f his
ledger of life, that he refrained from useless outcry at the moment.
Such a stroke kills some men, either at once, or by lengthened torture;
others it sends mad, so that they make a clamour which draws the
attention of the astonished and not sympathetic world; but it only
paralysed Jean Jacques. For a time he sat fascinated by the ferocity
of the event, his eyes following the hurrying wife and the jaunty,
swaggering master-carpenter with a strange, animal-like dismay and
apprehension. They remained fixed with a kind of blank horror and
distraction on the landscape for some time after both had disappeared.

At last, however, he seemed to recover his senses, and to come back from
the place where he had been struck by the hammer of treachery. He seemed
to realize again that he was still a part of the common world, not a
human being swung through the universe on his heart-strings by a Gorgon.

The paper and pencil in his hand brought him back from the far Gehenna
where he had been, to the world again--how stony and stormy a world it
was, with the air gone as heavy as lead, with his feet so loaded down
with chains that he could not stir! He had had great joy of this his
world; he had found it a place where every day were problems to
be solved by an astute mind, problems which gave way before the
master-thinker. There was of course unhappiness in his world. There was
death, there was accident occasionally--had his own people not gone
down under the scythe of time? But in going they had left behind in
real estate and other things good compensation for their loss. There was
occasional suffering and poverty and trouble in his little kingdom; but
a cord of wood here, a barrel of flour there, a side of beef
elsewhere, a little debt remitted, a bag of dried apples, or an Indian
blanket--these he gave, and had great pleasure in giving; and so the
world was not a place where men should hang their heads, but a place
where the busy man got more than the worth of his money.

It had never occurred to him that he was ever translating the world
into terms of himself, that he went on his way saying in effect, "I am
coming. I am Jean Jacques Barbille. You have heard of me. You know me.
Wave a hand to me, duck your head to me, crack the whip or nod when I
pass. I am M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosopher."

And all the while he had only been vaguely, not really, conscious of
his wife and child. He did not know that he had only made of his