d hoped they would last him longer than everybody knew
they would. The implied affection of all the paragraphs was visible in
the last words. He put the letter carefully away. The cigarettes were
sufficient for a considerable time beyond customary. Something of his
appetite had gone; the periods of half wakeful slumber in his chair drew
out through whole evenings. The actual world retreated; his memories, as
bright as ever, became a little confused; the years, figures, mingled
incongruously; famous arias were transposed to operas in which they had
not been sung.

Winter retreated, but the latter part of March and April were bitterly
cold; no leaves appeared; the ground remained barren; he seldom got out.

The albums of programmes were brought from their place on the low
shelves, but now, more than often, they were barely opened, scanned.
Then, on an evening when belated snow was sifting through the cracks of
the solid shutters, he came on an oblong package, wrapped in strong
paper. He opened it, in a momentary revival of interest, of life. It was
a tall ledger, bound in crumbling calf, with stained and wrinkled
leaves. Howat had not seen it for twenty years, but he recalled
immediately that it was a forge book kept in Gilbert Penny's day; then
Myrtle Forge had been new, that other Howat alive. He opened it
carefully, powdered his knees with leather dust, and studied the faded
entries; what flourishing, pale violet initials, what rubicund lines and
endings!

There were two handwritings, listing commonplace transactions now
invested by time with an accumulated, poignant significance, one smooth
and clerkly, the other abrupt, with heavy, impatient strokes. Youth,
probably, held at an unwelcome task; and, more than likely, Howat ...
October, in seventeen fifty. Years of virility, of struggle and
conquest, of iron--iron, James Polder had shown him, still uncorrupted,
better than the metal of to-day--and iron-like men. The ledger slipped
to the floor, tearing the spongy leather and crumbling the sere leaves.
He recovered it, dismayed at the damage wrought. A sheet apparently had
come loose, and he bent forward with difficulty, a swimming head. Howat
made an attempt to find its place, when he discovered that it was not a
part of the volume. It was, he saw, a note, obliterated by creases but
with some lines still legible, hurriedly scrawled, by a woman:

"You must be more careful ... Your mother. So hot-headed, Howat. I can'