good! I'd give ten million dollars
to-day for a body like any other man's--and this--this is what I have!"

He struck his hands against his bosom. "Look at it!" he cried,
hysterically. "This is what I've got to live in! It won't digest any
food, and I can't keep it warm--there's nothing right with it! How
would you like to lie awake at night and say to yourself that your
teeth were decaying and you couldn't help it--your hair was falling
out, and nobody could stop it? You're old and worn out--falling to
pieces; and everybody hates you--everybody's waiting for you to die, so
that they can get you out of the way. The doctors come, and they're all
humbugs! They shake their heads and use long words--they know they
can't do you any good, but they want their big fees! And all they do is
to frighten you worse, and make you sicker than ever!"

There was nothing that Montague could do save to sit and listen to this
outburst of wretchedness. His attempts to soothe the old man only had
the effect of exciting him more.

"Why does it all have to fall on me?" he moaned. "I want to be like
other people--I want to live! And instead, I'm like a man with a pack
of hungry wolves prowling round him--that's what it's like! It's like
Nature--hungry and cruel and savage! You think you know what life is;
it seems so beautiful and gentle and pleasant--that's when you're on
top! But now I'm down, and I KNOW what it is--it's a thing like a
nightmare, that reaches out for you to clutch you and crush you! And
you can't get away from it--you're helpless as a rat in a
corner--you're damned--you're damned!" The miserable man's voice broke
in a cry of despair, and he sank down in a heap in front of Montague,
shaking and sobbing. The other was trembling slightly, and stricken
with awe.

There was a long silence, and then the stranger lifted his tear-stained
face, and Montague helped to support him. "Have a little more of the
whisky," said he.

"No," the other answered feebly, "I'd better not."

"--My doctors won't let me have whisky," he added, after a while.
"That's my liver. I've so many don'ts, you know, that it takes a
note-book to keep track of them. And all of them together do me no
good! Think of it--I have to live on graham crackers and
milk--actually, not a thing has passed my lips for two years but graham
crackers and milk."

And then suddenly, with a start, it came to Montague where he had seen
this wrinkled old face before. It was