“Maybe, and maybe not. ’Twill aid a man, mayhap, to have a son and see him grow to manhood. Of what aid is his birth an’ he wither of some hidden disease in childhood, suffer and die with none but you to sorrow? To my thinking no hope at all were better than hope unfulfilled.” Peregrine mused, his eyes on the glowing turf. “Methinks I find your simile not over apt. An’ a child of our flesh die, we may see God’s Hand in the death. An’ a hope of our heart die, mayhap we are the murderers.” Simon turned on him half savagely. “Is a mother a murderer that her babe dies in her arms for lack of the milk in her breasts, an’ she’d give her life’s blood for it would it avail? Methinks you must look somewhat further.” Peregrine was silent. Here he found no answer to give. “Sixty year and more I’ve lived here in this hovel,” went on Simon, “and never a kindly word spoken to me. I might be the plague itself for the way men eye me. From boyhood ’twas the same. Mayhap ’tis something bred in me they shun. Yet, for all that, I nurtured hope for twenty year; dreamed, as you dream now. At last I had naught left on which to nourish it. It shrivelled and died. I saw it twist in agony, for ’twas no easy death. When it was dead I laughed that it had ever lived. Hope, I tell you, dying in a man’s soul rots there, turns his soul foul. Better strangle it before it comes to birth. Then you can rid yourself of it. Later you cannot; and dying it lies there to canker and decay.” He stopped, and again Peregrine could find no answer. The wind sighed through the trees without; all else was silence. “Did you speak?” asked Simon suddenly. “No,” said Peregrine startled, “yet methought——” “Fancy,” said Simon shortly. “Nay,” said Peregrine listening. “It was as a voice from far off places. _Ego sum resurrectio et vita_, it said.” “The wind sighing in the trees brings voices to a man’s fancy,” returned Simon crossly. “And yet—” said Peregrine wondering. “I too have dreamed,” retorted Simon. “Hope, I tell you, is dead within my soul. Yet—yet one fancy remains. An’ it be not wholly foul, an’ there be one spot of sweetness left within it e’er I die, perchance ’twill be carried hence by my singing bees. A mad fancy, and I am e’en mad to dream it. ’Tis cankered through and through. We have had enough of jargon for the time. An’ you would sleep, there’s your couch.” He pointed to a heap of dried bracken in a corner of the room. Peregrine rose from the floor, crossed to the bracken, and lay down. Simon sat motionless by the fire. Without, the wind sighed among the trees in the valley. * * * * * A sound in the room roused Peregrine the next morning. He looked up to see Simon standing by the open doorway. Without, the dim world was carpetted in snow. “You made good slumber,” said Simon turning and seeing him awake. “Exceeding good,” responded Peregrine refreshed and cheerful. “And how fared you?” “As needful,” grunted Simon.