Dr. Bowdler, perhaps, with well-breathed body and soul, did not quite comprehend how vacant and well worn out both heart and lungs were under poor Starke's bony chest. "You don't seem to comprehend what this engine is to me.--You said the world was broad. I had a mind, even when I was a boy, to do something in it. My father was a small farmer over there in the Jerseys. Well, I used to sit thinking there, after the day's work was done, until my head ached, of how I might do something,--to help, you understand?" "I understand." "To make people glad I had lived. I was lazy, too. I'd have liked to settle down and grub like the rest, but this notion kept driving me like, a sting. I can understand why missionaries cross the seas when their hearts stay behind. It grew with me, kept me restless, like a devil inside of me. I'm not strong-brained, as you said. I had only one talent,--for mechanism. They bred me a lawyer, but I was a machinist born. Well,--it's the old story. What's the use of telling it?" He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the floor. "Go on. It will be good for both of us. Aikens has not come." "There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My father left me a fortune; _that_ was swallowed up. I worked on with hard struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"-- He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor waited until he was controlled. "Never mind," gently. "Don't go on." "Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was, uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if they had lived, it would have been different with me,--I'm so fond of children. I was of her,--God knows I was! But after the children were gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,--used to her. It's the way with husbands and wives, sometimes. Well"-- He swallowed some choking in his throat, and hurried on.