"To tell the truth," he said, with a forced laugh, "I don't feel as chipper as I usually do under such like circumstances. It seems to me you ain't so chipper as you might be, either, Mark."
"Good-night, Perry," I said, smoking very hard.
"Good-night," he answered. At the door he paused and gazed at me.
"Say, Mark," he said, "them two was just intended for one another—you know it—I see you know it. God picked 'em out for one another. I know it. You know it, too. But it's hard not to be picked yourself—ain't it?"
Tim's minute! God keep me from such another!
It was all so plain now. The fire was dying away. The hands of the clock were crawling off another hour, and still he did not come. But what did I care? All in the world that I loved I had lost—Mary and my brother—and Tim had taken both. He who had so much had come in his strength and robbed me, left me to sit alone night after night, with my pipe and my dogs and my crutches. Had he told me that night when I came back to the valley that he loved the girl in all truth, I should have stood aside and cheered him on in his struggle against her, but I had not measured the depth of his mind nor given him credit for cunning. Perry Thomas saw it. He had gone away from her and wounded her by his neglect. In the fabrication of the other girl, the beautiful Edith, whose charms so outshone all other women, he had hit at the heart of her vanity; and now he had come back so gayly and easily to take from me what I might not have won in a lifetime. Losing her, I cared little that what he had done had been in ignorance that I loved her and that she was plighted to me. Losing her, I had no thought of blame for the girl, for when she told me that in all the world she cared for none so much as me, she meant it, for she believed that he had passed out of her life.
By the fireplace, so close that I could put my hand upon the arm, was the rocking-chair I had placed for her, and many a night had I sat there watching it and smiling, and picturing it as it was to be when she came. There would Mary be, sewing beneath the lamplight; there the fire burning, with old Captain and young Colonel, snuggling along the hearthstone; here I should be with my pipe and my book, unread, in my lap, for we should have many things to talk of, Mary and I. We should have Tim. As he played the great game, we should be watching his every move. And when he won, how she and I would smile over it and say "I told you so!" When he lost—Tim was never to lose, for Tim was invincible! Tim was a man of brain and brawn. His arm was the strongest in the valley; in all our country there was no face so fine as his; in all the world few men so good and true.
Now he had come! The chair there was empty. So it would always be. But here I should always be with my pipe and my crutches, and the dogs snuggling by the fire.
Tim had come! The clock hands were crawling on and on. His minute had better end. I hurled my pipe into the smouldering coals; I tossed a crutch at little Colonel, and the dog ran howling from the room. Old Captain sat up on his haunches, his slantwise eyes wide open with wonder.