him, still twisting his beard. Milford asked him what had
happened. He looked up with a sour snarl. "It's all off," he said.

"What's all off?" Milford asked.

"It's all off with me, that's what. My girl's married."

"You don't mean it!" the Professor cried.

"Then what the devil do I want to say it for? She married about two
hours ago, so Miles Brent tells me, and he was there--married a feller
named Hogan. I see him around there once or twice, but don't think
anythin' of it. Well, I'll swear. I thought I knowed her, and I did know
her at one time, but she changed. Blamed if you can tell how soon
they'll change on you. Hogan--an old widower."

"I know him," said Milford. "He milks fifteen cows. His milk caught
her."

"I hate to think that," Mitchell drawled, "but I'll have to. Yes, sir,
hauled off in a milk-wagon. And she owns a piece of land worth fifty
dollars an acre."

"She must have wanted milk to wash off her freckles," said Milford.

"Don't, Bill--don't make light of a man's trouble. She's a big loss to
me, I tell you."

"But, Bob, you didn't really love her, now, did you?"

"Bill, there's different sorts of love. I loved her in my way, as much
as any man ever loved a woman, I reckon, in his way. I put my faith in
her, and that was goin' a good ways. Humph! I can't hardly believe it,
but I know it's so."

"When the heart is rent," said the Professor, twisting his beard to aid
his thought; "when the heart is rent----"

"It's the failure of the rent--on the land, that gets Bob," Milford
broke in. "His heart has nothing to do with it."

"Bill, I thought you had more sympathy than----"

"Sympathy for a man who has failed to beat a woman out of her property?
Of course, I wish you'd succeeded, but I'm not going to console you
because you haven't. I'm a scoundrel all right enough, but a scoundrel
has his limits."

"That's all right, Bill, but somebody may give you the slip."

"That's true enough, but my heart and not my pocket will do the
grieving. I haven't any time to give to a man's pocket grief."

"Wait till you have a real grief," said the Professor. "Wait till
ignorance comes heavy of hoof down your hallway to tell you that your
years of study are but a waste-land, covered with briars; to cut you
with the blue steel of a chilling smile, and to turn you out of an
institution that you hold dear. That's grief." He leaned forward upon
the table, with his head on his arms.

"You had no right to