s though in a park;
before the fireplace two patent rockers, and behind them a table
littered with magazines and novels; in the corners golf sticks of
innumerable designs, and wherever the eye turned it met coldly colored
prints showing trotting horses in action. I had one of the
rocking-chairs and Rufus Blight the other, and he was looking up at the
mills when he spoke so regretfully of them. He referred again to
Talcott.

"I can't understand it--a man happy doing nothing. I suppose I am a
sort of machine--I must have work fed into me. Here I am at fifty-five
and not a wheel moving. It was the power of the mills that kept me
running. Now I have lost that." For a moment he was silent. Then he
leaned toward me and said in a wistful voice: "David, you remember my
brother. He could be happy just sitting thinking. Now if my energy
could have been combined with his mentality, what----"

I finished the sentence. From the past came the picture of the
Professor at the bare table in the cabin, pointing a long finger at me.
"What a man we would have made."

Rufus Blight's eyes opened wide. "How did you read my thoughts so
well!" he exclaimed.

"The conclusion was simple," said I. "Years ago I heard your brother
say the same thing."

"Oh! Well it does express the case exactly. Henderson was always a
wonderful man for thinking, David. In his young days he was perfectly
happy with a book. There were not many books in our valley, but he
read them all and it was very interesting to hear the ideas he formed
from them. He was a wonderful talker." Rufus Blight nodded his head
reminiscently. "A wonderful talker. But when it came to practical
things he was quite helpless. It wasn't that he was lazy. If there
had been at hand anything big to do, anything that appealed to him, he
would have done it. What he needed was an opportunity. He really
never had half a chance. He did try working in the store with me--and
he tried hard, but a mind like his could not be happy measuring out
sugar and counting eggs. Such work seemed to lead to nothing--I know
it did to me. But I had a different kind of a mind. I had to feed it,
like a machine, with figures and facts. But to him it was of no
importance that butter had gone up a cent a pound. He would say that
the ants weren't worried about it, nor the birds, nor the people of
other planets. Do you know, David, I really used to envy Hendry his
way of seeing things."