'Well, and you?” I said. 'I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to...?” His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down. 'I don't understand,” he groaned. 'I've been doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I — I — haven't slept for the last ten nights...”

“His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening.

The long shadows of the forest had slipped downhill while we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of