I shall bid you good-morning."

"Yes. Say," he shouted, "tell Bruck I want to see him, too."

The list was followed, and a night of sorrow fell at the end of a
heart-breaking day. Not in all instances had the publishers been gruff;
some had spoken kindly, one had looked at the manuscript, and then had
shown the Professor a bank of books written on the same line. At last,
worn out with serving as pall-bearer to his own dead spirit, he offered
the book for enough money to pay his life insurance. The publisher shook
his head. Old, old story, gathering mold.

CHAPTER XXVII.

WARMER THAN THE WORLD.

A bluster of warm wind brought a thaw, and the ice in the lake was
breaking--a disjointing time, a cracking of winter's old bones, a time
when being alone we feel less lonely than in a noisy company. At night
Milford sat musing in the kitchen. The outer door stood open, and he
heard the cattle tramping about in the mushy barnyard. The hired man and
his wife were singing a lonesome song in the sitting-room. There came
another tramping, not of cattle, but of one more weary, of a man, the
Professor. He trod into the light that fell from the door, and Milford
bounded up to meet him, but fell back in reverence of his grief-stricken
face. For a time the old man did not speak. He dropped his bundle, once
so precious, but now a sapless husk, laid his walking-stick across it,
took hold of a chair, and let himself slowly down with a groan.

"We are going to have rain," he said, attempting to smile, and
unbuttoning his old coat with a palsied fumble.

"Yes, I think so. The clouds have been tumbling about all day."

"A weird song they are singing in there."

"The love song of the ignorant and the poor," said Milford.

"The poor and the wise would not have written it," the Professor
replied.

"Shall I tell them to stop?" Milford asked.

"Oh, no, poor crickets. Bring some cider, my boy. Let us live for a time
in recollection only. I will not take too much."

"You may take as much as you like. It is time to drink."

"Yes, to drink or to rave."

Milford brought a jug of cider. "The devil's sympathy," said the old
man, drinking. "More, give me more--promises heaven, but slippers the
foot that treads its way to hell. But I will not take too much. Did I
tell you that I had lost my place at the mill?"

"No, you didn't say anything about it."

"I was discharged the evening before I went to town, but it made no
impression