It had been a good Indian summer and there were still leaves on the tiring maples behind the plant. It was the evergreens that looked expectant, under the moon they stood like girls waiting to be asked by the tall dark handsome sky.

Howland turned away from the window, unadmiring. He hated November. November meant December, and December meant Christmas bills. He had no feeling for nature or religion or almost anything else but money. It seemed to him that for all his fifty-seven years he had been reaching out for money that would stick to his fingers. The irony was that so much of it had passed through them.

He compared his watch with the steel hands over the Manila driftwood door, lettered in computer-type characters Curtis Pickney, General Manager.

Almost ten.

Howland went back to his desk. He studied the payroll.

So near and yet so far is the story of my life.

It had started with his first job out of the commercial course at New Bradford High. Old man Louie Wocjzewski had taken him on to tend register in the sandwich shop across the blacktop from Compo Copper and Brass. It had seemed to him then that there could not be so much cash in the world. They were working six-day shifts in those days and eight to nine hundred dollars a week had gone through the register. What he had got from it was twelve greasy singles, counted out in cautious cadence by old Wojy every Saturday night.