STEPHEN FIRST HEARD of the Cataract Mills in Milhampton, Massachusetts, through an advertisement in a paper. He answered the advertisement. He had never been to Milhampton. He had no friends, no acquaintances there, that he knew of. It was well removed from Reddington. It would serve his purpose as well as any other place in the United States. His mother had begged him not to put the ocean between himself and her, when he had mentioned Australia or South America.

Upon his arrival in Milhampton, Stephen hunted up a lodging-house in Cataract Village close to the mills, and hired a room. He worked hard for his eighteen dollars a week. But there was little joy in his work. Even the raise in his position, and pay, at the end of the first three months, gave him no thrill. What was the use of his rising in the world? Wasn’t oblivion what he desired more than anything else? Wasn’t the feature that he liked best about his new job, the fact that it hid him, covered him up? None of the men who ate breakfast and supper with him—who softened their bread-crusts in their coffee, and prepared their meat and potatoes as Stephen had seen the dog’s meat and potatoes prepared at home, shopped all up and covered with gravy—had heard of Stephen Dallas of Reddington. Success, too many raises, would mean exposure finally, opening up the old wound again. Stephen had suffered enough for a while.

Stephen believed he would suffer always. But he didn’t take into consideration his youth. There is something about twenty-three that struggles and fights all by itself—never mind how indifferent the soul, how sick the body—and accomplishes its purposes and designs without help. The same month that Stephen’s mother’s age came to her rescue, Stephen’s youth came to his. Early in September, before a year had passed since the Dallas oak had fallen, death delivered Mrs. Dallas from her suffering. It was two or three weeks before his mother died that Stephen met Stella.

He met her at a church sociable, in the vestry of the Congregational Church in Cataract Village. He had gone to the church sociable with the shipping-clerk at the mills, who had told him, with a wink, that he had met some peaches there at the last shindy, and invited him to come along, if he wanted to. Stephen had never in his life before passed a whole year practically void of feminine society.

It so happened that the night before the shipping-clerk invited Stephen to the church sociable, Stephen had drifted into a musical show down-town. The musical show started him to thinking about Helen Dane.