ay, and how one day he
realised that he should never remember, and what a blow it was.

Then he said a lot of things that I did not understand. He said that
when one grew out of childhood, he lost his sympathy with events, and
when that sympathy was lost, it was possible to live in the world only
as an adventurer with everything in one's hand.

He said a sentinel watched to see if a man set his heart on a thing, and
if he did the sentinel gave some sign, whereupon the devil's imps
swarmed up to break that thing in pieces. He said that sometimes a man
beat off the devils and saved the thing, but it was rare, and meant a
life of tireless watching. From every point of view, indifference was
better.

Still, he said, it was a mistake for a man to allow events to browbeat
him. He ought to fight back, hitting where he could. An event, once in a
while, was strangely a coward. Besides that, if Destiny found a man
always ready to strip, she came after a while to accord to him the
courtesies of a duellist, and if he were a stout fellow, she sometimes
hesitated before she provoked a fight. Of course the man could not
finally beat her off, but she would set him to one side, as a person
with whom she was going to have trouble, and give him all the time she
could.

He said a man ought to have the courage to strike out for what he
wanted; that the ship-wrecked who got desperately ashore was a better
man than the hanger-back; that a great misfortune was a great
compliment. It measured the resistance of the man. Destiny would not
send artillery against a weakling. It was sometimes finer to fight when
the lights were all out; I would not understand that, men never did
until they were about through with life. But, above everything else, he
said, a man ought to go to his ruin with a sort of princely
indifference. God Almighty could not hurt the man who did not care.

Then he gave me a friendly direction about the cattle, to put them in
his boundary on our road home, bade me remember our contract of no tales
told, and got into his saddle.

I watched him cross the bridge, and ride away through the Hills with his
men, humming some song about the devil and a dainty maid, and I wished
that I might grow up to have such splendid courage. His big galleon had
gone down on the high seas with a treasure in her hold that I could not
reckon, and he went singing like one who finds a kingdom.

Then Jud called to me to get out of the road, and a mu