“And did you marry her?” asked the astonished boy after a moment. He spoke as the superstitious refer to the dead. “Was it Mrs. Gridley?” “No, b’dam, it warn’t Mrs. Gridley!” A little tear squeezed out of the man’s hard eye—a ludicrously little tear on a ludicrously big and beefy face. It stayed there for a moment. Then it melted. Nathan turned and tiptoed softly out of Eden. In quite another voice he suggested: “I could show you, perhaps, how to polish this and make it better, by doing it with you as we go along.” A red-haired girl thrust her flaming head in the door. “Mike Sweeney’s come for them calfskins and they ain’t all bundled yet,” she whined. “You tell Mike Sweeney to go to hell!” roared Caleb. “And if you interrupt me again with calfskins I’ll kill the both o’ ye and fire you beside!” The girl closed the door. Caleb swore volubly for a half-moment about the deficiencies of certain hirelings “these days” in the matter of mental endowment. Then he begged: “Go on, bub! Tell me what you was sayin’ about that poetry.” “Let’s get a pencil and paper,” Nathan suggested. “We’ll work it out together.” VI It was dark outside and the tannery had long been deserted when a pathetically pleased old war-horse of business and an addle-pated young poet ended the new version of Caleb Gridley’s youthful sentiment. “Now read it all over, out loud,” ordered the tanner. He paced up and down with his dented, dusty, greenish derby on the back of his head, cant-hook thumbs in the armpits of his vest. Nat read: “GRACIA “Sometimes, dear heart, in the quiet night, When the stars hang soft and low, I slip away from the clash and care To the Hills of Long Ago. Across those Hills in the whisp’ring dark, With the night-breeze sighing through, I see those castles we’d planned to build When our dreams had all come true. “Your face grows plain in an evening star, Ere the moon rides high and cold, And Memory tunes with the summer night On a chord that’s rare and old. The troth we pledged comes in sad rebuke To a thousand loveless days, But wandering fires led me off and down, ‘Long a thousand ambushed ways. “Yet somewhere deep in each tuneful night Plays a softer, sweeter lay; Though life is gray with a thousand sighs It has held one deep-pink day. And thus the glow of the Long Ago Keeps my path to you, dear, bright; Yet a little while and Our Morning dawns So good night, dear heart, good night!”