e day after the mill was burnt,--looking first at the smoking
mass of hot bricks and charred shingles, so as clearly to understand
how utterly dead his life-long scheme was. He stalked gravely around
it, his hands in his pockets; the hodmen who were raking out their
winter's firewood from the ashes remarking, that "old Knowles didn't
seem a bit cut up about it." Then he went out to the farm he had meant
to buy, as I told you, and looked at it in the same stolid way. It was
a dull day in October. The river crawled moodily past his feet, the
dingy prairie stretched drearily away on the other side, while the
heavy-browed Indiana hills stood solemnly looking down the plateau
where the buildings were to have risen.

Well, most men have some plan of life, into which all the strength and
the keen, fine feeling of their nature enter; but generally they try to
make it real in early youth, and, balked then, laugh ever afterwards at
their own folly. This poor old Knowles had begun to block out his
dream when he was a gaunt, gray-haired man of sixty. I have known men
so build their heart's blood, and brains into their work, that, when it
tumbled down, their lives went with it. His fell that dull day in
October; but if it hurt him, no man knew it. He sat there, looking at
the broad plateau, whistling softly to himself, a long time. He had
meant that a great many hearts should be made better and happier there;
he had dreamed----God knows what he had dreamed, of which this reality
was the foundation,--of how much world-freedom, or beauty, or kindly
life this was the heart or seed. It was all over now. All the
afternoon the muddy sky hung low over the hills and dull prairie, while
he sat there looking at the dingy gloom: just as you and I have done,
perhaps, some time, thwarted in some true hope,--sore and bitter
against God, because He did not see how much His universe needed our
pet reform.

He got up at last, and without a sigh went slowly away, leaving the
courage and self-reliance of his life behind him, buried with that one
beautiful, fair dream of life. He never came back again. People said
Knowles was quieter since his loss; but I think only God saw the depth
of the difference. When he was leaving the plateau, that day, he
looked back at it, as if to say good-bye,--not to the dingy fields and
river, but to the Something he had nursed so long in his rugged heart,
and given up now forever. As he looked, the warm,