wrinkled, with clear grey eyes and long brown beard, 

 slightly grizzled then watch and wonder why Rocky, 

 experienced, wise and steadfast, should at sixty 

 be seeking still. Were the prizes so few in the pros- 

 pector's life ? or was there something wanting in 

 him too ? Why had he not achieved success ? 



It was not so clear then that ideals differ. Rocky's 

 ideal was the life not the escape from it. There 

 was something sentiment, imagination, poetry, call 

 it what you will that could make common success 

 seem to him common indeed and cheap ! To follow 

 in a new rush, to reap where another had sown, had 

 no charm for him. It may be that an inborn pride 

 disliked it ; but it seems more likely that it simply did 

 not attract him. And if as in the end I thought 

 Rocky had taken the world as it is and backed himself 

 against it living up to his ideal, playing a * lone 

 hand ' and playing it fair in all conditions, treading 

 the unbeaten tracks, finding his triumph in his work, 

 always moving on and contented so to end : the 

 crown, " He was a man ! " then surely Rocky's had 

 achieved success ! 



That is Rocky, as remembered now ! A bit ideal- 

 ised ? Perhaps so : but who can say ! In truth 

 he had his sides and the defects of his qualities, like 

 every one else ; and it was not every one who made 

 a hero of him. Many left him respectfully alone ; 

 and something of their feeling came to me the first 

 time I was with him, when a stupid chatterer talked 

 and asked too much. He was not surly or taciturn, 

 but I felt frozen through by a calm deadly unrespon- 



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