the Whiting guy. 'I guess we'll call it a draw,' he says, 'and all bets off.' I just looks at him and says, quite civil and polite: 'You darned half-baked slob of a rough-house scrapper,' I says, 'it ain't a draw or anything like it. My kid wins, and I'll trouble you now to proceed to cash in with the dough, or else I'm liable to start something.' So he paid up, and I took the White Hope indoors and give him a wash and brush-up, and we cranks up the bubble and hikes off to the town and spends the money on getting food for the celebration supper. And what's over I slips into the kid's pocket and says: 'That's your first winner's end, kid, and you've earned it.'“
Steve paused and filled his glass.
“I'm on the waggon as a general thing nowadays,” he said; “but I reckon this an occasion. Right here is where we drink his health.”
And, overcome by his emotion, he burst into discordant song.
“Fo-or he's a jolly good fellow,” bellowed Steve. “For he's a jolly good fellow. For he's—”
There was a sound of quick footsteps outside, and Mamie entered the room like a small whirlwind.
“Be quiet!” she cried. “Do you want to wake him?”
“Wake him?” said Steve. “You can't wake that kid with dynamite.”
He raised his glass.
“Ladeez'n gentlemen, the boy wonder! Here's to him! The bantam-weight champeen of Connecticut. The Sixty-First Street Cyclone! The kid they couldn't sterilize! The White Hope!”
“The White Hope!” echoed Kirk.
“Fo-or he's a jolly good fellow—” sang Steve.
“Be quiet!” said Mrs. Porter from the doorway, and Steve, wheeling round, caught her eye and collapsed like a pricked balloon.
Of the little band of revellers it would be hard to say which was the most taken aback at this invasion. The excitement of the moment had kept them from hearing the sound of the automobile which Mrs. Porter, mistrusting the rough road that led to the shack, had stopped some distance away.
Perhaps, on the whole, Kirk was more surprised than either of his companions. Their guilty consciences had never been quite free from the idea of the possibility of pursuit; but Kirk, having gathered from Mamie that neither Ruth nor her aunt was aware of what had happened, had counted upon remaining undisturbed till the time for return came on the morrow.
He stood staring at Ruth, who had followed Mrs. Porter into the room.
Mrs. Porter took charge of the situation. She was in her element. She stood with one hand resting on the table as if she were about to make an after-dinner speech—as indeed she was.
Lora Delane Porter was not dissatisfied with the turn events had taken. On the whole, perhaps, it might be said that she was pleased. She intended, when she began to speak, to pulverize Kirk and the abandoned young woman whom he had selected as his partner in his shameful escapade, but in this she was swayed almost entirely by a regard for abstract morality.
As concerned Ruth, she felt that the situation was, on the whole, the best thing that could have happened. To her Napoleonic mind, which took little account of the softer emotions, concerning itself entirely with the future of the race, Kirk had played his part and was now lagging superfluous on the stage. His tendency, she felt, was to retard rather than to assist William Bannister's development. His influence, such as it was, clashed with hers. She did not forget that there had been a time when Ruth, having practically to choose between them, had chosen to go Kirk's way and had abandoned herself to a life which could only be considered unhygienic and retrograde. Her defeat in the matter of Whiskers, the microbe-harbouring dog from Ireland, still rankled.
It was true that in what might be called the return match she had utterly routed Kirk; but until this moment she had always been aware of him as an opponent who might have to be reckoned with. She was quite convinced that it would be in the best interests of everybody, especially of William Bannister, if he could be eliminated. There were signs of human weakness in Ruth which sometimes made her uneasy. Ruth, she told herself, might “bear the torch,” but when it came to “not faltering” she was less certain of her.
Ruth, it was true, had behaved admirably in the matter of the upbringing of William from the moment of her conversion till now, but might she not at any moment become a backslider and fill the white-tiled nursery with abominable long-haired dogs? Most certainly she might. In a woman who had once been a long-haired dogist there are always possibilities of a relapse into long-haired dogism, just as in a converted cannibal there are always possibilities of a return to the gods of wood and stone and the disposition to look on his fellow-man purely in the light of breakfast-food.
For these reasons Mrs. Porter was determined to push home her present advantage, to wipe Kirk off the map as an influence in Ruth's life. It was her intention, having recovered William Bannister and bathed him from head to foot in a weak solution of boric acid, to stand over Ruth while she obtained a divorce. That done, she would be in a position to defy Kirk and all his antagonistic views on the subject of the hygienic upbringing of children.
She rapped the table and prepared to speak.
Even a Napoleon, however, may err from lack of sufficient information; and there was a flaw in her position of which she was unaware. From the beginning of the drive to the end of it Ruth had hardly spoken a word, and Mrs. Porter, in consequence, was still in ignorance of what had been happening that day in Wall Street and the effect of these happenings on her niece's outlook on life. Could she have known it, the silent girl beside her had already suffered the relapse which she had feared as a remote possibility.
Ruth's mind during that drive had been in a confusion of regrets and doubts and hopes. There were times when she refused absolutely to believe the story of Kirk's baseness which her aunt poured into her ear during the first miles of the journey. It was absurd and incredible. Yet, as they raced along the dark roads, doubt came to her and would not be driven out.
A single unfortunate phrase of Kirk's, spoken in haste, but remembered at leisure, formed the basis of this uncertainty.  Could it be that Mamie's undeviating devotion to the boy had won the love which she had lost? It was possible. Considered in the light of what Mrs. Porter had told her, it seemed, in her blackest moments, certain.
She knew how wrapped up in the boy Kirk had been. Was it not a logical outcome of his estrangement from herself that he should have turned for consolation to the one person in sympathy with him in his great love for his child?
She tried to read his face as he stood looking at her now, but she could find no hope in it. The eyes that met hers were cold and expressionless.
Mrs. Porter rapped the table a second time.
“Mr. Winfield,” she said in the metallic voice with which she was wont to cow publishers insufficiently equipped with dash and enterprise in the matter of advertising treatises on the future of the race, “I have no doubt you are surprised to see us. You appear to be looking your wife in the face. It speaks well for your courage but badly for your sense of shame. If you had the remnants of decent feeling in you, you would be physically incapable of the feat. If you would care to know how your conduct strikes an unprejudiced spectator, I may tell you that I consider you a scoundrel of the worst type and unfit to associate with any but the low company in which I find you.”
Steve, who had been listening with interest, and indeed, a certain relish while Kirk was, as he put it to himself, “getting his” in this spirited fashion, started at the concluding words of the address, which, in his opinion, seemed slightly personal. He had long ago made up his mind that Lora Delane Porter, though an entertaining woman and, on the whole, more worth while than a moving-picture show, was quite mad; but, he felt, even lunatics ought to realize that there is a limit to what they may say.
He moaned protestingly, and rashly, for he drew the speaker's attention upon himself.
“This person,” went on Mrs. Porter, indicating Steve with a wave of her hand which caused him to sidestep swiftly and throw up an arm, as had been his habit in the ring when Battling Dick or Fighting Jack endeavoured to blot him out with a right swing, “who, I observe, retains the tattered relics of a conscience, seeing that he winces, you employed to do the only dangerous part of your dirty work. I hope he will see that he gets his money. In his place I should be feeling uneasy.”
“Ma'am!” protested Steve.
Mrs. Porter silenced him with a gesture.
“Be quiet!” she said.
Steve was quiet.
Mrs. Porter returned to Kirk.
Of all her burning words, Kirk had not heard one. His eyes had never left Ruth's. Like her, he was trying to read a message from a face that seemed only cold. In this crisis of their two lives he had no thought for anybody but her. He had a sense of great issues, of being on the verge of the tremendous; but his brain felt numbed and heavy. He could not think. He could see nothing except her eyes.
His inattention seemed to communicate itself to Mrs. Porter. She rapped imperatively upon the table for the third time. The report galvanized Steve, as, earlier in the day, a similar report had galvanized Mr. Penway; but Kirk did not move.
“Mr. Winfield!”
Still Kirk made no sign that he had heard her. It was discouraging, but Lora Delane Porter was not made of the stuff that yields readily to discouragement. She resumed:
“As for this wretched girl”—she indicated the silent Mamie with a wave of her hand—“this abandoned creature whom you have led astray, this shameless partner of your——”
“Say!”
The exclamation came from Steve, and it stopped Mrs. Porter like a bullet. To her this interruption from one whom she had fallen upon and wiped out resembled a voice from the tomb. She was not accustomed to having her victims rise up and cut sharply, even peremptorily, into the flow of her speech. Macbeth, confronted by the ghost of Banquo, may have been a little more taken aback, but not much.
She endeavoured to quell Steve with a glance, but it was instantly apparent that he was immune for the time being to quelling glances. His brown eyes were fixed upon her in a cold stare which she found arresting and charged with menace. His chin protruded and his upper lip was entirely concealed behind its fellow in a most uncomfortable manner.
She had never had the privilege of seeing Steve in the active exercise of his late profession, or she would have recognized the look. It was the one which proclaims the state of mind commonly known as “being fighting mad,” and in other days had usually heralded a knock-out for some too persistent opponent.
“Say, ma'am, you want to cut that out. That line of talk don't go.”
Great is the magic of love that can restore a man in an instant of time from being an obsequious wreck to a thing of fire and resolution. A moment before Steve's only immediate object in life had been to stay quiet and keep out of the way as much as possible. He had never been a man of ready speech in the presence of an angry woman; words intimidated him as blows never did, especially the whirl of words which were at Lora Delane Porter's command in moments of emotion.
But this sudden onslaught upon Mamie, innocent Mamie who had done nothing to anybody, scattered his embarrassment and filled him with much the same spirit which sent bantam-weight knights up against heavy-weight dragons in the Middle Ages. He felt inspired.
“Nix on the 'abandoned creature,'“ he said with dignity. “You're on the wrong wire! This here lady is my affianced wife!”
He went to Mamie and, putting his arm round her waist, pressed her to him. He was conscious, as he did so, of a sensation of wonderment at himself. This was the attitude he had dreamed of a thousand times and had been afraid to assume. For the last three years he had been picturing himself in precisely this position, and daily had cursed the lack of nerve which had held him back. Yet here he was, and it had all happened in a moment.
“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Porter.
“Sure thing,” said Steve. His coolness, the ease with which he found words astonished him as much as his rapidity of action.
“I stole the kid,” he said, “and it was my idea at that. Kirk didn't know anything about it. I wired to him to-day what I had done and that he was to come right along. And,” added Steve in a burst of inspiration, “I said bring along Mamie, too, as the kid's used to her and there ought to be a woman around. And she could be here, all right, and no harm, she being my affianced wife.” He liked that phrase. He had read it in a book somewhere, and it was the goods.
He eyed Mrs. Porter jauntily. Mrs. Porter's gaze wavered. She was not feeling comfortable. Hers was a nature that did not lend itself easily to apologies, yet apologies were obviously what the situation demanded. The thought of all the eloquence which she had expended to no end added to her discomfort. For the first time she was pleased that Kirk had so manifestly not been listening to a word of it.
“Oh!” she said.
She paused.
“That puts a different complexion on this affair.”
“Betcha life!”
She paused once more. It was some moments before she could bring herself to speak. She managed it at last.
“I beg your pardon,” she said.
“Mine, ma'am?” said Steve grandly. Five minutes before, the idea that he could ever speak grandly to Lora Delane Porter would have seemed ridiculous to him; but he was surprised at nothing now.
“And the young wom——And the future Mrs. Dingle's,” said Mrs. Porter with an effort.

Steve had started to follow her when Mrs. Porter, magnificent woman, snatching what was left from defeat, stopped him.
“Wait!” she said. “What you have said alters the matter in one respect; but there is another point. On your own confession you have been guilty of the extremely serious offence, the penal offence of kidnapping a child who—”
“Drop me a line about it, ma'am,” said Steve. “Me time's rather full just now.”
He disappeared into the outer darkness after Mamie.
* * * * *
In the room they had left, Kirk and Ruth faced each other in silence. Lora Delane Porter eyed them grimly. It was the hour of her defeat, and she knew it. Forces too strong for her were at work. Her grand attack, the bringing of these two together that Ruth might confront Kirk in his guilt, had recoiled upon her. The Old Guard had made their charge up the hill, and it had failed. Victory had become a rout. With one speech Steve had destroyed her whole plan of campaign.
She knew it was all over, that in another moment if she remained, she would be compelled to witness the humiliating spectacle of Ruth in Kirk's arms, stammering the words which intuition told her were even now trembling on her lips. She knew Ruth. She could read her like a primer. And her knowledge told her that she was about to capitulate, that all her pride and resentment had been swept away, that she had gone over to the enemy.
Elemental passions were warring against Lora Delane Porter, and she bowed before them.
“Mr.  I seem to have made a mistake. Good night.”
Kirk did not answer.
“Good night, Ruth.”
Ruth made no sign that she had heard.
Mrs. Porter, grand in defeat, moved slowly to the door.
But even in the greatest women there is that germ of feminine curiosity which cannot be wholly eliminated, that little grain of dust that asserts itself and clogs the machinery. It had been Mrs. Porter's intention to leave the room without a glance, her back defiantly toward the foe. But, as she reached the door, there came from behind her a sound of movement, a stifled cry, a little sound whose meaning she knew too well.
She hesitated. She stood still, fighting herself. But the grain of dust had done its work. For an instant she ceased to be a smoothly working machine and became a woman subject to the dictates of impulse.
She turned.
Intuition had not deceived her. Ruth had gone over to the enemy. She was in Kirk's arms, holding him to her, her face hidden against his shoulder, for all the world as if Lora Delane Porter, her guiding force, had ceased to exist.
Mrs. Porter closed the door and walked stiffly through the scented night to where the headlights of her automobile cleft the darkness. Birds, asleep in the trees, fluttered uneasily at the sudden throbbing of the engine.
The White Hope slept. The noise of the departing car, which had roused the birds, had made no impression on him. As Steve had said, dynamite could not do it. He slumbered on, calmly detached, unaware of the remarkable changes which, in the past twenty-four hours, had taken place in his life. An epoch had ended and a new one begun, but he knew it not.
And probably, if Kirk and Ruth, who were standing at his bedside, watching him, had roused him and informed him of these facts, he would have displayed little excitement. He had the philosophical temperament. He took things as they came. Great natural phenomena, like Lora Delane Porter, he accepted as part of life. When they were in his life, he endured them stoically. When they went out of it, he got on without them. Marcus Aurelius would have liked William Bannister Winfield. They belonged to the same school of thought.
The years have a tendency to destroy this placidity towards life and to develop in man a sense of gratitude to fate for its occasional kindnesses; and Kirk, having been in the world longer than William Bannister, did not take the gifts of the gods so much for granted. He was profoundly grateful for what had happened. That Lora Delane Porter should have retired from active interference with his concerns was much; but that he should have had the incredible good fortune to be freed from the burden of John Bannister's money was more.
If ever money was the root of all evil, this had been. It had come into his life like a poisonous blight, withering and destroying wherever it touched. It had changed Ruth; it had changed William Bannister; it had changed himself; it was as if the spirit of the old man had lived on, hating him and working him mischief. He always had superstitious fear of it; and events had proved him right.
And now the cloud had rolled away. A few crowded hours of Bailey's dashing imbecility had removed the curse forever.
He was alone with Ruth and his son in a world that contained only them, just as in the old days of their happiness. There was something symbolic, something suggestive of the beginning of a new order of things, in their isolation at this very moment. Steve had gone. Only he and Ruth and the child were left.
The child—the White Hope—he was the real hero of the story, the real principal of the drama of their three lives. He was the link that bound them together, the force that worked for coherence and against chaos. He stood between them, his hands in theirs; and while he did so there could be no parting of the ways. His grip was light, but as strong as steel. Time would bring troubles, moods, misunderstandings, for they were both human; but, while that grip held, there could be no gulf dividing Ruth and himself, as it had divided them in the past.
He faced the future calmly, with open eyes. It would be rough going at first, very rough going. It meant hard work, incessant work. No more vague masterpieces which might or might not turn into “Carmen” or “The Spanish Maiden.” No more delightful idle days to be loafed through in the studio or the shops. No more dreams, seen hazily through the smoke of a cigar, as he lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling, of what he would do to-morrow. To-morrow must look after itself. His business was with the present and the work of the present.
He braced himself to the fight, confident of his power to win. He had found himself.
Bill stirred in his sleep and muttered. Ruth bent over him and kissed the honourable scratch on his cheek.
“Poor little chap! You'll wake up and find that you aren't a millionaire baby after all! I wonder if you'll mind. Kirk, do you mind?”
“Mind!”
“I don't,” said Ruth. “I think it will be rather fun being poor again.”
“Who's poor?” said Kirk stoutly. “I'm not. I've got you and I've got Bill. Do you remember—ages ago—what that Vince girl, the model, you know, said that her friend had called me? A plute. That's me. I'm the richest man in the world.”


I am a determined software engineer who has spent the last 3 years mastering coding languages and applying skills to art museum projects. Adept in a full-stack JavaScript and Python, I have a passion for developing innovative products with my technical skills and cross-functional insights from liberal arts academic background.
• Attract a wider pool of audience by establishing virtual museum spaces, designing digital storytelling, and integrating advanced technology like VR, AR, and 3D scanning/printing into museum spaces
• Accomplish the interaction design that fulfills needs and respects the dignity of disabled visitors
• Gain 5/5 satisfaction rate by tour guiding 20+ groups of visitors from public schools and elderly homes
• Improve the research efficiency and speed by digitizing paper-written indexes of 500+ objects in Caro Archive into an excel file and refining digitalized raw data through Open Refine and Gephi
• Enhanced the public safety of Yumli in Seoul by transforming street designs that accomplished 76% crime prevention effect, 83.3% local satisfaction rate, 13.6% decrease in families’ fear of crimes
• Induced strategies for user experience design of Lotte Omnichannel Service and designed course agenda of Service Strategic Planning Workshop for executive members of 19 Lotte Corp affiliates
• Acquired a collaborative research project for 40k sex assault victims in Seoul with Casa Internazionale Delle Donne and Telefono Rosa in Rome by initiating the search, contact, and visit of the institutions
• Trained and mobilized the riot police platoon and protected citizens at Seoul from 1.8 million protestors of Candlelight Revolution, the most massive protest in Korean history, that lasted 23 weeks
• Supervised security strategies of the US ambassador residences for 8 weeks with 100 police officers
• Monitored the bodyguard operation of the US President and North Korean Officer during their visits
• Awarded by Police Commissioner General for guiding the platoon safely during Supreme Court Riot
• Authored a 46,000-word user acceptance report on ‘GoCart,’ the auto-pilot distribution robot that transported specimens in Eulji Univ Hospital and served drinks at Pyeong Chang Winter Olympic
• Assembled market research data on the electric automobile business in the global market and assessed the Korean government’s response to the growing market in terms of the subsidy
• Promoted ‘Design Governance Project’ organized by the Seoul City Government by editing and translating the summary report of the project that helped winning IF Design Award in 2018
GPA: 3.51 | College Scholar | Dean's List
An intensive training course that strengthens full stack developing skills
The act of subscribing to YouTube carries important meanings to users. By subscribing to specific YouTubers, users feel like they are supporting them which they take pride of. When the YouTuber becomes more and more influential after you become a fan of him/her, users feel they have insights.
Check OutMetatron is a web novel platform for authors who want to share their works online. Users can upload novels that they wrote and receive likes or ratings by other users. Metatron is an application that attempts to suggest the future of online content market. At Metatron, anyone can become an auther.
Check OutThis project is a full-stack development project of Jungbin Oh and Jason Wong. Tindawg is a website that helps dog owners to find a match for their dogs. Users can upload information about their dogs on this page and receive requests from other dog owners.
Check OutThe project carries an ambition to integrate a card game with the computer player AI algorithm that plays specific roles according to the story. This game, therefore, includes the storyboard, secretive computer behaviors and hidden features that the player needs to find to win the game.
Check Out


--- layout: nb-post title: "IPython Parallel Introduction" author: John Dennison github: johnistan tags: [HPC, Python, IPython, Scientfic Computing, Parallel Computing] ---
NOTE: the code in this notebook is shown for better readability. To toggle on/off, click here.
The members of the Analytics Services team here at Activision are heavy users of Mesos and Marathon to deploy and manage services on our clusters. We are also huge fans of Python and the Jupyter project.
The Jupyter project was recently reorganized from IPython, in a move referred to as "the split": One part that was originally part of IPython (IPython.parallel
) was split off into a separate project ipyparallel. This powerful component of the IPython ecosystem is generally overlooked.
In this post I will give a quick introduction to the ipyparallel project and then introduce a new launcher we have open sourced to deploy IPython clusters into Mesos clusters. While we have published this notebook in HTML, please feel free to download the original to follow along.
The ipyparallel project is the new home of IPython.parallel module that was hosted within IPython core before 2015. The focus of the project is interactive cluster computing. This focus on interactive computing and first-class integration with the IPython project is a distinguishing feature. For a more complete dive into the internals of ipyparallel, please visit the docs. I aim to give the bare minimum to get you started.
At the most basic level an IPython cluster is a set of Python interpreters that can be accessed over TCP. Under the hood, it works similarly to how Jupyter/IPython work today. When you open a new notebook in the browser, a Python process (called a kernel) will be started to run the code you submit. ipyparallel does the same thing except instead of a single Python kernel, you can start many distributed kernels over many machines.
There are three main components to the stack.
The easiest way to get your hands dirty is to spin up a cluster locally. That is you will run a Client, Controller, and Engines all on your local machine. The hardest part of provisioning distributed clusters is making sure all the pieces can talk to each other (as usual the easiest solution to a distributed problem is to make it local).
Our team are users of conda to help manage our computational environments (Python and beyond). Here is a quick run through to get setup (our public conda recipes are here). A combination of pip and virtualenv will also work, but when you start installing packages from the scipy stack we find conda the easiest to use.
First find your version of Miniconda from here
If you're using linux these commands will work:
wget https://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-MacOSX-x86_64.sh
bash Miniconda-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh # follow prompts
conda update --all
# make a new python 3 env named py3
conda create -n py3 python=3 ipython ipyparallel ipython-notebook
source activate py3
While there are lower level commands to start and configure Controllers and Engines, the primary command you will use is ipcluster
. This is a helpful utility to start all the components and configure your local client. By default, it uses the LocalControllerLauncher
and the LocalEngineSetLauncher
which is exactly what we want to start.
Open a terminal install ipyparallel
and start a cluster.
(py3)➜ ipcluster start --n=4
2016-04-11 22:24:15.514 [IPClusterStart] Starting ipcluster with [daemon=False]
2016-04-11 22:24:15.515 [IPClusterStart] Creating pid file: /home/vagrant/.ipython/profile_default/pid/ipcluster.pid
2016-04-11 22:24:15.515 [IPClusterStart] Starting Controller with LocalControllerLauncher
2016-04-11 22:24:16.519 [IPClusterStart] Starting 2 Engines with LocalEngineSetLauncher
2016-04-11 22:24:46.633 [IPClusterStart] Engines appear to have started successfully
# You can also use the IPython magic shell command. but errors are harder to see and stopping the cluster can be janky.
!ipcluster start -n 4 --daemon
If started correctly we should now have four engines running on our local machine. Now to actually interact with them. First we need to import the client.
import ipyparallel as ipp
rc = ipp.Client()
rc.ids # list the ids of the engine the client can communicate with
The client has two primary way to farm out work to the engines. First is a direct view. This is used to apply the same work to all engines. To create a DirectView
just slice the client.
The second way is a LoadBalancedView
which we will cover later in the post.
dv = rc[:]
dv
With a direct view you can issue a function to execute within the context of that engine's Python process.
def get_engine_pid():
import os
return os.getpid()
dv.apply_sync(get_engine_pid)
This pattern is so common that ipyparallel provides a IPython magic function to execute a code cell to all engines: %%px
%%px
import os
os.getpid()
It is key to notice that the engines are fully running stateful Python interpreters. If you set a varible within %%px
code block, it will remain there.
%%px
foo = 'bar on pid {}'.format(os.getpid())
%%px
foo
The DirectView
object provides some syntactic sugar to help distributing data to each engine. First is dictionary style retrieval and assignment. First let's retrieve the value of foo
from each engine.
dv['foo']
Now we can overwrite it's its value.
dv['foo'] = 'bar'
dv['foo']
There are many cases where you don't want the same data on each machine, but rather you want to chuck an list and distribute each chunk to an engine. The DirectView
provides the .scatter
and the .gather
methods for this.
# start with a list of ids to work on
user_ids = list(range(1000))
dv.scatter('user_id_chunk', user_ids)
Notice that this method completed almost immediately and returned an AsyncResult
. All the methods we have used up to now have be blocking and synchronous. The scatter
method is aysnc. To turn this scatter into a blocking call we can chain a .get()
to the call.
dv.scatter('user_id_chunk', user_ids).get()
Now we have a variable on each engine that holds an equal amount of the original list.
%%px
print("Len", len(user_id_chunk))
print("Max", max(user_id_chunk))
Let's apply a simple function to each list. First, declare a function within each engine. The --local
flag also executes the code block in your local client. This is very useful to help debug your code.
%%px --local
def the_most_interesting_transformation_ever(user_id):
"""
This function is really interesting
"""
return "ID:{}".format(user_id * 3)
the_most_interesting_transformation_ever(1)
%%px
transformed_user_ids = list(map(the_most_interesting_transformation_ever, user_id_chunk))
Now we have 4 separate list of transformed ids. We want to stitch the disparate lists into one list on our local notebook. gather
is used for that.
all_transformed_user_ids = dv.gather('transformed_user_ids').get()
print(len(all_transformed_user_ids))
print(all_transformed_user_ids[0:10])
Obviously, this example is contrived. The serialization cost of shipping Python objects over the wire to each engine is more expensive than the calculation we performed. This tradeoff between serialization/transport vs computation cost is central to any decision to use distributed processing. However, there are many highly parallelizable problems where this project can be extremely useful. Some of the main use cases we use ipyparallel for are hyperparameter searches and bulk loading/writing from storage systems.
The previous example where you scatter a list, perform a calculation, and then gather a result works for lots of problems. One issue with this approach is that each engine does an identical amount of work. If the complexity of the process each engine is performing is variable, this naive scheduling approach can waste processing power and time. Take for example this function:
%%px --local
import random
import time
def fake_external_io(url):
# Simulate variable complexity/latency
time.sleep(random.random())
return "HTML for URL: {}".format(url)
%time fake_external_io(1)
%time fake_external_io(1)
If you had a list of urls to scrape and gave each worker an equal share, some workers would finish early and have to sit around doing nothing. A better approach is to assign work to each engine as it finishes. This way the work will be load balanced over the cluster and you will complete your process earlier. ipyparallel provides the LoadBalancedView
for this exact use case. For this specific problem, threading or an async event loop would likely be a better approach to speeding up or scaling out, but suspend your disbelief for this exercise.
lview = rc.load_balanced_view()
lview
@lview.parallel()
@ipp.require('time', 'random')
def p_fake_external_io(url):
# Simulate variable complexity/latency
time.sleep(random.random())
return "HTML for URL: {}".format(url)
Here we used two ipyparallel decorators. First we used lview.parallel()
to declared this a parallel function. Second, we declared that this function depends on the modules time and random. Now that we have a load balanced function we can compare timings with our naive approach.
urls = ['foo{}.com'.format(i) for i in range(100)]
# Naive single threaded
%time res = list(map(fake_external_io, urls))
dv.scatter('urls', urls).get()
# seed for some semblance reproducability
%px random.seed(99)
# Naive aassignment
%time %px results = list(map(fake_external_io, urls))
# Load balanced version
%time res = p_fake_external_io.map(urls).get()
This isn't a perfect example, but you can get the idea. The larger the number of inputs to your parallel problem, the more variable the run time of each component process, the more time you save from switching to a load balanced view.
This is only scratching the surface of ipyparallel project. I would highly recommend taking a look at the docs. Here is a list of further topics I would look into if you are interested.
Our team at Activision largely uses ipython clusters for distributed model training. This project has been vital for hyperparameter searches for our machine learning models, allowing us to easily parallelize these searches beyond one machine has sped up training by many orders of magnitude utilizing hundreds of cores.
The examples so far are a useful introduction to the API and the some features of ipyparallel. Hopefully you are convinced to try out the library. However, deploying a working cluster beyond a single machine introduces some issues.
ipyparallel provides support for a range of cluster and batch job management systems such as PBS and WindowsHPC. The full list is provided in the documentation. ipyparallel also provides an SSH based launcher. Given passwordless ssh onto machine you can easily deploy engines and connect them to your controller and client. Also there is a wonderful project starcluster that helps spin up machines from cloud providers.
These tools are great. If you have access to existing HPC clusters or are planning on deploying dedicated clusters either on your own cold-iron (2016 version of bare-metal) or in the cloud then they meet your needs.
However, we are big users of Mesos, Docker, and Marathon to manage our clusters and services. Furthermore, even with the existing launchers, managing complex dependencies within the engines is a pain. Using Docker to package all dependencies makes deploying heterogeneous clusters easier. Targeting our existing cluster management system and simplifying dependencies is a big win for us.
With this in mind, we are open sourcing a new ipyparallel launcher that deploys IPython clusters into Mesos using Docker and Marathon. The code lives here and on pypi/conda as ipyparallel_mesos
.
We have two pre-built Docker images for the Controller and Engine. These are stripped down Docker images. Internally we use conda for almost all our dependencies, even inside our Docker containers. Please visit our public conda recipes and channel. However, extending from the ipyparallel-marathon-engine
image will allow you to easily install your custom dependencies with or without conda.
The project is young, but hopefully you will find it useful. Please note that this currently targets Python 3. PR's are welcome to support older versions of Python (it's 2016, we can now refer to 2.7 as old). Please open any issues on the github page. Please read the README for the project for more details.


"I'm going on an adventure!" -Bilbo Baggins
June 11, 2015
So I just finished watching Shereef's Fireside Chat and the main point that I got was:
Devbootcamp is a place where you come prepared to take a hold of your own learning - do not expect to be spoon-fed knowledge.
Of course the learning environment will be different than the learning environment of traditional schools. In schools, there is a wide variety of students who do not all have the same interests. Not all students will find every topic worthwhile. Why would they go out of their way to further their studies with research and join these knowledge communities when they barely want to learn the topic? DevBootcamp on the other hand is made up of people who want to learn coding. This type of environment is what anyone would dream to be a part of. The most rewarding type of learning is the kind where you do not want to stop and that happens when everyone around you is working towards a common goal. Nothing excites me more than a teacher who is passionate about what they are teaching and students who are passionate about absorbing lessons and willing to further their knowledge on their own.
I am definitely nervous about challenging this program but the moment Shereef mentioned common fears, I felt so much better! Upon hearing that some people were starting with the fear that they were accepted into DBC on accident, I burst out laughing! It was a perfect description of how I feel right now: scared of not having enough coding knowledge, scared of holding people back, etc. It was a great relief to hear that I'm not alone in my paranoia. I think I will always have a fear that my knowledge is not enough because obviously, it is not enough. But that is not going to stop me, in fact it challenges me to prove to myself that I can do it. I'm definitely looking forward to the next 18 weeks.


Airplane Crash Data Visualization Dashboard
Accidents
5,268
Fatalities
105,479
Fatality Rate
16.5%
Model Airplane
Douglas DC3
Histogram
Flight type
Comercial
Military
Private


This article covers the following topics:
To ensure orderly or graceful release of TCP connections is a
challenge with TCP networking applications. Abortive or ungraceful
release may result if special care is not taken. In Java, an
unexpected abortive release can manifest itself by the application
receiving a java.net.SocketException
when reading or
writing to the socket. read()
and write()
normally return a numeric value indicating, respectively, the
number of bytes received or sent. If an exception is received
instead, this indicates the connection has been aborted and also
that data may have been lost or discarded. This article explains
what causes socket connections to be aborted and provides tips for
avoiding the situation, except for the case where an application
intends to abort the connection.
First, we need to distinguish the differences between an
abortive and an orderly connection release. To understand this
distinction we need to look at what happens at the TCP protocol
level. It is helpful to imagine an established TCP connection as
actually two separate, semi-independent streams of data. If the two
peers are A and B, then one stream delivers data from A to B, and
the other stream from B to A. An orderly release occurs in two
stages. First one side (say A) decides to stop sending data and
sends a FIN
message across to B. When the TCP stack at
B's side receives the FIN
it knows that no more data
is coming from A, and whenever B reads all preceding data off the
socket, further reads will return the value -1
to
indicate end-of-file. This procedure is known as the TCP
half-close, because only one half of the connection is closed. Not
surprisingly, the procedure for the other half is exactly the same.
B sends a FIN
message to A, who eventually receives a
-1
after reading all preceding data sent by A off the
socket.
By contrast, an abortive close uses the RST (Reset) message. If either side issues an RST, this means the entire connection is aborted and the TCP stack can throw away any queued data which has not been sent or received by either application.
So, how do Java applications perform orderly and abortive
releases? Let's consider abortive releases first. A convention that
has existed since the days of the original BSD sockets is that the
"linger" socket option can be used to force an abortive
connection release. Either application can call
Socket.setLinger
(true, 0) to tell the TCP stack that
when this socket is closed, the abortive (RST) procedure is to be
used. Setting the linger option has no immediate effect, except
that when Socket.close()
is called subsequently, the
connection is aborted with an RST message. As we will see shortly,
there are other ways that may cause a connection to be aborted, but
this is the simplest way to make it happen.
The close()
method is also used to perform orderly
release, as well as abortive. So, at its simplest, the difference
between an orderly release and an abortive release could be as
little as not setting the linger(0) option, described above, prior
to calling Socket.close()
. Take the example of two
connected peers A and B: If A calls Socket.close()
, a
FIN
message is sent from A to B; and when B calls
Socket.close()
, a FIN
is sent from B to
A. In fact, the default setting for the linger option is to not use
abortive close; so if two applications terminate their connection
just by using Socket.close()
, then the outcome should
be an orderly release. So what, then, is the problem?
The problem is a slight mismatch between the semantics of
Socket.close()
and the TCP FIN
message.
Sending a TCP FIN
message means "I am finished
sending", whereas Socket.close()
means "I am
finished sending and receiving." When you call
Socket.close()
, clearly it is no longer possible to
send data; nor, however, is it possible to receive data. So what
happens, for example, when A attempts an orderly release by closing
the socket, but B continues to send data? This is perfectly
allowable in the TCP specification, because as far as TCP is
concerned only one half of the connection has been closed. But
since A's socket is closed there is nobody to read data if B should
continue sending. In this situation A's TCP stack must send an RST
to forcibly terminate the connection.
Another common scenario, which may result in an unintended
SocketException
, is the following: Say A has sent data
to B, but B closes the socket without reading all the data. In this
situation, B's TCP stack knows that some data is effectively lost
and it will forcibly terminate with RST rather than use the orderly
FIN
procedure. A will get a
SocketException
if it then tries to send or receive
data from the socket.
There are a number of simple ways to avoid being surprised by this problem.
shutdownOutput()
. This method has the same
effect as close()
in that a FIN
is sent
to indicate that this peer has finished sending, but it is still
possible to read from the socket until such time as the remote peer
sends a FIN
and end-of-file is read from the stream.
Then the socket can be closed with
Socket.close()
.


Returning From The Beach During A Storm
from Hunger For Salt, a new book of poems by Elaine Fletcher Chapman
Returning From The Beach During A Storm from Elaine Fletcher Chapman on Vimeo.
Anticipation of Blossoms
from Hunger For Salt, a new book of poems by Elaine Fletcher Chapman
Poetry Video: Anticipation of Blossoms from Elaine Fletcher Chapman on Vimeo.
He Marked My Body
from Hunger For Salt, a new book of poems by Elaine Fletcher Chapman
Poetry Video: He Marked My Body from Elaine Fletcher Chapman on Vimeo.


Think You Can Beat Lewis Hamilton on Track? Gran Turismo Sport Lets You Prove It
by Alex CarausuRacing simulators, make no mistake, are rounding up to become success stories that manage to pull massive amounts of capital in this digital world.
And that’s kind of understandable taking into account that they are reshaping the way motorsport enthusiasts train and get track education.
Lewis Hamilton, newly crowned Formula 1 world champion for the sixth time, has been associated with Gran Turismo Sport from the incipient stages of the game, helping the developers fine tune the game by providing feedback, and setting reference lap times for fans try to and beat.
You could have had a run at attacking the time Lewis set on Nurburgring GP in a Mercedes-AMG GT3, but everything was unofficial. That was until this week, when Polyphony Digital Studios decided to give everybody the opportunity to fight against the Formula 1 legend, and try to beat his records.
A total of ten challenges will be added to the game, allowing the opportunity to tackle them in the beautiful 1989 Le Mans winner Sauber Mercedes C9, and the Mercedes-AMG GT3. To be honest it’s not a big surprise that this add-on only lets you play with Mercedes cars, as five of the six world titles that Lewis won were in Mercs.
The world of motorsport offered us a lot of great racers, but this would be the first time that a Formula 1 world champion, at the peak of his career, will share his racing technique and philosophy. Besides the time attacks, training videos have been recorded for some of the tracks, in which Lewis will reveal some of his best kept secrets.
 The add-on will make its appearance on the PlayStation Store on 28th of November. 🏁
PRESS RELEASE
Challenge Lewis Hamilton's Lap Times!
Lewis Hamilton is calling you out!
This single player game mode allows you to challenge the best lap times set by none other than the Gran Turismo Sport Maestro and six-time F1 World Drivers Champion Lewis Hamilton, who personally threw down these lap times in Gran Turismo Sport!
In addition to the challenges themselves, the package includes replays and video tutorials by Lewis, where you can learn directly from the Maestro himself. Clearing the events will result in various bonuses, such as special cars and an unlock for the in-game credits limit.
This DLC will be available at the PS Store on November 28.
Lewis Hamilton Time Trial Challenge
Package Content
Ten Challenges
A total of ten challenges with the Mercedes-AMG GT3 and the Sauber Mercedes C9 await you.
• Dragon Trail - Seaside
• Autodromo Lago Maggiore - GP
• Brands Hatch Grand Prix Circuit
• Willow Springs International Raceway: Big Willow
• Suzuka Circuit
• Autodromo Nazionale Monza
• Mount Panorama Motor Racing Circuit
• Autódromo de Interlagos
• Nürburgring GP
• Nürburgring Nordschleife
Practice Makes Perfect
Replays and Ghosts of Lewis
In all of these challenges, you can watch replays and activate Lewis' ghost car. You can also check driving data such as braking points and throttle operations as many times as you like. And even if his ghost car leaves you behind, you can position the Ghost back near the your location at every sector, and even set an offset time (in seconds) with the Ghost to mimic racing against Lewis in person!
Strategy Guide
Some tracks come with a video tutorial where Lewis provides advice. Learn a World Champion's techniques!
Messages
Lewis will comment on your performance with voice messages. Even if you are a beginner, he will give you motivation to keep trying!
Compete and Record
Online Rankings
"Friend Rankings" and the Top 10 Stars’ rankings will be available for each of the ten challenges. You can compete against Lewis Hamilton, as well as against players from all over the world!
Replay Sharing
Saved replays of your challenges can be shared online. It’s also possible to watch replays shared by other users.
Rewards
Award Credits
Setting lap times with a Bronze or better will award you in-game credits. Clearing all challenges will also score you even more bonus credits!
Unlocking the Credit Limit Cap
Here's some good news for players who are at the in-game credits limit: Achieving a Gold or better in all challenges will upgrade the limit from the original 20 million to 100 million!
Car Rewards
Cars will be awarded as special rewards for each challenge achievement level. Users who succeed in clearing the harder conditions will receive a special prize with a design supervised by Lewis Hamilton's very own "Project 44" team!
https://www.gran-turismo.com/us/news/00_3676549.html


The music system for the people, by the people. (But with added elements of a dictatorship where necessary.)
All users are encouraged to upload their favourite tracks. A wide range of music is tolerated, in fact the more the varied the better, but please think about the other listeners before overwhelming the room with hundreds of screaming death metal tracks all at the same time.
By using this system you hereby agree to not upload any terrible music. This includes, but is not limited to, Kayne West and all rap music.


Create a powerful online petition in just a few minutes. No technical knowledge is needed to start your online petition. Just click the button above and you'll be ready to start collecting signatures for your online petition right away. iPetitions: the most flexible online activism tools on the Internet.
To find out more - check our About page!


{% if myvar %}
The variable I passed in is: {{ myvar }}
{% else %}
No variable was passed in.
{% endif %}
This is the example template!
Blah blah blah
This is a link to Google!
{% for link in links %}
Here is a link!
{% endfor %}
This is the end of the template


If you are using Internet Explorer, please use Firefox, Chrome or Edge instead.
Otherwise, please update your browser to the latest version to use Indico without problems.
×


sheetsee-core changes
Methods for charts have been removed:
Sheetsee.makeColorArrayOfObject(data, colors)
Sheetsee.addUnitsLabels(arrayObj, oldLabel, oldUnits)
Updated sheetsee-tables
to allow you to re-use a template (rather than duplicating it for each different table you wanted to create). Previously it assumed your HTML table div
id matched your script template id
. This means that you can pass in an extra key/value pair in your table options into Sheetsee.maketable()
. The new pair it takes is: "templateID" : "yourtemplateid"
. Example below, full sheetsee-tables
documentation here.
var tableOptions = {
"data": gData,
"pagination": 10,
"tableDiv": "#fullTable",
"filterDiv": "#fullTableFilter",
"templateID": "tableTemplte"
}
Sheetsee.makeTable(tableOptions)
Google recently updated their Google Spreadsheets and the API. For a bit this was breaking things using the old API, including Tabletop. This has been fixed and the latest version of tabletop.js works on both old and new spreadsheets. Be sure to include at least version 1.3.4 in your project.
D3 charts need an array of objects, and something to chart: the thing itself (aka labels) and the corresponding value (aka units). Your data usually contains more than D3 needs to make the chart, so you have to tell it what to chart from your data to chart.
Previously Sheetsee required you pass your data through a function, addUnitsAndLabels()
which took in your data and the things you wanted to chart, reformatted your data for you so that you could pass it into one of the d3 charts. This is one more step than actually needs to happen.
Now Sheetsee just asks for what you want your labels and units to be in the options you give it when calling the chart function. It then sorts the data correctly on the inside of the chart function. Yay, easier!
var options = {
labels: "name",
units: "cuddleability",
m: [60, 60, 30, 150],
w: 600, h: 400,
div: "#barChart",
xaxis: "no. of pennies",
hiColor: "#FF317D"
}
Thanks @maxogden for the help with this.


The thin line between love and hate...
An approach of Test Automation
-->
Who will talk to you?

Be familiar with project specification
Create test scenarios
Maintain test cases
Prepare test data
Always updated
Execute tests
Find bugs!
Buddy wants to become an automation tester!
Are you ready?
Test Automation
From Wikipedia
In software testing, test automation is the use of special software (separate from the software being tested) to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes. Test automation can automate some repetitive but necessary tasks in a formalized testing process already in place, or perform additional testing that would be difficult to do manually. Test automation is critical for continuous delivery and continuous testing.
Test Automation
Test Automation
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Let's continue...
Real Test Automation
Outdated test cases
Tests not ready for automation
No proper test data
No test data strategy in place
Hard coding test data
Bugs in application
Developers not making their code automatable
Application not developed to be testable
Setting unrealistic goals
No stable test environment
Not having a controlled test environment
Environment under development
Different environments
CLIENT
Myth 1
Automated testing can completely replace manual testing or
human testers
Effectiveness in finding bugs
Myth 2
Automated tests can test everything
Tests not worth automating
CAPTCHA
One time test
Test that don't have predictable results
Usability testing
Myth 3
Failing automated tests indicates all bugs in the code
Return on Investment
Buddy is feeling down
CLIENT
No more...
You will have your hands full
Tests worth automating
Deterministic tests
Tests needed to be run as much as possible
Tests that focus on the money and risk areas of your application
Tests that are hard to test manually
Test that need to run against multiple builds and browsers
Load/stress tests
Dynamically growing IT branch
Google Trends - Selenium
Google Trends - DevOps
What the future holds?
Trends in Test Automation
DEVOPS
Internet of Things
Self Driving Cars Testing
Virtual Reality
Test Automation Level Up Program