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 



