The flood-gates were open. The younger man burst out in exclamations,
waving his thin, nervous, knotted fingers, his face twitching as he spoke.
"Of myself...no, not myself, but my body! I'm not well...I'm getting worse
all the time. The doctors don't make out what is the matter...I don't
sleep ... I worry...I forget things, I take no interest in life...the
doctors intimate a nervous breakdown ahead of me...and yet I rest ... I
rest...more than I can afford to! I never go out. Every evening I'm in bed
by nine o'clock. I take no part in college life beyond my work, for fear
of the nervous strain. I've refused to take charge of that summer-school
in New York, you know, that would be such an opportunity for me ... if I
could only sleep! But though I never do anything exciting in the
evening ... heavens! what nights I have. Black hours of seeing myself in a
sanitarium, dependent on my brother! I never ... why, I'm in
hell ... that's what the matter with me, a perfect hell of ignoble
terror!"

He sat silent, his drawn face turned to the window. The older man looked
at him speculatively. When he spoke it was with a cheerful, casual quality
in his voice which made the other look up at him surprised.

"You don't suppose those great friends of yours, the nerve specialists,
would object to my telling you a story, do you? It's very quiet and
unexciting. You're not too busy?"

"Busy! I've forgotten the meaning of the word! I don't dare to be!"

"Very well, then; I mean to carry you back to the stony little farm in the
Green Mountains, where I had the extreme good luck to be born and raised.
You've heard me speak of Hillsboro; and the story is all about my
great-grandfather, who came to live with us when I was a little boy."