God rest his soul, and I heartily hope
he has found riches and rest and his dog ere now, as I feel certain he
has, and what little I know can do no harm, if told, to any.

Well, as I was saying, when storms were brewing in the air and the sea,
the uneasiness of the elements themselves seemed to take possession of
his soul and agitate it,--for his very body would rock to and fro and
sway in the chair when the fit was on him, and he would talk to his dog,
and to men and women, too, whom no one could see save himself, and if
what he said might be taken as the words of a sane man, he certainly had
been rich and powerful one day--and loved and hated, too, for that
matter. For from his speech one could but learn that all that makes life
worth the living was once his, and that he had lost it all--but
whatever may have been his other losses, one there must have been in
truth, for as to it his words were always the same: "_Gone, gone_," he
would say, "_gone_--and the winds I hear coming blow over her grave--but
winds cannot reach her, for she lies warm and well covered, deep down in
her grave." And so he would sit muttering and swaying his body in the
chair, as the winds blew stormily out of the east, and the boom of the
waves rolled up from the bluff, as they pounded heavily against the
rocks and the shore.

Why did I not make him settle down? Because he wouldn't. I tried time
and again to persuade him to it, but he never would consent. Perhaps he
was right in his impulse to roam, and loved the careless freedom of it,
and the solitude it gave him. For if a man would hide himself from man
he must keep on the move. If he stops he becomes known. But in travel he
loses his identity, and passes from place to place unknown and unnoted.

But it seemed pitiful to me that one so old and feeble should have no
home, and so I persuaded him to settle down for one winter, at least,
and hired him a little house in a pleasant street and started him in
his housekeeping experiment. But alas! evil came of it, and I never did
a deed I more profoundly regretted, for it led to the calamity I am
about to tell you of, and brought upon the poor man the greatest grief
that might befall him, even the death of his dog, and in a most cruel
and painful fashion at that. Ah, me! could we but see the end of things
from their beginning, how little of our doing would be done at times;
for the benevolent blundering of our lives is as often fruitful of harm
as t