he trees--the dark trees--the
winter skeleton trees! Recoiling, he returned to his armchair and sat
down before the fire. It had been shining like that, the lamp turned
low, his chair drawn up, when Larry came in that afternoon two months
ago. Bah! He had never come at all! It was a nightmare. He had been
asleep. How his head burned! And leaping up, he looked at the calendar
on his bureau. "January the 28th!" No dream! His face hardened and
darkened. On! Not like Larry! On! 1914.

A STOIC

I

1

"Aequam memento rebus in arduis
Servare mentem:"--Horace.

In the City of Liverpool, on a January day of 1905, the Board-room of
"The Island Navigation Company" rested, as it were, after the labours
of the afternoon. The long table was still littered with the ink, pens,
blotting-paper, and abandoned documents of six persons--a deserted
battlefield of the brain. And, lonely, in his chairman's seat at the top
end old Sylvanus Heythorp sat, with closed eyes, still and heavy as an
image. One puffy, feeble hand, whose fingers quivered, rested on the arm
of his chair; the thick white hair on his massive head glistened in the
light from a green-shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and
then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt,
escaped his thick lips between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of
white hairs above his cleft chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick
trunk of a body in short black-braided coat seemed divested of all neck.

Young Gilbert Farney, secretary of "The Island Navigation Company,"
entering his hushed Board-room, stepped briskly to the table,
gathered some papers, and stood looking at his chairman. Not more than
thirty-five, with the bright hues of the optimist in his hair, beard,
cheeks, and eyes, he had a nose and lips which curled ironically. For,
in his view, he was the Company; and its Board did but exist to chequer
his importance. Five days in the week for seven hours a day he wrote,
and thought, and wove the threads of its business, and this lot came
down once a week for two or three hours, and taught their grandmother
to suck eggs. But watching that red-cheeked, white-haired, somnolent
figure, his smile was not so contemptuous as might have been expected.
For after all, the chairman was a wonderful old boy. A man of go and
insight could not but respect him. Eighty! Half paralysed, over head and
ears in debt, having gone the pace all his l