one who will not believe in apparitions even though he see them--there
was not even fairness! Perhaps (and his bearing was mildly tolerant),
perhaps some people believed there was fairness, but he had his share
of days to count by and remember. Forty-nine years of here and there,
and in and out, and up and down; walking all kinds of roads in all
kinds of weathers; meeting this sort of person and that sort, and many
an adventure that came and passed away without any good to it--"and
now," said he sternly, "I am breaking stones on a bye-way."

"A bye-road such as this," said I, "has very few travellers, and it may
prove a happy enough retreat."

"Or a hiding-place," said he gloomily.

We sat quietly for a few moments--

"Is there no way of being happy?" said I.

"How could you be happy if you have not got what you want?" and he
thumped solidly with his hammer.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Many a thing," said he, "many a thing."

I squatted on the ground in front of him, and he continued--

"You that are always travelling, did you ever meet a contented person
in all your travels?"

"Yes," said I, "I met a man yesterday, three hills away from here, and
he told me he was happy."

"Maybe he wasn't a poor man?"

"I asked him that, and he said he had enough to be going on with."

"I wonder what he had."

"I wondered too, and he told me.--He said that he had a wife, a son, an
apple-tree, and a fiddle.

"He said, that his wife was dumb, his son was deaf, his apple-tree was
barren, and his fiddle was broken."

"It didn't take a lot to satisfy that man."

"And he said, that these things, being the way they were, gave him no
trouble attending on them, and so he was left with plenty of time for
himself."

"I think the man you are telling me about was a joker; maybe you are a
joker yourself for that matter."

"Tell me," said I, "the sort of things a person should want, for I am a
young man, and everything one learns is so much to the good."

He rested his hammer and stared sideways down the road, and he remained
so, pursing and relaxing his lips, for a little while. At last he said
in a low voice--

"A person wants respect from other people.--If he doesn't get that,
what does he signify more than a goat or a badger? We live by what
folk think of us, and if they speak badly of a man doesn't that finish
him for ever?"

"Do people speak well of you?" I asked.

"They speak badly of me," said he, "and the