ally, for none denied his intellect. He drove a virile pen,
and had an epigrammatic tongue. He had had a hard time. He had borne the
yoke in his youth. This, we have strong authority for saying, is good
for a man; but it leaves its mark upon him. He had been desperately
poor. He had not minded that except for his mother, and he had approved
of her giving up every cent to meet the old security debts. It had cut
him off from his college education; but he had worked till he was a
better scholar than he might have been had he gone to college. He had
kept his mother comfortable as long as she lived, and then had put up
a monument over her in the old churchyard, as he had done before to his
father's memory. This, everyone said, was foolish, and perhaps it was,
for it took him at least two years to pay for them, and he might have
laid up the money and got a start, or, as some charitable persons said,
it might have been given to the poor. However, the monuments were put
up, and on them were epitaphs which recorded at length the virtues of
those to whom they were erected, with their descent, and declared that
they were Christians and Gentlepeople. Some one said to Floyd that he
might have shortened the epitaphs, and have saved something. "I did not
want them shortened," said he.

He had borne the yoke otherwise also. One of the first things he had
done after starting in life was to fall in love with a beautiful woman.
She was very beautiful and a great belle. Every one said it was sheer
nonsense for Henry Floyd to expect her to marry him, as poor as he
was, which was natural enough. The only thing was that she led Floyd to
believe she was going to marry him when she did not intend to do it, and
it cost him a great deal of unhappiness. He never said one word against
her, not even when she married a man much older than himself, simply, as
everyone said, because he was very rich. If Floyd ever thought that she
treated him badly, no one ever knew it, and when finally she left her
husband, no one ever ventured to discuss it before Floyd.

Henry Floyd, however, had suffered,--that everyone could see who had
eyes; but only he knew how much. Generally grave and dreamy; when quiet
as calm as a dove, as fierce as a hawk when aroused; moving always in an
eccentric orbit, which few understood; flashing out now and then gleams
which some said were sparks of genius but which most people said were
mere eccentricity, he had sunk into a recluse.