When circumstances cross the ruling passion, when rocks lie in the way and winds are contrary, then things happen, characters emerge, slight events are significant, mere adventures are transformed into a real plot. What care I how many “hair-breadth 'scapes” and “moving accidents” your hero may pass through, unless I know him for a man? He is but a puppet strung on wires. His kisses are wooden and his wounds bleed sawdust. There is nothing about him to remember except his name, and perhaps a bit of dialect. Kill him or crown him,--what difference does it make? But go the other way about your work: “Take the least man of all mankind, as I; Look at his head and heart, find how and why He differs from his fellows utterly,”-- and now there is something to tell, with a meaning. If you tell it at length, it is a novel,--a painting. If you tell it in brief, it is a short story,--an etching. But the subject is always the same: the unseen, mysterious, ruling passion weaving the stuff of human nature into patterns wherein the soul is imaged and revealed. To tell about some of these ruling passions, simply, clearly, and concretely, is what I want to do in this book. The characters are chosen, for the most part, among plain people, because their feelings are expressed with fewer words and greater truth, not being costumed for social effect. The scene is laid on Nature's stage because I like to be out-of-doors, even when I am trying to think and learning to write. “Avalon,” Princeton, July 22, 1901. CONTENTS I. A Lover of Music II. The Reward of Virtue III. A Brave Heart IV. The Gentle Life V. A Friend of Justice VI. The White Blot VII. A Year of Nobility VIII. The Keeper of the Light I. A LOVER OF MUSIC I He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of the wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the door of Moody's “Sportsmen's Retreat,” as if he were a New Year's gift from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there was something more in it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if you will, the time and the manner of his arrival. It was the last night of December, some thirty-five years ago. All the city sportsmen who had hunted the deer under Bill Moody's direction had long since retreated to their homes, leaving the little settlement on the border of the Adirondack wilderness wholly under the social direction of the natives. The annual ball was in full swing in the dining-room of the hotel. At one side of the room the tables and chairs were piled up, with their legs projecting in the air like a thicket of very dead trees.