Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com





ROADS OF DESTINY

by O. Henry




CONTENTS

I. Roads of Destiny
II. The Guardian of the Accolade
III. The Discounters of Money
IV. The Enchanted Profile
V. "Next to Reading Matter"
VI. Art and the Bronco
VII. Phoebe
VIII. A Double-dyed Deceiver
IX. The Passing of Black Eagle
X. A Retrieved Reformation
XI. Cherchez la Femme
XII. Friends in San Rosario
XIII. The Fourth in Salvador
XIV. The Emancipation of Billy
XV. The Enchanted Kiss
XVI. A Departmental Case
XVII. The Renaissance at Charleroi
XVIII. On Behalf of the Management
XIX. Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking
XX. The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss
XXI. Two Renegades
XXII. The Lonesome Road




ROADS OF DESTINY



I

ROADS OF DESTINY

I go to seek on many roads
What is to be.
True heart and strong, with love to light--
Will they not bear me in the fight
To order, shun or wield or mould
My Destiny?

/Unpublished Poems of David Mignot/.


The song was over. The words were David's; the air, one of the
countryside. The company about the inn table applauded heartily, for
the young poet paid for the wine. Only the notary, M. Papineau, shook
his head a little at the lines, for he was a man of books, and he had
not drunk with the rest.

David went out into the village street, where the night air drove the
wine vapour from his head. And then he remembered that he and Yvonne
had quarrelled that day, and that he had resolved to leave his home
that night to seek fame and honour in the great world outside.

"When my poems are on every man's tongue," he told himself, in a fine
exhilaration, "she will, perhaps, think of the hard words she spoke
this day."

Except the roisterers in the tavern, the village folk were abed. David
crept softly into his room in the shed of his father's cottage and
made a bundle of his small store of clothing. With this upon a staff,
he set his face outward upon the road that ran from Vernoy.