way." Ewbert
was excitedly gulping his second cup of tea; he pushed his chair back,
and flung his napkin down as he added, "You can come in, too, and see
that I get off alive."

"I shall not come near you," she answered resentfully; but Ewbert had
not closed the door behind him, and she felt it her duty to listen.

IX.

Mrs. Ewbert heard old Hilbrook begin at once in a high senile key
without any form of response to her husband's greeting: "There was one
thing you said to-day that I've been thinkin' over, and I've come down
to talk with you about it."

"Yes?" Ewbert queried submissively, though he was aware of being quite
as fagged as his wife accused him of being, after he spoke.

"Yes," Hilbrook returned. "I guess I ha'n't been exactly up and down
with myself. I guess I've been playing fast and loose with myself. I
guess you're right about my wantin' to have enough consciousness to
enjoy my unconsciousness," and the old gentleman gave a laugh of rather
weird enjoyment. "There are things," he resumed seriously, "that are
deeper in us than anything we call ourselves. I supposed I had gone to
the bottom, but I guess I hadn't. All the while there was something down
there that I hadn't got at; but you reached it and touched it, and now I
know it's there. I don't know but it's my Soul that's been havin' its
say all the time, and me not listenin'. I guess you made your point."

Ewbert was still not so sure of that. He had thrown out that hasty
suggestion without much faith in it at the time, and his faith in it had
not grown since.

"I'm glad," he began, but Hilbrook pressed on as if he had not spoken.

"I guess we're built like an onion," he said, with a severity that
forbade Ewbert to feel anything undignified in the homely illustration.
"You can strip away layer after layer till you seem to get to nothing at
all; but when you've got to that nothing you've got to the very thing
that had the life in it, and that would have grown again if you had put
it in the ground."

"Exactly!" said Ewbert.

"You made a point that I can't get round," Hilbrook continued, and it
was here that Ewbert enjoyed a little instant of triumph. "But that
ain't the point with _me_. I see that I can't prove that we shan't live
again any more than you can prove that we shall. What I want you to do
_now_ is to convince me, or to give me the least reason to believe, that
we shan't live again on exactly the same terms that we live now. I don