Driven against that bleak rock of fact upon which so many shining generalizations have come to wreck, Mrs. Peachey had cast about helplessly for some floating spar of logic which might bear her to the firm ground of established optimism. "I declare, Tom, I believe you are out of your head!" she exclaimed, adding immediately, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself to be so ungrateful when the good Lord has kept you out of the poorhouse. If you weren't tipsy, I'd give you a hard shaking. Now, you take that palm-leaf fan and go right straight downstairs." So Tom had gone, for his wife, who lacked the gift of argument, possessed the energy of character which renders such minor attributes unnecessary; and Oliver, passing through the hall a couple of hours later, found him still helplessly seeking the draught towards which she had directed him. "Any chance of a breeze springing up?" inquired the young man as they moved together to the porch. The force which was driving him out of the house into the suffocating streets was in his voice when he spoke, but honest Tom did not hear it. After the four war years in which he had been almost sublime, the old soldier had gradually ceased even to be human, and that vegetable calm which envelops persons who have fallen into the habit of sitting still, had endowed him at last with the perfect serenity of a cabbage. The only active principle which ever moved in him was the borrowed principle of alcohol--for when that artificial energy subsided, he sank back, as he was beginning to do now, into the spiritual inertia which sustains those who have outlived their capacity for the heroic. "I ain't felt a breath," he replied, peering southward where the stars were coming out in a cloudless sky. "I don't reckon we'll get it till on about eleven." "Looks as if we were in for a scorching summer, doesn't it?" "You never can tell. There's always a spell in June." And he who had been a hero, sat down in his cane-bottomed chair and waved the palm-leaf fan feebly in front of him. He had had his day; he had fought his fight; he had helped to make the history of battles--and now what remained to him? The stainless memory of the four years when he was a hero; a smoldering ember still left from that flaming glory which was his soul!