What could I answer but Yes, and what could the poor old man do but
shrink back into his corner, disappointed and abashed. Yet I was not
satisfied, nor was he, as I could see by the appealing glances he gave
me now and then from under the fallen masses of his long white hair.
But the landlady was complaisant and moved about the table and in and
out of the room with a bustling air that left us but little
opportunity for conversation. At length she was absent somewhat longer
than usual, whereupon the old man, suddenly lifting his head, cried
out:

"_She_ cannot tell the story. She has no feeling for it; she wasn't
_there_."

"And you were," I ventured.

"Yes, yes, I was there, always there; and I see it all now," he
murmured. "Fifty years ago, and I see it all as if it were happening
at this moment before my eyes. But she will not let me talk about it,"
he complained, as the sound of her footsteps was heard again on the
kitchen boards. "Though it makes me young again, she always stops me
just as if I were a child. But she cannot help my showing you--"

Here her steps became audible in the hall, and his words died away on
his lips. By the time she had entered, he was seated with his head
half turned aside, and his form bent over as if he were in spirit a
thousand miles from the spot.

Amused at his cunning, and interested in spite of myself at the
childish eagerness he displayed to tell his tale, I waited with a
secret impatience almost as great as his own perhaps, for her to leave
the room again, and thus give him the opportunity of finishing his
sentence. At last there came an imperative call for her presence
without, and she hurried away. She was no sooner gone than the old man
exclaimed:

"I have it all written down. I wrote it years and years ago, at the
very time it happened. She cannot keep me from showing you that; no,
no, she cannot keep me from showing you that." And rising to his feet
with a difficulty that for the first time revealed to me the full
extent of his infirmity, he hobbled slowly across the floor to the
open door, through which he passed with many cunning winks and nods.

"It grows quite exciting," thought I, and half feared his daughter
would not allow him to return. But either she was too much engrossed
to heed him, or had been too much deceived by his seeming indifference
when she last entered the room, to suspect the errand which had taken
him out of it. For sooner than I had expected,