O tempora, O mores! NO! But that he refused the
subject in hand, that he eschewed expression upon
it and resolutely drove the argument in other
directions, that he achieved such superbly un-Arplike
inconsistency; and with such rich material for his
sardonic humors, not at arm's length, not even so
far as his finger-tips, but beneath his very palms,
he rejected it: this was the impossible fact.

Eskew--there is no option but to declare--was
no longer Eskew. It is the truth; since the morning
when Ariel Tabor came down from Joe's office,
leaving her offering of white roses in that dingy,
dusty, shady place, Eskew had not been himself.
His comrades observed it somewhat in a physical
difference, one of those alterations which may
come upon men of his years suddenly, like a "sea
change": his face was whiter, his walk slower, his
voice filed thinner; he creaked louder when he rose
or sat. Old always, from his boyhood, he had,
in the turn of a hand, become aged. But such
things come and such things go: after eighty there
are ups and downs; people fading away one week,
bloom out pleasantly the next, and resiliency is
not at all a patent belonging to youth alone. The
material change in Mr. Arp might have been
thought little worth remarking. What caused
Peter Bradbury, Squire Buckalew, and the Colonel
to shake their heads secretly to one another and
wonder if their good old friend's mind had not