With that he bowed and stood rubbing his hands. I smiled of course at his simplicity. A sort of pity took hold of me. In bulk he was almost the size of an ox. Without doubt he was as poor as any of his birds. He was dependent for all that he got upon his ability to amuse those who fell across his path. Yet, with all that, the seriousness of the world had no resting place upon his shoulders. In his own province he was, as he claimed, as absolute as a king, and to my way of thinking far happier than any of whom I have ever heard. I did not want to wound his feelings. With the pretext that I must be going, I leaned over and tossed a handful of small silver into his hands. At the same time I clapped my heels against the horse’s flanks and with a wave of my arm bade him “Adieu.” I thought I had done with him. I had given him more than he had counted on, I am sure. I had no other idea but that he would gather up his cart and make his way to the nearest village. But my horse had scarcely carried me ten steps when there fell upon my ears the same whistling with which he had first greeted me. Then followed the chorus of the birds. I turned in the saddle and looked back. The great fellow was standing in the middle of the road. His hands were extended towards me. His chest was heaving like a bellows and the sweat was streaming from his forehead. For all that he was smiling like a pleased child. His little eyes were twinkling and blinking in the light of the sun. When he saw that I had turned about, he struck still higher notes and the birds with him. I rode slowly on and on. I turned now and then to wave back at him. At each turning I saw the same figure in the middle of the road and heard the same trilling sounds. They grew fainter and fainter. The man himself grew dimmer and dimmer. At length the warbling ceased. For the last time I waved “farewell.” But as I did, there he was with his head thrown back, his thumb under his arm and one foot proudly before the other. When he realized that I would soon be out of sight he threw both arms out towards me to wish me good fortune on my way. So it went with me. On that great highway I found myself in a new and varied world. One strange character passed after the other with each quite different from the one before. At first I thought them only the odds and ends of all humanity driving forward without aim or purpose. But after a while I had to acknowledge that of the people I met, I was the least in experience of them all. I began to make a fresh estimate of men and their manners. They soon impressed me with the thought that they knew what they were about as well as I. The only difference between them and me was that they had interests other than my own. And to cap it all a certain shrewdness warned me that if I were to continue to cope with them, I must sharpen my wits to the keenness of theirs.