woods, so to speak, and sweat in the dust of cities; but he did it, for
his will was of tempered steel. He buried his dreams in the clouds and
came down to earth greatly resolved, but with one undying hate. It is not
good to hate as he could, and worse to be hated by such as him; and I
will tell you the story, and what it led to.

"It was when he was a subaltern that he made up his mind to the plunge.
For years he had placed all his hopes and confidents in a book of verses
he had wrote, and added to, and improved during that time. A little
encouragement, a little word of praise, was all he looked for, and then
he was ready to buckle to again, profitin' by advice, and do better. He
put all the love and beauty of his heart into that book, and at last,
after doubt, and anguish, and much diffidents, he published it and give
it to the world. Sir, it fell what they call still-born from the press.
It was like a green leaf flutterin' down in a dead wood. To a proud
and hopeful man, bubblin' with music, the pain of neglect, when he come
to realize it, was terrible. But nothing was said, and there was nothing
to say. In silence he had to endure and suffer.

"But one day, during maneuvers, there came to the camp a grey-faced man,
a newspaper correspondent, and young Shrike knocked up a friendship
with him. Now how it come about I cannot tell, but so it did that this
skip-kennel wormed the lad's sorrow out of him, and his confidents,
swore he'd been damnabilly used, and that when he got back he'd crack up
the book himself in his own paper. He was a fool for his pains, and a
serpent in his cruelty. The notice come out as promised, and, my God! the
author was laughed and mocked at from beginning to end. Even confidentses
he had given to the creature was twisted to his ridicule, and his very
appearance joked over. And the mess got wind of it, and made a rare story
for the dog days.

"He bore it like a soldier, and that he became heart and liver from the
moment. But he put something to the account of the grey-faced man and
locked it up in his breast.

"He come across him again years afterwards in India, and told him very
politely that he hadn't forgotten him, and didn't intend to. But he was
anigh losin' sight of him there for ever and a day, for the creature took
cholera, or what looked like it, and rubbed shoulders with death and the
devil before he pulled through. And he come across him again over here,
and that was the last of