world----'

'What?' he said aloud. 'What?

'The last lines your father ever wrote in this world arrived on
Saturday, the twentieth, and news of his death reached me by wire on
Monday, the twenty-second.'

'That's a big enough dose for one day,' he said. 'I can't stand
any more.' He thrust the letter into his breast-pocket. 'Another
impossibility. No prodigal's return to end _that_ story. Veal was never
a favourite meat of mine. Lord! I could laugh to see what a mess I have
made of things. I could cry if anybody else had made it, and had meant
as well, and hoped as blindly.

'Monday, the twenty-second. That was the day I came here. Strange it
is--strange! I'd have sworn he was alive that night--that first night in
the tent here. I seemed to feel him near me. We had that knack--the old
governor and I--poor old chap! He could jog my mental elbow when I was
a thousand miles away from him, and I could make him talk of me at any
time.

'Ghosts? No. Death is death, and there's an end of it. Ah!' He stood
suddenly arrested. 'Six hours' difference between here and England. That
explains it. His last wish was towards me. He loved nobody as he loved
me, I think. Well, I shall vex him no more. His tribulation is over.

'Why cant a wrong-doer have a hell of his own, and be saved from
singeing innocent people? The smoke of my torment ascendeth, and even
George goes coughing at the smell of brimstone. George would be much
more comfortable if I had been virtuous--Madge would have more to lend
him.

'Now, if I had a bottle of whisky here, I'd put an end to this for an
hour or two. But I haven't, and I must do something. I must drug this
down. Bodily labour.' He laid his open palm on the knotted rind of the
big tree against which he had leaned his back whilst he read the first
phrases of the letter. 'You'll do as well as anything. It took many a
score of years to bring you here, but now you must come down. You'll
sleep in the gorge before I have done with you, old piny monster, three
hundred feet below your roots.'

He walked to the tent, and returning jacketless, axe in hand, fell upon
the tree with a measured frenzy. The sun was still high, and before he
had been at work ten minutes the sweat poured from his brow like rain.
He paused to breathe, and to survey the gash he had made in the side
of the tree. Compared with the girth of the forest giant, it looked the
merest trifle, but he nodded gaspingly.

'You'll sleep in the