d abominable like gore. After a while the boy got a
torch outside, and as he flared it I caught sight of Miller on his cot,
backed up into one corner. He was sitting upright, staring straight
ahead and a little down, as if in careful consideration. As I stepped
toward him the pliable bamboo floor undulated; the movement was carried
to him and he began to nod, very gently and gravely. He seemed to be
saying: 'No, Ah cain't affawd it.' It was atrocious. Finally I was by
his side and he was again motionless, staring thoughtfully. Then I saw
he was considering. In his hands, which lay twined on his knees, were a
lot of little metallic oblongs. I disengaged them. The _muchacho_ drew
nearer, and with the torch over my shoulder I examined them. They were
photographs, cheap tintypes. The first was of a woman, a poor being,
sagging with overwork, a lamentable baby in her arms. The other pictures
were of children--six of them, boys and girls, of all ages from twelve
to three, and under each, in painful chirography, a name was
written--Lee Miller, Amy Miller, Geraldine Miller, and so on.

"You don't understand, do you? For a moment I didn't. I stared stupidly
at those tintypes, shuffled and reshuffled them; the torch roared in my
ear. Then, suddenly, understanding came to me, sharp as a pang. He had a
wife and seven children.

"A simple fact, wasn't it, a commonplace one, almost vulgar, you might
say. And yet what a change of view produced by it, what a dislocation of
judgment! I was like a man riding through a strange country, in a storm,
at night. It is dark, he cannot see, he has never seen the country, yet
as he rides on he begins to picture to himself the surroundings, his
imagination builds for him a landscape--a mountain there, a river here,
wind-streaming trees over there--and right away it exists, it _is_, it
has solidity, mass, life. Then suddenly comes a flash of lightning, a
second of light, and he is astounded, absolutely astounded to see the
real landscape different from that indestructible thing that his mind
had built. Thus it was with me. I had judged, oh, I had judged him
thoroughly, sized him up to a certainty, and bang, came the flare of
this new fact, this extremely commonplace fact, and I was all off. I
must begin to judge again, only it would never do that man any good.

"A hundred memories came back to me, glared at me in the illumination of
that new fact. I remember the _camisa_, the bare feet. I saw him