sters, whose brilliant marriage
to--"

Aye, to whom?

The hermit walked back to the hermitage. At the door stood Bob Binkley,
his old friend and companion of the days before he had renounced the
world--Bob, himself, arrayed like the orchids of the greenhouse in the
summer man's polychromatic garb--Bob, the millionaire, with his fat,
firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond rings, sparkling fob-chain, and
pleated bosom. He was two years older than the hermit, and looked five
years younger.

"You're Hamp Ellison, in spite of those whiskers and that going-away
bathrobe," he shouted. "I read about you on the bill of fare at the inn.
They've run your biography in between the cheese and 'Not Responsible
for Coats and Umbrellas.' What 'd you do it for, Hamp? And ten years,
too--gee whilikins!"

"You're just the same," said the hermit. "Come in and sit down. Sit on
that limestone rock over there; it's softer than the granite."

"I can't understand it, old man," said Binkley. "I can see how you could
give up a woman for ten years, but not ten years for a woman. Of course
I know why you did it. Everybody does. Edith Carr. She jilted four or
five besides you. But you were the only one who took to a hole in the
ground. The others had recourse to whiskey, the Klondike, politics, and
that _similia similibus_ cure. But, say--Hamp, Edith Carr was just about
the finest woman in the world--high-toned and proud and noble, and
playing her ideals to win at all kinds of odds. She certainly was a
crackerjack."

"After I renounced the world," said the hermit, "I never heard of her
again."

"She married me," said Binkley.

The hermit leaned against the wooden walls of his ante-cave and wriggled
his toes.

"I know how you feel about it," said Binkley. "What else could she
do? There were her four sisters and her mother and old man Carr--you
remember how he put all the money he had into dirigible balloons? Well,
everything was coming down and nothing going up with 'em, as you might
say. Well, I know Edith as well as you do--although I married her. I was
worth a million then, but I've run it up since to between five and six.
It wasn't me she wanted as much as--well, it was about like this. She
had that bunch on her hands, and they had to be taken care of. Edith
married me two months after you did the ground-squirrel act. I thought
she liked me, too, at the time."

"And now?" inquired the recluse.

"We're better friends than ever now.