wo
weeks ago; in thought, it is, for me, a lifetime. It was a time of
suspense and waiting when diversion seemed almost irreverent, but at
last it was forced upon us by that ever-moving providence which stood
back of the whole affair. My dam broke at the upper farm. Chance?
Nothing of the sort! I went up to see how it had happened, and found
some rotten joists and rust-eaten girders. They are in the course of
events. Auber went with me while I should see things set to rights.

It was a simple incident, but somehow I suspected it of finality even as
we started out of the yard on the long drive. I was suspicious of that
knobby hill region, which was connected with the incipient indications
of the whole affair. On arriving in the late afternoon, however, nothing
could be more natural than that Auber, having inspected the dam, should
stroll on to the pasture, where he once sketched the path that runs down
to his dream-meadow.

I went back to the farmhouse, and wrote to my engineers a detail of the
breach in the dam, then sat down on the porch to enjoy a smoke. The day
was warm and dreamy; the sun, filtering through the September haze,
rested on the eyelids like a caressing hand. I was soon half asleep,
peering lazily at the view which zigzags down between the knobby hills
to the more cultivated farm-lands that we had left hours behind us, when
the telephone rang. I got up and answered it:

"William?--at the farm? Oh yes--a message, a telegram--for Mr. Hurn, you
say? Is it important?--Well, go ahead--What! Must take 11.10
express--crisis on Wall Street?--meet on train--Who?--Ezekiel."

It had come, then! Chance? No. A railroad merger; stockholders
interested. At first I said: "I won't tell him." Then I thought: "After
this supposed Sentence is delayed and delayed till he no longer looks on
the world as his prison cell, and the whole matter evaporates in a
psychological mist, he will say: 'Our superstitions, my dear friend, and
your loving care, cost me just twenty thousand dollars that trip. My
picture of the twilight path, which you would have interrupted, won't
replace a hundredth part of that.'"

I wandered down to the broken dam; there beside the breach, with the
river sucking darkly through, Josiah Peacock stood, contemplating the
scene with his practical eye against to-morrow's labor. Suddenly I found
myself mentioning the telegram. He said, "Then you'll have to drive
back to-night." I felt alarmed; surely this wa