abruptly and bent his ear. "Ah, there's the bluebird! Do you hear
him whistling in the meadow? God bless him; he's a hearty fellow
and has spring in his throat."

"I passed one coming up," said Christopher.

"The same, I reckon. He'll be paying me a visit soon, and I've
got my crumbs ready." He smiled brightly and then sat with his
chin on his crutch, looking steadily across the road. "You
haven't had your chance, my boy," he resumed presently; "and a
man ought to have several chances to look round him in this
world, for otherwise the things he misses will always seem to him
the only things worth having. I'm not much of a fellow to preach,
you'll say--a hundred and eighty pounds of flesh that can't dress
itself nor hobble about without crutches that are strapped on-
-but if it's the last word I speak I wouldn't change a day in my
long life, and if it came to going over it again I'd trust it all
in the Lord's hands and start blindfolded. And yet, when I look
back upon it now, I see that it wasn't much of a life as lives
go, and the two things I wanted most in it I never got."

Christopher turned quickly with a question.

"Oh, you think I have always been a contented, prosaic chap,"
pursued Tucker, smiling, "but you were never more mistaken since
you were born. Twice in my life I came mighty near blowing out my
brains--once when I found that I couldn't go to Paris and be an
artist, and the second time when I couldn't get the woman I
wanted for my wife. I wasn't cut out for a farmer, you see, and I
had always meant from the time I was a little boy to go abroad