But it should not have been cold that August evening. Beyond the wooden bed a small, rectangular window with sash removed showed a square of warm sky and a few stars twinkling dully in the autumnal haze. An occasional impatient tinkle of the cow-bell down in the corral indicated midges, only present on bland days and nights when there is in the air no hint of frost to stiffen the thin swift mite-wings. High summer, and he was cold! Bedlam in the next room, and he was lonely! His sensations were getting out of hand, beyond the remedial influences and friendly fraternal sounds of this world he had so long tenanted. By a score of years he had exceeded his due claim upon earth's good offices to man. He was a trespasser and an alien in this strange present--he with his ancient interests, fogy ways of speech and thought, obsolete images and ideals, and mind that could only regard without attempt at comprehension the little and great innovations of the new age. "We c'u'd make shift well enough with the things we had whin I was a lad," Old Dalton had often said to those who talked to him of the fine things men were inventing--the time-savers, space-savers, work-savers; "we c'u'd make shift well enough. We got along as well as they do now, too, we did; and, sir, we done better work, too. All men thinks of, these days, is gettin' through quick. Yagh, that's it, that's it--gettin' through quick-like, an' leavin' things half done." So is a man born and implanted in his own generation. And if by strength he invades the next generation beyond, he does not go far before he finds he is a stranger utterly. In the current talk of men there are new smartnesses of speech built upon the old maternal tongue. There are new vogues of dress, new schools of thought, new modes even of play. Perhaps, again, new vices that the older simpler life kept dormant give the faces of this fresh generation a look and a difference strange and sinister. A hundred years old! There are to be found, notably in steadily moving rural communities, not a few who endure to ninety hardily enough; but rare and singular are the cases where a man is to be found, except as dust in a coffin, a century after his birth. Old Dalton had inherited from his mother the qualities that are the basis of longevity--a nature simple and serene, a physique perfect in all involuntary functions and with the impulse of sane and regular usages to guide voluntary ones, an appetite and zest for work. She had married at eighteen and had lived to see her son reach his eightieth year, herself missing the century mark by only a few months.