e Jerseys. Well, I used
to sit thinking there, after the day's work was done, until my head
ached, of how I might do something,--to help, you understand?"

"I understand."

"To make people glad I had lived. I was lazy, too. I'd have liked to
settle down and grub like the rest, but this notion kept driving me
like, a sting. I can understand why missionaries cross the seas when
their hearts stay behind. It grew with me, kept me restless, like a
devil inside of me. I'm not strong-brained, as you said. I had only one
talent,--for mechanism. They bred me a lawyer, but I was a machinist
born. Well,--it's the old story. What's the use of telling it?"

He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the floor.

"Go on. It will be good for both of us. Aikens has not come."

"There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to
this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of
this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession
of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a
costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My
father left me a fortune; _that_ was swallowed up. I worked on with hard
struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within
my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all
that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"--

He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor
waited until he was controlled.

"Never mind," gently. "Don't go on."

"Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was,
uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It
rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if
they had lived, it would have been different with me,--I'm so fond of
children. I was of her,--God knows I was! But after the children were
gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short
of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,--used to her.
It's the way with husbands and wives, sometimes. Well"--

He swallowed some choking in his throat, and hurried on.

"She had some money,--not much, but her own. I wanted it. Then I stopped
to think. This engine seemed like a greedy devil swallowing everything.
Another step, and she was penniless, ruined: common sense told me that.
And I loved her,--well enough to see how my work came between us every
hour, made me cr