This is a long digression from Mr. Hill's talk of the evening, and I have said nothing yet of the afternoon. We took chairs out on the grass in front of the cottage, after dinner, and sat in the shade. We soon had visitors. Mr. Hill's brother and his wife walked up from the lower farm, and a little later there came Mr. Hill's son and his young bride. The son is a physician, whose practice covers much of that country-side; and it was interesting to me to learn that his professional training was got at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. Fearful of disturbing the family gathering, I drew off a little, and gave my attention to a book. Late in the afternoon I was roused by the coming of another guest. He was an old neighboring farmer out in search of a heifer which had broken through the pasture-fence. As he joined us he was speaking so swiftly and incoherently about the heifer's escape that I felt some doubt of his sanity, but he quieted down in a moment, and threw himself on the grass with the evident purpose of resting before resuming the search. He was lying flat upon his back, and his long bony fingers were clasped under his head. He wore no hat, nor coat, nor waistcoat, and a dark gingham shirt lay close to the sharp outlines of his almost fleshless body. Braces that were patched with strings passed over his lean shoulders, and were made fast to faded blue jeans, whose extremities were tucked into an old pair of cowhide boots. A long white beard rested on his breast, reaching almost to his waist. Only a thin fringe of hair remained above his ears; and over the skull the bare skin was so tightly drawn that you could almost trace the zigzagging junctures of the frontal and the cranium bones. But skeleton as he was, he was marvellously alive. His eyes were aflame, and prone as he lay and resting, he impressed you as a man so vitalized, that with a single movement he could be upon his feet and in intense activity. He was talking on about the heifer, nervously repeating to us, again and again, the details of where he had seen her last, and the rift which he had found in the fence, and how he had sent his hired man in one direction, and had gone in another himself. He was a rich farmer, Mr. Hill told me afterward, and he lived alone, except for an occasional hired man whom he could induce to stay with him for a season. But even in his old age he worked on his farm with the strength and endurance of three men, laying aside, year by year, his store of gain. Without a single human tie he worked on as though spurred by every claim of affection and the highest sense of responsibility to provide for those whom he loved; and all the while a vast misanthropy grew upon him, and he would see less and less of his fellow-men, and an almost life-long scepticism hardened into downright unbelief.