asonable, fantastic! And to those two who had taken away your
happiness anyhow."

I wish you could have heard how quietly and naturally Robert
Halarkenden answered me. He considered a moment first, in his Scotch
way, and then he said: "Do not you see, lassie, that's where it was
simple, verra simple. Houses and lands and a place in the world are
small affairs after love, and mine was come to shipwreck. So it seemed
to me I'd try living free of the care of possessions. I'd try the old
rule, that a man to find his life must lay it down. It was verra
simple, as I'm telling you, once I'd got the fancy for it. Laying down
a life is not such a hard business; it's only to make up your mind.
And I did indeed find life in doing it, I was care-free as few are in
those forest years."

I think you would have agreed with me, Mr. McBirney, that the
middle-aged, lined face of my uncle's gardener was beautiful as he said
those things. "Why did you leave the forest?" I asked him then; you
may believe I'd forgotten about my bones by now.

"Ah, you'll find it grows irksome to be coddling one's own soul
indefinitely," he confided to me with the pretty gentleness which
breaks through his Scotch manner once in a while. "One gets tired of
one's self, the spoiled body. I hungered to do something for somebody
besides Robert Halarkenden. I'd taken charge of a lad with
tuberculosis one summer up there, and I'd cured him, and I had a
thought I could do the same for other lads. I wanted to get near a
city to have that chance. I've been doing it here," and then he drew
back into his Scotchness and was suddenly cold and reserved. But I
knew that was shyness, and because he had spoken of his secret good
deeds and was uncomfortable.

So I was not frozen. "You have!" I pounced on him. And I made him
tell me how, besides his unending gardening, besides his limitless
reading, he has been, all these years, working in the city in his few
spare hours, spending himself and his wages--wages!--and helping,
healing, giving all the time--like you----

I felt the most torturing envy of my life as I listened to that. _I_
wanted to be generous and wonderful and self-forgetting, and have a
great, free heart "of spirit, fire, and dew." _I_ wanted the something
in me that made that still radiance of Robert Halarkenden's eyes. You
see? "I"--always "I." That's the way I'm made. Utterly selfish. I
can't even see heavenliness but I want to sna