ps deeming misleading, the old _Memento
mori_. He bade them recollect that for practical purposes they had to
reckon on--and with--thirty, forty, fifty, years of life and activity.
That was a long time--order the many days! You could not afford to
calculate on the accident of an early death to end your responsibility.
It was well said; yet not even the broadest sanest argument can
altogether persuade Death out of his traditional role, nor induce
Atropos to wield her shears always without caprice. Yet again, in this
case there seemed little caprice; the likely ending came rather
quickly--that was all; it was just such an ending as, in some form or
other, might have been expected--just such as once, in talk with me, the
man himself had, hardly gravely yet quite sincerely, treated as likely,
almost as inevitable.

I was the first to get the news--at breakfast time one November morning.
A telegram came to me from Jenny; it was sent from Tours. "Leonard has
died from wound received in a duel. Do not come to me. I want to be
alone.--JENNY DRIVER."

He had insulted somebody--in a country where men still fought on the
point of honor. The conclusion sprang forward on a glance. He had passed
much time abroad, I knew--the code was not strange to him, nor the use
of his weapons. Though both had been strange, little would he have
shunned the fight! He would take joy in it--joy in shedding the
advantage of his mighty strength, glad to meet his man on even terms,
eagerly accepting the leveling power of a bullet. He had made himself
intolerable again; some one had uprisen and done away with the incubus
of him. The whole affair seemed just what might be looked for; he had
died fighting--for him a natural death.

So the life was out of the big man--and he had been so full of it. That
was strange to think of.

Somehow he seemed incompatible with death. I remember drawing a long
breath as I said to myself "Dead!" and thought grewsomely of the
carrying out of that great coffin--with all the mighty weight of him
inside; even dead he would oppress men by size, insolently crushing
their shoulders with his bulk. "Part of the objection to me is because
I'm so large," he had said. Even the undertaker's men would share in
that objection. "I shall certainly be stamped out. Ah, well, small
wonder--and what a pity!"

He had a power over me; something of his force had reached me, too--or
my thoughts would not have dwelt on him so long; they woul