and study painting. I'd set my heart on it, as people say, but
when the time came my father died and I had to stay at home to
square his debts and run the place. For a single night I was as
clean crazy as a man ever was. It meant the sacrifice of my
career, you know, and a career seemed a much bigger thing to me
then than it does to-day."

"I never heard that," said Christopher, lowering his voice.

"There's a lot we don't know even about the people we live in a
little house with. You never heard, either, I dare say, that I
was so madly in love once that when the woman threw me over for a
better man I shut myself up in a cabin in the woods and did not
speak to a human being for six months. I was a rare devil, sure
enough, though you'd never believe it to see me now. It took two
blows like that, a four years' war, and the surgeon's operating
table to teach me how to be happy."

"It was Miss Matoaca Bolling, I suppose?" suggested Christopher,
with a mild curiosity.

The old soldier broke into his soft, full laugh.

"Matoaca! Bless your soul, no. But to think that Lucy should have
kept a secret for more than thirty years! Never talk to me again
about a woman's letting anything out. If she's got a secret that
it mortifies her to tell it will be buried in the grave with her,
and most likely it will never see the light at judgment Day. Lucy
was always ashamed of my being jilted, you know."