"I had to work, David," he went on. "Hendry could earn a living teaching school, but I hadn't the brains, so I toiled away in the store from early morning until late at night. Teaching school was easier. He used to say that if the sluggard did actually go to the ant he would probably find him a most uninteresting creature to talk to. I guess Hendry was right. I do know that he had little of the virtue of the ant, but he was one of the most interesting men I ever heard talk. When I was behind the counter it was my main pleasure to listen to him, perched on a chair in front of it." Rufus Blight laughed. "Really, David, in those days I was proud of having such a distinguished brother. I had always looked up to him. He was older than I, four years, and he was my protector against the assaults of other lads--my ready compendium of universal knowledge. I never dreamed but that if I prospered he would prosper; and if he, then I. Why, David, I can feel him now clapping me on the back and calling me his grub-worm. 'Some day,' he would say, 'I'll come and ask a bed in your garret.' And I would laugh at him and talk of the time when we--I always said 'we'--when we should have a pair of fine trotters, and should go skimming over the country together instead of crawling along behind our blind mare." Rufus Blight paused. The whimsical smile was gone and he was looking at me through narrowed eyes. "Then the break came." And quickly, as he said it, he turned from me and began to smoke very hard. "The break?" said I in a questioning tone; for I believed that at last I was to know the mystery which lay behind the Professor's conduct if only I could lead him on.