, saw him moving up the hill in
the north road, until finally his voice, still singing, died away in the
distance.

Once I happened to reach the house just as the singer was passing, and
Harriet said:

"There goes that drunkard."

It gave me an indescribable shock. Of course I had known as much, and
yet I had not directly applied the term. I had not thought of my singer
as _that_, for I had often been conscious in spite of myself, alone in
my fields, of something human and cheerful which had touched me, in
passing.

After Harriet applied her name to my singer, I was of two minds
concerning him. I struggled with myself: I tried instinctively to
discipline my pulses when I heard the sound of his singing. For was he
not a drunkard? Lord! how we get our moralities mixed up with our
realities!

And then one evening when I saw him coming--I had been a long day alone
in my fields--I experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. With an
indescribable joyousness of adventure I stepped out toward the fence and
pretended to be hard at work.

"After all," I said to myself, "this is a large world, with room in it
for many curious people."

I waited in excitement. When he came near me I straightened up just as
though I had seen him for the first time. When he lifted his hat to me
I lifted my hat as grandiloquently as he.

"How are you, neighbour?" I asked.

He paused for a single instant and gave me a smile; then he replaced his
hat as though he had far more important business to attend to, and went
on up the road.

My next glimpse of him was a complete surprise to me. I saw him on the
street in town. Harriet pointed him out, else I should never have
recognized him: a quiet, shy, modest man, as different as one could
imagine from the singer I had seen so often passing my farm. He wore
neat, worn clothes; and his horse stood tied in front of the store. He
had brought his honey to town to sell. He was a bee-man.

I stopped and asked him about his honey, and whether the fall flowers
had been plenty; I ran my eye over his horse, and said that it seemed to
be a good animal. But I could get very little from him, and that little
in a rather low voice. I came away with my interest whetted to a still
keener edge. How a man has come to be what he is--is there any discovery
better worth making?

[Illustration: "HE USUALLY CAME IN THE EVENING"]

After that day in town I watched for the bee-man, and I saw him often on
his way to t