to dogs, and a cow, and the
tomcat--by the way, I don't see him any more. I didn't know you went
into sheep. Was Tommy the ewe-lamb, and did the dogs play Nathan and
David with him?"

This I said, thinking to cheer him up a bit; but he only scowled.
Really, I must remember Mabel's caution about telling the wrong stories
and laughing in the wrong places. "Well, Jim, what was 'it' that you
valued so, and who were 'they' who took it away?"

"The prince of the power of the air; the spirit that walks in darkness,
and rules in the children thereof. The beautiful order of things
generally, and their incurable depravity. All these are one, and the
name doesn't matter. If you urged me to it, I might say that you had
played a very passable David to my Uriah."

"Who--I? I'm not a sheep-stealer. What would I want to hurt you for?
Jim, you're joking, and it's a joke of doubtful taste."

"Do I look like it? _You_ might find a joke in this: you can find them
everywhere. I can't."

"As I told you, you take Life too seriously. If you will be more
specific, and tell me what you have lost, perhaps I can help you to find
it."

"Some losses are irrecoverable. You'd better let it alone, Bob; you'd
better have let me alone before, as I've said. You mean well enough; but
it's ill meddling with another man's life. You don't know what
responsibility you take, or what effect you may produce. I don't say
that it's the worst of all possible worlds, but it is such that each of
us had best go his own way, and keep clear of the others. When one
forgets that safe rule, and mixes with his kind, only harm seems to come
of it."

"If that is so, I might better have staid at home now. Methinks your
written hand is different from your spoken. I mean--"

"O yes, when I write I try to come out of myself and be decently civil;
and so I should to a chance visitor for five minutes, or an hour maybe.
But I can't keep it up all day--not to say for a week. You'll have to
see the facts, and bear with them. I don't want to be rough on you; but
I'm not myself--or not what I was before, or supposed myself to be. It's
all in the plan, no doubt; we are fulfilling the beneficent intentions
of Nature. Perhaps I'm breaking down, and the end is not so far off as
we thought. If so, so much the better: we'll escape that sad old age you
prophesied."

Now I am not lacking in humanity, but it does not afflict me as it did
six months ago to hear Jim go on in this way. I