bruptly sat upright.
"What's this?" he asked gravely.

Tom pushed his papers away from him, rose and went to the dusty window
that looked to the west, where, at the end of the long street, the
sun was setting behind the ruin of charred timbers on the bank of the
shining river.

"It seems that I played once too often," he said.

Crailey was thoroughly astonished. He took a long, affectionate pull at
the flask and offered it to his partner.

"No," said Tom, turning to him with a troubled face, "and if I were you,
I wouldn't either. These fishing trips of yours--"

"Fishing!" Crailey laughed. "Trips of a poetaster! It's then I write
best, and write I will! There's a poem, and a damned good one, too, old
preacher, in every gill of whiskey, and I'm the lad that can extract it!
Lord! what's better than to be out in the open, all by yourself in the
woods, or on the river? Think of the long nights alone with the glory
of heaven and a good demijohn. Why, a man's thoughts are like actors
performing in the air and all the crowding stars for audience! You know
in your soul you'd rather have me out there, going it all by myself,
than raising thunder over town. And you know, too, it doesn't tell on
me; it doesn't show! You couldn't guess, to save your life, how much
I've had to-day, now, could you?"

"Yes," returned the other, "I could."

"Well, well," said Crailey, good-naturedly, "we weren't talking of me."
He set down the flask, went to his friend and dropped a hand lightly on
his shoulder. "What made you break the guitar? Tell me."

"What makes you think I broke it?" asked his partner sharply.

"Tell me why you did it," said Crailey.

And Tom, pacing the room, told him, while Crailey stood in silence,
looking him eagerly in the eye whenever Tom turned his way. The listener
interrupted seldom; once it was to exclaim: "But you haven't said why
you broke the guitar?"

"'If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out!' I ought to have cut off the
hands that played to her."

"And cut your throat for singing to her?"

"She was right!" the other answered, striding up and down the room.
"Right--a thousand times! in everything she did. That I should even
ap-proach her, was an unspeakable insolence. I had forgotten, and so,
possibly, had she, but I had not even been properly introduced to her."

"No, you hadn't, that's true," observed Crailey, reflectively. "You
don't seem to have much to reproach her with, Tom."

"Reproach her!