e way, that young fellow over there who said
that is a violoncellist. 'Grand ducal 'cello to the imperial violin,'
you know."

I reconsidered him in the wink of an eye. He is not Socrates and he
is not Verlaine, I said to myself. This old lovable scarecrow is the
Ancient Mariner, and he is going to hold me with his glittering eye
and I am going to listen like a three years' child. The very fellow:
the "skinny hand," the "long gray beard"--and doubtless, too, the
true Ancient Mariner smelled of tobacco and drink. Certainly he talked
poetry. And so did my old man, miraculously, almost without effort. So
I sat back and listened, while he told his story.

II

Andy Gordon was for all his years a weaver in the mills at Glastonbury;
just an ordinary human stick or stone, as you might call it, doing his
mechanical work at the machine like a machine--until one day he drew
his pay, before you could say Jack Robinson, and started off walking
anywhere. He did it of a sudden and without seeming cause, but inwardly
there was a pressing retraction upon his soul that told him to get away
from the mechanical actualities.

He was feeling himself tired to death that day he drew his money; and,
of course, he was still young. And when a young man really wants very
much to die, he always comes out of that valley (at any rate, so people
say) with something new in his heart. Andy walked off anywhere, just so
he got to the hills.

And when he arrived at the hills, it was all very, very sweet. They
were just coming light yellow and the bluebirds were there before him,
touring the air just for the fun of it. And he made right away a queer
discovery--he knew for the first time that New Year's is not the first
day of January, at all. It's the first day of spring. Men are right
silly, Andy thought, calling some dead and sodden day in mid-winter by
the fancy, saucy name of New. The thing that is New, of course, is the
Green. The New Year is the Green Year.

Well, he had a hunk of bread in his pocket and some onions, and a man
can walk a long way upon the strength of that; so he went along up a
road when he felt like it and over a hill when he felt like that. But
most of the time his heart was very sad in his body and his mind took
no pleasure of the bluebirds. For he was thinking that his life wasn't
very much. He could see nothing in working year after year at the mill.
And yet that was all he was good for (so he thought).

On and on and