"Take the first turn to the right from his house, going west. It's an unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room upstairs ... you'll be alone, God knows--excepting Saturdays and Sundays." * * * * * I packed my Heine in a bundle ... with my Bible and my Josephus in the Greek, along with Whiston's English version ... and I included a bundle of books on New Testament times that made me groan under their weight. For I planned to begin a four-act play on Judas, and must study for writing that, as well as learn the "how" of the lyric.... The stupendousness of the silence of absolute solitude! At first the thoughts run on with a tangle and jangle, a turmoil almost of madness ... then they quiet down into the peace that only a hermitage gives and the objects of life are seen in their true relativity and perspective. My diet was one of sow-belly, bread, and coffee, and what fish I caught in the sluggish, muddy stream.... Saturday, toward sunset, I heard a whooping in the woods. It was Randall coming with a few friends for his week-end, as he had warned. With him, his wild brother, Jack; and Bill, his assistant plumber and man-about-shop. The drinking had begun before they were in sight of the shack. And it was kept up till late Sunday night ... around a big fire in a cleared space they sang and gambled and drank. Randall served great hilarity to the party by trying to breed his gelded horse to his mare ... the mare kicked and squealed, indignant at the cheat, looking back, flattening her ears, and showing the vicious whites of her eyes. Several times the infuriated beast's heels whished an inch or so from Randall's head, as he forced the gelding to advance and mount. We rolled on the grass, laughing ... myself included. Then all stripped to the buff for a swim in the stream ... a treacherous place where the bottom was at times but two or three feet from the surface, and the mud, soft and semi-liquid for five feet more. And there were snags, and broken beer and whiskey bottles all over the bottom where it was decent and gravelly. Bill, with his solemn dundreary whiskers, leaped high in the air like a frog, kicking his legs and yelling drunkenly as he took off. "Look out, Bill," I shouted, "it's nothing but mud there!" But Bill didn't heed me. He hit with a swish and a thud instead of a splash, and didn't come up. We put out in our rickety boat. By that luck that favours the drunkard and fool, we laid hold on Bill's feet sticking out, just under the water. We tugged mightily and brought him forth, turned into a black man by the ooze ... otherwise, unharmed. * * * * *