n he had
hoped. He knew, for example, that the peculiar vacancy of Timmy's
expression at the moment implied deep thought rather than the complete
absence of thought that it suggested. That was a curious characteristic
that always made the man a little uneasy. Timmy's face was sometimes
radiantly, spontaneously expressive, the most sensitive of mirrors, and
sometimes it was rather mechanically expressive, but it was only
expressive in a positive sense. In moments of abstraction or daydreaming
there was no faraway look, no frown of concentration. Only blankness.

"The world would get a trifle crowded, you know."

Timmy leaped the gap easily to connect the two remarks, as Phil had
thought he would. "Oh, I didn't mean there should be no _death_. I was
thinking of something else. That man they found dead in the bush
yesterday."

"A man with a heart condition should never go hunting alone."

"Was it his heart, Uncle Phil?"

"His heart and his head both, if you ask me. He had a bad heart, all
right--I saw him have an attack once. You'd think a man like that would
have sense enough to avoid overexertion, but he lost his way and started
churning through swamp and brush in a straight line instead of looking
for the trail again. Must have acted like a moron, running until he
dropped."

"Would panic make a man do that?"

"It will make a man do any crazy thing imaginable, if he lets it get
the upper hand. There's only a few square miles of marsh and brush here,
with the town already crowding up against it. In a few years it will be
drained and the land used for industrial development and so on, then the
fools will have to find some other way to kill themselves."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, every so often we have to turn out search parties and have a grand
shivaree looking for some idiot who usually turns up dead. Drowned
himself in two feet of water, or run himself ragged, or even put a
bullet through his head for no good reason. It's happened several times
in the past few years, so the place is getting a bad name it doesn't
deserve. Even the search parties often get themselves balled up and mill
around in circles, perfect examples of mass hysteria. Sometimes I get
fed up with the human race."

"I ... didn't know. I mean, about the ... deaths."

Phil laughed outright at the tragic tone.

"Oh, come now! Let's not be morbid about it! You wanted to drive out
here, remember."

"I still do, Uncle Phil. You and Dad were ta