"Mine's true," cried Mr. Wriford, quick and sharp, and got indignantly to his feet. Habit of thought of the kind that had helped work his destruction in him jumped at him at this, as he took it, flat insult to his face, and in the old way set him surging in head and heart at the slight to his dignity. "Mine's true!" he cried and looked down hotly at Mr. Puddlebox. "And mine's as true," said Mr. Puddlebox equably and giving him only the same merry eye. Mr. Wriford, heaving: "Why, you said yourself--only last night--that whisky was your curse. You've told me a lot of rubbish; you couldn't have meant it for anything else. I've told you facts. What don't you believe?" "I don't believe any of it," said Mr. Puddlebox, and at Mr. Wriford's start and choke, added quickly: "as you tell it." One of those sudden blanks, one of those sudden snappings of the train of thought--_click!_ like an actual snapping in the brain--came to Mr. Wriford. One of those floodings about his mind of immense and whirling darkness in which desperately his mental eye sought to peer, and desperately his mental hands to grope. He tried to remember what it was that he had told Mr. Puddlebox. He tried to search back among recent moments that he could remember--or thought he remembered--for words he must have spoken but could not recollect. His indignation at Mr. Puddlebox's refusal to believe him disappeared before this anguish and the trembling that it gave. He made an effort to hold his own, not to betray himself, and with it cried indignantly: "Well, what did I say?" then, unable to sustain it, abandoned himself to the misery and the helplessness, and used again the same words, but pitiably. "Well, what did I say?" Mr. Wriford asked and caught his breath in a sob. Mr. Puddlebox put that large, soft, fat, kindly and protective hand against Mr. Wriford's leg that stood over him and pulled on the trouser. "Now, look here, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox very soothingly, "sit here by me, and I will tell you what you said, and we will put this to the rights of it." Very dejectedly Mr. Wriford sat down; very protectively Mr. Puddlebox put the large hand on his knee and patted it. "Now, look here, my loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I'll tell you what you said, and what I mean by saying I don't believe a word of it as you tell it. What I mean, my loony, is that there's one thing the same in your story and in mine, and it is the same in every story that I hear from folks along the road, and I challenge you or any man to hear as many as I have heard. It is that we've both been glumphed, boy. We've both led beautiful, virtuous lives and ought to be angels with beautiful wings--'stead of which, here we are: glumphed; folks have got up and given us fat hits and glumphed us.