honest forehead, and I put my left arm around his head so
he couldn't see what was coming, and sent a bullet through his brain."

"We buried him on the hillside overlooking the lake, and the little
girls put a slab up over him, which says:

"Prince of the house of Clay
Who saved our mother's life,
Lies here in peace, and lives
In grateful memory in our hearts."

There was a silence, in which each man's mind went back to the one
overwhelming thought--that bound them so close together.

Then the young doctor said slowly: "If what you say is true, I envy
Prince--and would gladly change places with him."

The old man recovered himself in a moment: "You take things too
seriously, Clay," he said quickly: "be glad you are not married. A
wife and children clutter up a man's affairs at a time like this--you
are quite free from family ties, I believe?"

"Quite free," the young man replied, "all my relatives live in the
East, all able to look after themselves. I have no person depending on
me--financially, I mean."

"Marriage," began the old doctor, in his most professional tone, as
one who reads from a manuscript, "is one-fourth joy and three-fourths
disappointment. There is no love strong enough to stand the grind of
domestic life. Marriage would be highly successful were it not for the
fearful bore of living together. Two houses, and a complete set of
servants would make marriage practically free from disappointments.
I think Saint Paul was right when he advised men to remain single if
they had serious work to do. Women, the best of them, grow tiresome
and double-chinned in time."

The young doctor laughed his own big, hearty laugh, the laugh which
his devoted patients said did them more good than his medicine.

"I like that," he said, "a man with a forty-two waist measure, wearing
an eighteen inch collar, finding fault with a woman's double chin. You
are not such a raving beauty yourself."

The old man interrupted him:

"I do not need to be. I am a doctor, a prescriber of pills, a mender
of bones, a plumber of pipes ... my work does not call for beauty.
Beauty is an embarrassment to a doctor. You would be happier, young
fellow, without that wavy brown hair and those big eyes of yours, with
their long lashes. A man is built for work, like a truck. Gold and
leather upholstering do not belong there. Women are different; it is
their place in life to be beautiful, and when they fail in that, they
fail entirel