there, quiet and still, and I hear some laugh at me, and now and
then some one say a good word to me that make me shut my hands
tight, so the tears not come to my eyes. But I felt alone--so much
alone. The world does not want a sad man. In my shop I try to laugh
as of old, and I am not sour or heavy, but I can see men do not say
droll things to me as once back time. No, I am not as I was. What am
I to do? There is but one way. What is great to one man is not to
another. What kills the one does not kill the other. Take away from
some people one thing, and they will not care; from others that
same, and there is nothing to live for, except just to live, and
because a man does not like death."

He paused. "You are right, Voban," said I. "Go on."

He was silent again for a time, and then he moved his hand in a
helpless sort of way across his forehead. It had become deeply
lined and wrinkled all in a couple of years. His temples were
sunken, his cheeks hollow, and his face was full of those shadows
which lend a sort of tragedy to even the humblest and least
distinguished countenance. His eyes had a restlessness, anon an
intense steadiness almost uncanny, and his thin, long fingers had a
stealthiness of motion, a soft swiftness, which struck me strangly.
I never saw a man so changed. He was like a vessel wrested from its
moorings; like some craft, filled with explosives, set loose along
a shore lined with fishing-smacks, which might come foul of one,
and blow the company of men and boats into the air. As he stood
there, his face half turned to me for a moment, this came to my
mind, and I said to him, "Voban, you look like some wicked gun
which would blow us all to pieces."