We were now but a few yards from home. There was another change in the weather. The sun was like a crystal chalice brimming with crimson wine, borne by an unseen Ganymede to his lord across the sapphire pavement of cloud. (Poetry is cheap to-day.) Had his white feet slipped on the wondrous far-off way? For of a sudden the crimson flood suffused the sapphire floor, and the gasp of the dying wind was as of one who cried, “Come away in my ’and, sir, and it was cracked before, and you didn’t ought to have left it there, and I never touched it, and ’ow was I to know yer didn’t want it broke?” Then the wind sank. My boat was motionless. I was becalmed within sight of my goal. So I waited in the middle of the river. The storm was passed, and the waves were perfectly calm and collected, like a bad halfpenny in an offertory bag. There was not a breath of wind, and consequently the first two matches which I lit were blown out at once. The third match did what was expected of it, and then I attempted to blow _it_ out. Finding this impossible, I threw it in the water. It floated on the top, and burnt with a clear steady flame for ten consecutive minutes. While I was watching it I let my pipe out, and had to strike a fourth match. The head came off it, and nestled lovingly in the palm of my hand. Then it walked away, and burned two holes in my blazer. How such little incidents as this make one wish that the nature of things was otherwise! I may own that I never did make King’s Bridge that afternoon. My canoe did not seem to care about going there of its own accord, and I did not like to paddle it there because I hate unnecessary fuss; so I just stopped where I was and read a little. What was I reading? Well, I had his book, you know, after his death. Some of it interests me; but this is chiefly because I knew the man. He wrote it as a remedy, and he died as a remedy; but I have a notion that he is not quite cured yet. I take the book here to read sometimes. You may see a page or two of it. I am not pretending that it has any literary value But try to think you knew the man who wrote it. * * * * * She shivered a little as she sat there in her nightdress. In the small hours of the morning in early summer it is always cold. She would have been much warmer in bed; she really ought to have been in bed; but the bed had not been slept in. It stood there in one corner of the room, looking white and restful. It seemed to be calling her, “Come to me; sleep and forget it--sleep and forget it.” On the little table at the foot of the bed was the pile of books and newspapers that had slowly accumulated. She had always been interested in the world and in the things others did and thought.