ement. For example, if that rascal of a Norton Carr had
not been so interesting to us all, had not so worked his way into the
hearts of us, I should never have gone hurrying after him (at Anthy's
suggestion) on that November day. And it might--who knows--have been
better in dollars and cents for the _Star_, if I had _not_ hurried. No,
as an old friend of mine in Hempfield, Howieson, the shoemaker (a wise
man), often remarks: "They say business is business. Well, I say
business _ain't_ business if it's _all_ business." Business grows not as
it eliminates talent or youth, however prickly or irritating to work
with, but by making itself big enough to use all kinds of human beings.

I recall yet the strange thrill I had when I left the printing-office
that day to search for Nort. It had given me an indescribable pleasure
to have Anthy ask me to help (her "we" lingered long in my
thoughts--lingers still), and I had, moreover, the feeling that it
depended somewhat on me to help bind together the now fiercely
antagonistic elements of the _Star_.

It may appear absurd to some who think that only those things are great
which are big and noisy, that anything so apparently unimportant should
stir a man as these events stirred me; but the longer I live the more
doubtful I am of the distinction between the times and the things upon
which the world places the tags "Important" and "Unimportant."

As I set forth I remember how very beautiful the streets of Hempfield
looked to me.

"Have you seen Norton Carr?" I asked here, and, "Have you seen Norton
Carr?" I asked there--tracing him from lair to lair, and friend to
friend, and thus found myself tramping out along the lower road that
leads toward the west and the river. He had sent a telegram, I found in
the course of my inquiry, which added a dash of mystery to my quest and
stirred in me a curious sense of anxiety.

The very feeling of that dull day, etched deep in my memory by the acid
of emotion, comes vividly back to me. There had been no snow, and the
fields were brown and bare--dead trees, dead hedges of hazel and cherry,
crows flying heavily overhead with melancholy cries, and upon the hills
beyond the river dull clouds hanging like widows' weeds: a brooding day.

At every turn I looked for Nort and, thus looking, came to the bridge.
It was the same spot, the same bridge, where, some years before, the
Scotch preacher and I, driving late one evening, looked anxiously for
the