moved him so? Some daughter, perhaps, or granddaughter,
who should have been the light of his home instead of---- I smiled to
find how bitter I was growing, and how swiftly I was weaving a romance
round an unshaven old man and his correspondence. Yet all day he
lingered in my mind, and I had fitful glimpses of those two trembling,
blue-veined, knuckly hands with the paper rustling between them.

I had hardly hoped to see him again. Another day's decline must, I
thought, hold him to his room, if not to his bed. Great, then, was my
surprise when, as I approached my bench, I saw that he was already
there. But as I came up to him I could scarce be sure that it was
indeed the same man. There were the curly-brimmed hat, and the shining
stock, and the horn glasses, but where were the stoop and the
grey-stubbled, pitiable face? He was clean-shaven and firm lipped,
with a bright eye and a head that poised itself upon his great
shoulders like an eagle on a rock. His back was as straight and square
as a grenadier's, and he switched at the pebbles with his stick in his
exuberant vitality. In the button-hole of his well-brushed black coat
there glinted a golden blossom, and the corner of a dainty red silk
handkerchief lapped over from his breast pocket. He might have been
the eldest son of the weary creature who had sat there the morning
before.

"Good morning, Sir, good morning!" he cried with a merry waggle of his
cane.

"Good morning!" I answered, "how beautiful the bay is looking."

"Yes, Sir, but you should have seen it just before the sun rose."

"What, have you been here since then?"

"I was here when there was scarce light to see the path."

"You are a very early riser."

"On occasion, sir; on occasion!" He cocked his eye at me as if to
gauge whether I were worthy of his confidence. "The fact is, sir, that
my wife is coming back to me to day."

I suppose that my face showed that I did not quite see the force of the
explanation. My eyes, too, may have given him assurance of sympathy,
for he moved quite close to me and began speaking in a low,
confidential voice, as if the matter were of such weight that even the
sea-gulls must be kept out of our councils.

"Are you a married man, Sir?"

"No, I am not."

"Ah, then you cannot quite understand it. My wife and I have been
married for nearly fifty years, and we have never been parted, never at
all, until now."

"Was it for long?" I asked.

"Yes, s