He was excited yet tired, tied up into nervous
knots without the will to loose them. What sense in going to bed, when
he could not sleep? What need of reviewing the last chapter of his
knowledge of the woman who was so compelling in her helplessness and her
childlike faith? He would read: something silly, if he had it at hand.
The large matters of the mind and soul were not for this unwilling
vigil; and at this intruding thought of the soul he smiled, remembering
how glibly he had bartered the integrity of his own to add his fragment
to the rising temple of Tira's faith. He had strengthened her at the
expense of his own bitter certainties. It was done deliberately and it
was not to be regretted, but it did open a window upon his private
rectitude. Was his state of mind to be taken so very seriously, even by
himself? Not after that! Lounging before his book-shelves in search of a
soporific, suddenly he remembered the mottled book. It flashed into his
mind as if a hand had hurled it there. He would read Old Crow's journal.

Settled in bed, the light beside him and the mottled book in his hand,
he paused a thoughtful minute before opening it. Poor old devil! Was
this the jangled record of an unsound mind, or was it the apologia for
an eccentricity probably not so uncommon, after all? Foolish, he
thought, to leave a record of any sort, unless you were a
heaven-accredited genius, entrusted with the leaves of life. Better to
recognize your own atomic insignificance, and sink willingly into the
predestined sea. He opened it and took a comprehensive glance over the
first page: an oblong of small neat handwriting. Many English hands were
like that. He was accustomed to call it a literary hand. Over the first
date he paused, to refer it back to his own years. How big was he when
Old Crow had begun the diary? Seven, that was all. He was a boy of seven
years, listening with an angry yet fascinated attention to the other
boys talking about Old Crow, who was, they said, luny, love-cracked. He
never could hear enough about the terrifying figure choosing to live up
there in the woods alone, and who yet seemed so gentle and so like other
folk when you met him and who gave you checker-berry lozenges. Still he
was furious when the boys hooted him and then ran, because, after all,
Old Crow was his own family. And with the first words, his mind started
to an alert attention. The words were to him.

"I am going to write some things down for