ar a
little tale, and I told him yes, of course. "Maybe it will seem
companionable to know that other people have faced a bit of trouble,"
he said. And then he told me. I don't know if you will believe it; it
seems too much of a drama to be credible to me, if I had not heard
Robert Halarkenden tell it in his entirely simple way, sitting in his
workingman's blouse, with the big clippers in his right hand. Thirty
years before he had been laird of a small property in Scotland, and
about to marry the girl whom he cared for. Then suddenly he found that
she was in love with his cousin--with whom he had been brought up, and
who was as dear as a brother--and his cousin with her. In almost no
more words than I am using he told me of the crisis he lived through
and how he had gone off on the mountains and made his decision. He
could not marry the girl if she did not love him. His cousin was heir
to his property; he decided to disappear and let them think he was
dead, and so leave the two people whom he loved to be happy and
prosperous without him. He did that. Two or three people had to know
to arrange things, and Sir Archibald Graye, of Toronto, was one, but
otherwise he simply dropped out of life and buried himself in Canadian
forests, and then, just as he was growing hungry for some things he
could not get in the forest, my uncle came along and offered him what
he wanted.

"But how could you?" I asked him. "You're a gentleman; how could you
make yourself a servant, and build a wall between yourself and nice
people?"

Robin smiled at me in a shadowy, gentle way he has. "Those walls are a
small matter of dust, lassie," he said. "A real man blows on them and
they're tumbling. And service is what we're here for. And all people
are nice people, you'll find." And when, still unresigned, I said
more, he went on, very kindly, a little amused it seemed. "Why should
it be more important for me to be happy than for those two? I hope
they're happy," he spoke wistfully. "The lad was a genius, but a wild
lad too," and he looked thoughtful. "Anyhow, it was for me to decide,
you see, and a man couldn't decide ungenerously. That would be to tie
one's self to a gnawing beast, which is what is like the memory of your
own evil deed. Take my word for it, lassie, there was no other way."

"It seems all exaggerated," I threw at him; "there was no sense in your
giving up your home and traditions and associations--it was
unre