Mr. Opp could never distinctly remember what happened after that. He knew that he had at first declined the offer, that he had been argued with, had reconsidered, and finally accepted a larger sum than he had asked for; but the details of the transaction were like the setting of bones after an accident. He remembered that he had sat where Hinton left him, staring at the floor until Nick came to close the office; then he had a vague impression of crossing the fields and standing with his head against the old sycamore-tree where the birds had once whispered of love. After that he knew that he had met Hinton and Guinevere coming up the river road hand in hand, that he had gotten home after supper was over, and had built a bridge of blocks for Miss Kippy. Then suddenly he had wakened to full consciousness, staggered out of the house to the woodshed, and shivered down into a miserable heap. There in the darkness he seemed to see things, for the first time in his life, quite as they were. His gaze, accustomed to the glittering promise of the future, peered fearfully into the past, and reviewed the long line of groundless hopes, of empty projects, of self-deceptions. Shorn of its petty shams and deceits, and stripped of its counterfeit armor of conceit, his life lay naked before him, a pitiful, starved, futile thing. "I've just been similar to Kippy," he sobbed, with his face in his hands, "continually pretending what wasn't so. I acted like I was young, and good-looking, and--and highly educated; and look at me! Look at me!" he demanded fiercely of the kindling-wood. Mr. Opp had been fighting a long duel--a duel with Circumstance, and Mr. Opp was vanquished. The acknowledgment of defeat, even to himself, gave it the final stamp of verity. He had fought valiantly, with what poor weapons he had, but the thrusts had been too many and too sure. He lay clothed in his strange new garment of humility, and wondered why he did not want to die. He did not realize that in losing everything else, he had won the greater stake of character for which he had been unconsciously fighting all along. The kitchen door opened, and he saw Miss Kippy's figure silhouetted against the light. "Brother D.," she called impatiently, "ain't you coming back to play with me?" He scrambled to his feet and made a hasty and somewhat guilty effort to compose himself. "Yes, I'm a-coming," he answered briskly, as he smoothed his scant locks and straightened his tie. "You go on ahead and gather up the blocks; I only stopped playing for a little spell." XVIII The marriage of Guinevere Gusty and Willard Hinton took place in mid-winter, and the account of it, published in the last issue of "The Opp Eagle," proved that the eagle, like the swan, has its death-song.