ed in a boat by hisself, and what has jokes made about him by
that Tom Leigh.' I punched Tom Leigh," observed Mr. Hawk
parenthetically. "'So,' she said me, 'yeou can go away, an' I don't
want to see yeou again.'"

This heartless conduct on the part of Miss Muspratt had had the
natural result of making him confess all in self-defense, and she had
written to the professor the same night.

I forgave Mr. Hawk. I think he was hardly sober enough to understand,
for he betrayed no emotion.

"It is fate, Hawk," I said, "simply fate. There is a divinity that
shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will, and it's no good
grumbling."

"Yiss," said Mr. Hawk, after chewing this sentiment for a while in
silence, "so she said me, 'Hawk,' she said--like that--'you're a girt
fule--'"

"That's all right," I replied. "I quite understand. As I say, it's
simply fate. Good-by."

And I left him.

As I was going back, I met the professor and Phyllis.

They passed me without a look.

I wandered on in quite a fervor of self-pity. I was in one of those
moods when life suddenly seems to become irksome, when the future
stretches blank and gray in front of one. In such a mood it is
imperative that one should seek distraction. The shining example of
Mr. Harry Hawk did not lure me. Taking to drink would be a nuisance.
Work was what I wanted. I would toil like a navvy all day among the
fowls, separating them when they fought, gathering in the eggs when
they laid, chasing them across country when they got away, and even,
if necessity arose, painting their throats with turpentine when they
were stricken with roop. Then, after dinner, when the lamps were lit,
and Mrs. Ukridge petted Edwin and sewed, and Ukridge smoked cigars and
incited the gramophone to murder "Mumbling Mose," I would steal away
to my bedroom and write--and write--and _write_--and go on writing
till my fingers were numb and my eyes refused to do their duty. And,
when time had passed, I might come to feel that it was all for the
best. A man must go through the fire before he can write his
masterpiece. We learn in suffering what we teach in song. What we lose
on the swings we make up on the roundabouts. Jerry Garnet, the man,
might become a depressed, hopeless wreck, with the iron planted
irremovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet, the author, should turn
out such a novel of gloom that strong critics would weep and the
public jostle for copies till Mudie's doorways became a sha