ing somewhat awry with me and my heart was sore
and rebellious over many things that have nothing to do with this
narration. Stillwater offered time and opportunity for healing and
counsel. Yet, looking back, I doubt if I should have found either had
it not been for Abel and his beloved garden.

Abel Armstrong (he was always called "Old Abel", though he was barely
sixty) lived in a quaint, gray house close by the harbour shore. I
heard a good deal about him before I saw him. He was called "queer",
but Stillwater folks seemed to be very fond of him. He and his sister,
Tamzine, lived together; she, so my garrulous landlady informed me,
had not been sound of mind at times for many years; but she was all
right now, only odd and quiet. Abel had gone to college for a year
when he was young, but had given it up when Tamzine "went crazy".
There was no one else to look after her. Abel had settled down to it
with apparent content: at least he had never complained.

"Always took things easy, Abel did," said Mrs. Campbell. "Never
seemed to worry over disappointments and trials as most folks do.
Seems to me that as long as Abel Armstrong can stride up and down in
that garden of his, reciting poetry and speeches, or talking to that
yaller cat of his as if it was a human, he doesn't care much how the
world wags on. He never had much git-up-and-git. His father was a
hustler, but the family didn't take after him. They all favoured the
mother's people--sorter shiftless and dreamy. 'Taint the way to git on
in this world."

No, good and worthy Mrs. Campbell. It was not the way to get on in
your world; but there are other worlds where getting on is estimated
by different standards, and Abel Armstrong lived in one of these--a
world far beyond the ken of the thrifty Stillwater farmers and
fishers. Something of this I had sensed, even before I saw him; and
that night in his garden, under a sky of smoky red, blossoming into
stars above the harbour, I found a friend whose personality and
philosophy were to calm and harmonize and enrich my whole existence.
This sketch is my grateful tribute to one of the rarest and finest
souls God ever clothed with clay.

He was a tall man, somewhat ungainly of figure and homely of face. But
his large, deep eyes of velvety nut-brown were very beautiful and
marvellously bright and clear for a man of his age. He wore a little
pointed, well-cared-for beard, innocent of gray; but his hair was
grizzled, and alto