The object of the huge game of life over here seemed to be to keep the great mass of those whom they regarded as commonalty out of any one of the circles, while striving individually each to climb into the one next above, and more contracted. The most maddening thing of all was to find his grave, dignified mother drawn in and made a partaker in this meaningless strife.

Still essentially an outsider, David could look with larger vision — the far-seeing vision of the western land, the hilltops and the dividing sea, — and to him now the circles seemed verily the concentric rings of the maelstrom into which events were hurrying him. Would he be able to rise from the swirling flotsam and ride free?

The deeper philosophy underlying it all he as yet but vaguely understood; that the