had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful
and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it
was, he talked more in those weeks, I suppose, than in the rest of his
life put together. Bits of his talk, homely and yet wise, come back to
me across the sixty years. One day, I remember, we talked of life, as
young men love to talk. We said nothing that had not been said by young
men since Abel's time, I do suppose, but it was all new to us; and
indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed
to make them their own in a manner. Yvon maintained that gaiety was the
best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the
human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for
him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the
scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would but spread
their wings and fly away from it, houp! it would no longer exist. "_Et
voila!_"

We laughed, but shook our heads. Ham meditated awhile, and then began in
his strong, quiet voice, a little husky, which I always supposed was
from his swallowing so much raw meal and flour.

"That's one way of lookin' at it, Eavan; I expect that's your French
view, likely; looks different, you see, to folks livin' where there's
cold, and sim'lar things, as butterflies couldn't find not to say
comfortable. Way I look at it, it always seemed to me that grain come as
near it as anything, go to compare things. Livin' in a grist-mill, I
presume, I git into a grainy way of lookin' at the world. Now, take
wheat! It comes up pooty enough, don't it, in the fields? Show me a
field o' wheat, and I'll show you as handsome a thing as is made this
side of Jordan. Wal, that might be a little child, we'll say; if there's
a thing handsomer than a field o' wheat, it's a little child. But bimeby
comes reapin' and all, and then the trouble begins. First, it's all in
the rough, ain't it, chaff and all, mixed together; and has to go
through the thresher? Well, maybe that's the lickin's a boy's father
gives him. He don't like 'em,--I can feel Father Belfort's lickin's
yet,--but they git red of a sight o' chaff, nonsense, airs, and what
not, for him. Then it comes here to the grist-mill. Well, I may be
gittin' a little mixed, boys, but you can foller if you try, I expect.
Say that's startin' out in life, leavin' home, or bindin' to a trade, or
whatever. Well, it goes i