His gaze dropped from the clouds to the bay beneath.  The sea-breeze was dying down with the day, and off Fort Point a fishing-boat was creeping into port before the last light breeze.  A little beyond, a tug was sending up a twisted pillar of smoke as it towed a three-masted schooner to sea.  His eyes wandered over toward the Marin County shore.  The line where land and water met was already in darkness, and long shadows were creeping up the hills toward Mount Tamalpais, which was sharply silhouetted against the western sky.

Oh, if he, Joe Bronson, were only on that fishing-boat and sailing in with a deep-sea catch!  Or if he were on that schooner, heading out into the sunset, into the world!  That was life, that was living, doing something and being something in the world.  And, instead, here he was, pent up in a close room, racking his brains about people dead and gone thousands of years before he was born.

He jerked himself away from the window as though held there by some physical force, and resolutely carried his chair and history into the farthest corner of the room, where he sat down with his back to the window.

An instant later, so it seemed to him, he found himself again staring out of the window and dreaming.  How he had got there he did not know.  His last recollection was the finding of a subheading on a page on the right-hand side of the book which read:  “The Laws and Constitution of Draco.”  And then, evidently like walking in one’s sleep, he had come to the window.  How long had he been there? he wondered.  The fishing-boat which he had seen off Fort Point was now crawling into Meiggs’s Wharf.  This denoted nearly an hour’s lapse of time.  The sun had long since set; a solemn grayness was brooding over the water, and the first faint stars were beginning to twinkle over the crest of Mount Tamalpais.

He turned, with a sigh, to go back into his corner, when a long whistle, shrill and piercing, came to his ears.  That was Fred. He sighed again.  The whistle repeated itself.  Then another whistle joined it.  That was Charley.  They were waiting on the corner—­lucky fellows!

Well, they would n’t see him this night.  Both whistles arose in duet.  He writhed in his chair and groaned.  No, they would n’t see him this night, he reiterated, at the same time rising to his feet.  It was certainly impossible for him to join them when he had not yet learned about the Draconian reforms.  The same force which had held him to the window now seemed drawing him across the room to the desk.  It made him put the history on top of his school-books, and he had the door unlocked and was half-way into the hall before he realized it.  He started to return, but the thought came to him that he could go out for a little while and then come back and do his work.

A very little while, he promised himself, as he went down-stairs.  He went down faster and faster, till at the bottom he was going three steps at a time.  He popped his cap on his head and went out of the side entrance in a rush; and ere he reached the corner the reforms of Draco were as far away in the past as Draco himself, while the examinations on the morrow were equally far away in the future.