out for that so sweet young
girl. I give my blood for her, though I am old and worn. I give my
time, my skill, my sleep. I let my other sufferers want that she may
have all. And yet I can laugh at her very grave, laugh when the clay
from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say 'Thud,
thud!' to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek. My
heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of the age of mine
own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes
the same.

"There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things
that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart
yearn to him as to no other man, not even you, friend John, for we are
more level in experiences than father and son, yet even at such a
moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, 'Here I
am! Here I am!' till the blood come dance back and bring some of the
sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek. Oh, friend John, it is a
strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and
troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the
tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and
tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he
make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John,
that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like
ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears
come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps
the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come
like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go
on with our labor, what it may be."

I did not like to wound him by pretending not to see his idea, but as
I did not yet understand the cause of his laughter, I asked him. As
he answered me his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different
tone,

"Oh, it was the grim irony of it all, this so lovely lady garlanded
with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered
if she were truly dead, she laid in that so fine marble house in that
lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the
mother who loved her, and whom she loved, and that sacred bell going
'Toll! Toll! Toll!' so sad and slow, and those holy men, with the
white garments of the angel, pretending to read books, and yet all the
time their eyes never o