ore.
He had a foolish feeling that he was invoking her remembered presence,
calling on her to help them out.

"Now, Dick," he began, when they were seated, "you said something about
my letter's not being normal. What is normal, when you come to that?"

Dick frowned into the fire. This, he felt, had some hidden leading, and
he wasn't going to be caught.

"What's the use of asking fool questions?" he inquired, in his turn.
"You know."

"Can't help it," said Raven. "I've got to be Socratic. Help me out, old
man. Let me have my little game. What is normal?"

"Why," said Dick, floundering, "I suppose it's what the general run of
people think--and do. It's keeping to the rules. It's trotting on the
course. It isn't going off at some tangent of your own."

Dick felt rather proud of this, its fluency and general appositeness. He
plucked up his spirits, thinking he might be going to manage Raven,
after all.

"Now, see here," said Raven, suddenly leaning forward and looking at him
in the friendliest community of feeling, "it means a good deal when a
fellow of my years, as you say, gets a biff that sends him staggering."

"Just what I said," Dick assured him. "It's mighty serious. It's awful."

"Has it occurred to you," said Raven, "that I may be right?"

"Right? How right?"

Thereupon question and answer piled up fast.

"I've indicted the universe, as it were. How can you prove the universe
hasn't laid herself open to it? How do you know the indictment of the
creature she made and then ground under her heel isn't the very thing
she's been waiting for all these millions of years?"

"Oh, come, Jack! the universe hasn't been waiting for you. That's a part
of it, don't you see? You've got delusions, delusions of greatness,
delusions----"

"Shut up. Don't use your spurious jargon on me. Just answer my
questions. How do you know it isn't the healthiest thing that ever
happened in this rotten tissue of pretense we call civilization for even
one man--just one--to get up and swear at the whole system and swear
again that, so far as his little midge's existence goes, he won't
subscribe to it? What business have you to call that disease? How do you
know it isn't health? How do you know I'm not one of the few normal
atoms in the whole blamed carcass?"

Dick felt himself profoundly shocked. He was having to reverse his
conclusions. Uncle Jack had stood for a well ordered sanity, conversant
with wool and books and mysterious