ou said you saw Tim and Mary," said I, a trifle angrily.

"I should say I did," Perry answered, chuckling and rocking again on
his feet. "The two of 'em, standin' there in the lamplight by the
table, him a-lookin' down like he was dyin', her a-lookin' up like she
was dyin' and holdin' on to him like he was all there was left for her
in the world. It made me swaller, Mark, it made me swaller."

There was a lump in Perry's throat at that moment, and he stopped his
rocking and turned to the fire, so his back was toward me.

"Of course you knocked," said I, after a silence.

"Of course I didn't," he snapped. "Do you suppose I was wanted then?
'No, sir,' I says, 'for them there is only two people in all the
world--there's Tim and there's Mary.'"

Perry was putting on his overcoat, winding his long comforter about his
neck and drawing on his mittens.

"To tell the truth," he said, with a forced laugh, "I don't feel as
chipper as I usually do under such like circumstances. It seems to me
you ain't so chipper as you might be, either, Mark."

"Good-night, Perry," I said, smoking very hard.

"Good-night," he answered. At the door he paused and gazed at me.

"Say, Mark," he said, "them two was just intended for one another--you
know it--I see you know it. God picked 'em out for one another. I
know it. You know it, too. But it's hard not to be picked
yourself--ain't it?"

Tim's minute! God keep me from such another!

* * * * * *

It was all so plain now. The fire was dying away. The hands of the
clock were crawling off another hour, and still he did not come. But
what did I care? All in the world that I loved I had lost--Mary and my
brother--and Tim had taken both. He who had so much had come in his
strength and robbed me, left me to sit alone night after night, with my
pipe and my dogs and my crutches. Had he told me that night when I
came back to the valley that he loved the girl in all truth, I should
have stood aside and cheered him on in his struggle against her, but I
had not measured the depth of his mind nor given him credit for
cunning. Perry Thomas saw it. He had gone away from her and wounded
her by his neglect. In the fabrication of the other girl, the
beautiful Edith, whose charms so outshone all other women, he had hit
at the heart of her vanity; and now he had come back so gayly and
easily to take from me what I might not have won in a lifetime. Losing