Exactly; run away as I did. There was nothing else to be done, unless, indeed, I had throttled the old gentleman; in which case I am confident that one of our modern model juries would have brought in the popular verdict of justifiable insanity. But, being a peaceable man, I was averse to extreme measures. So I did the next best thing--consulted my wife, and retired to this village. Then consider the shock to my feelings when I looked up that day and saw the enemy of our peace stalking into our little Paradise with his book under his arm and his carpet-bag in his hand!--coming with his sermons and his shirts, prepared to stay a week--that is to say a year--that is to say forever, if we would suffer him--and how was he to be hindered by any desperate measures short of burning the house down? "My dear nephew!" says he, striding toward me with eager steps, as you perhaps remember, smiling his eternally dry, leathery smile--"Nephew Frederick!"--and he held out both hands to me, book in one and bag in t'other--"I am rejoiced! One would almost think you had tried to hide away from your old uncle, for I've been three days hunting you up. And how is Dolly? She ought to be glad to see me, after all the trouble I've had in finding you! And, Nephew Frederick--h'm!--can you lend me three dollars for the hackman? For I don't happen to have----Thank you! I should have been saved this if you had only known I was stopping last night at a public house in the next village, for I know how delighted you would have been to drive over and fetch me!" If you were not already out of hearing, you may have noticed that I made no reply to this affecting speech. The old gentleman has grown quite deaf of late years--an infirmity which was once a source of untold misery to his friends, to whom he was constantly appealing for their opinions, which they were obliged to shout in his ear. But now, happily, the world has about ceased responding to him, and he has almost ceased to expect responses from the world. He just catches your eye, and when he says, "Don't you think so, sir?" or "What is your opinion, sir?" an approving nod does your business. The hackman paid, my dear uncle accompanied me to the house, unfolding the catalogue of his woes by the way. For he is one of those worthy, unoffending persons whom an ungrateful world jostles and tramples upon--whom unmerciful disaster follows fast and follows faster. In his younger days he was settled over I don't know how many different parishes; but secret enmity pursued him everywhere, poisoning the parochial mind against him, and driving him relentlessly from place to place. Then he relapsed into agencies, and went through a long list of them, each terminating in flat failure, to his ever-recurring surprise--the simple old soul never suspecting, to this day, who his one great tireless, terrible enemy is!