even flimsy a pretense of fairness will shelter a man
in high place--and therefore a Burbank. "He will fool the people as
easily as he fools himself," said I. And more than ever it seemed to me
that I must keep out of the game of his administration. My necessity of
party regularity made it impossible for me to oppose him; my equal
necessity of not outraging my sense of the wise, not to speak of the
decent, made it impossible for me to abet him.

At last Woodruff came in person. When his name was brought to me, I
regretted that I could not follow my strong impulse to refuse to see
him. But at sight of his big strong body and big strong face, with its
typically American careless good humor--the cool head, the warm heart,
the amused eyes and lips that could also harden into sternness of
resolution--at sight of this old friend and companion-in-arms, my mood
began to lift and I felt him stirring in it like sunshine attacking a
fog. "I know what you've come to say," I began, "but don't say it. I
shall keep to my tent for the present."

"Then you won't have a tent to keep to," retorted he.

"Very well," said I. "My private affairs will give me all the occupation
I need."

He laughed. "The general resigns from the command of the army to play
with a box of lead soldiers."

"That sounds well," said I. "But the better the analogy, the worse the
logic. I am going out of the business of making and working off gold
bricks and green goods--and that's no analogy."

"Then you must be going to kill yourself," he replied. "For that's
life."

"Public life--active life," said I. "Here, there are other things." And
I looked toward my two daughters, whose laughter reached us from their
pony-cart just rounding a distant curve in the drive.

His gaze followed mine and he watched the two children until they were
out of sight, watched them with the saddest, hungriest look in his eyes.
"Guess you're right," he said gruffly.

After a silence I asked: "What's the news?"

A quizzical smile just curled his lips, and it broadened into a laugh as
he saw my own rather shamefaced smile of understanding. "Seems to me,"
said he, "that I read somewhere once how a king, perhaps it was an
emperor, so hankered for the quiet joys that he got off the throne and
retired to a monastery--and then established lines of post-horses from
his old capital to bring him the news every half-hour or so. I reckon
he'd have taken his job back if he could have got it