our, and the perplexity of human life. Instead of satisfying my
curiosity I was more anxious than ever to see Old Toombs with my own
eyes.

But the weeks passed and somehow I did not meet him. He was a lonely,
unneighbourly old fellow. He had apparently come to fit into the
community without ever really becoming a part of it. His neighbours
accepted him as they accepted a hard hill in the town road. From time
to time he would foreclose a mortgage where he had loaned money to some
less thrifty farmer, or he would extend his acres by purchase, hard cash
down, or he would build a bigger barn. When any of these things happened
the community would crowd over a little, as it were, to give him more
room. It is a curious thing, and tragic, too, when you come to think of
it, how the world lets alone those people who appear to want to be let
alone. "I can live to myself," says the unneighbourly one. "Well, live
to yourself, then," cheerfully responds the world, and it goes about its
more or less amusing affairs and lets the unneighbourly one cut himself
off.

So our small community had let Old Toombs go his way with all his money,
his acres, his hedge, and his reputation for being a just man.

Not meeting him, therefore, in the familiar and friendly life of the
neighbourhood, I took to walking out toward his farm, looking freshly
at the wonderful hedge and musing upon that most fascinating of all
subjects--how men come to be what they are. And at last I was rewarded.

One day I had scarcely reached the end of the hedge when I saw Old
Toombs himself, moving toward me down the country road. Though I had
never seen him before, I was at no loss to identify him. The first and
vital impression he gave me, if I can compress it into a single word,
was, I think, force--force. He came stubbing down the country road with
a brown hickory stick in his hand which at every step he set vigorously
into the soft earth. Though not tall, he gave the impression of being
enormously strong. He was thick, solid, firm--thick through the body,
thick through the thighs; and his shoulders--what shoulders they
were!--round like a maple log; and his great head with its thatching
of coarse iron-gray hair, though thrust slightly forward, seemed set
immovably upon them.

He presented such a forbidding appearance that I was of two minds about
addressing him. Dour he was indeed! Nor shall I ever forget how he
looked when I spoke to him. He stopped short there