For a few moments Rufus Blight was silent, and my eyes were on the
picture of the great mills to which the counting of sugar and eggs had
led. From the mills they wandered to what they had given the man who
built them, from the golf sticks to the prints of trotting horses and
to the litter on the table. This den measured the true extent of his
conquest. I looked at him. With a movement of weariness he stretched
his feet toward the fire and leaned back and gazed at the ceiling, with
a whimsical smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

"I had to work, David," he went on. "Hendry could earn a living
teaching school, but I hadn't the brains, so I toiled away in the store
from early morning until late at night. Teaching school was easier.
He used to say that if the sluggard did actually go to the ant he would
probably find him a most uninteresting creature to talk to. I guess
Hendry was right. I do know that he had little of the virtue of the
ant, but he was one of the most interesting men I ever heard talk.
When I was behind the counter it was my main pleasure to listen to him,
perched on a chair in front of it." Rufus Blight laughed. "Really,
David, in those days I was proud of having such a distinguished
brother. I had always looked up to him. He was older than I, four
years, and he was my protector against the assaults of other lads--my
ready compendium of universal knowledge. I never dreamed but that if I
prospered he would prosper; and if he, then I. Why, David, I can feel
him now clapping me on the back and calling me his grub-worm. 'Some
day,' he would say, 'I'll come and ask a bed in your garret.' And I
would laugh at him and talk of the time when we--I always said
'we'--when we should have a pair of fine trotters, and should go
skimming over the country together instead of crawling along behind our
blind mare." Rufus Blight paused. The whimsical smile was gone and he
was looking at me through narrowed eyes. "Then the break came." And
quickly, as he said it, he turned from me and began to smoke very hard.

"The break?" said I in a questioning tone; for I believed that at last
I was to know the mystery which lay behind the Professor's conduct if
only I could lead him on.

"Yes," said he in an even voice, "the break. The break came and I had
to leave the valley. I wouldn't stay after that, David. There was
nothing left for me there, but I had my work; I could go on weighing
butter and