78 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



liked to know him, and should have found 

 him congenial, if I had been mature enough, 

 and could have got below the protective crust 

 which naturally grows over a man whose 

 ways of life and thought are different from 

 those of all the people about him. I have 

 little question that when he was out of the 

 sight of the world he was accustomed to sit as 

 I do to-day, and look and look and dream. 



One thing he did not dream of, that a 

 boy to whom he had never spoken would be 

 thinking of him forty years after he had 

 taken his last ramble and snared his last 

 grouse. 



"An idler," said his busier neighbors, 

 though he earned his own living and paid 

 his own scot. 



" A misspent life," said the clergy, though 

 he harmed no one. 



But who can tell ? " Who knoweth the 

 interpretation of a thing ? " Perhaps his, 

 also, was for him a good philosophy. 

 As one of the ancients said, " A man's mind 

 is wont to tell him more than seven men that 

 sit upon a tower." If we are not born alike, 

 why should we be bound to live alike ? "A 



