The boy’s answer was irrelevant.  “You first tell me what you did with a brown checked suit you once owned.”

“I never owned but one brown suit,” I replied, “and that was when I was still in college.  I think that I gave it away before it was worn out.”

The boy once more clapped his hands.  “Oh, I knew it, I knew it.  I’ll give mine tomorrow to the man who takes our ashes.  Now, won’t you please play the piano for me?”

“Assuredly.  Choose your tune!”

He fumbled a bit in the rack and passing some rather good music, he held up a torn and yellow sheet.  “This is what I want,” he said.

I had not played it for many years.  After a false start or so—­for it was villainously set in four sharps for which I have an aversion—­I got through it.  On a second trial I did better.

The boy made no comment.  He had sunk down in his chair until he was quite out of sight.  “Well,” I said, “what next?”

There was no answer.

I arose from the bench and glanced in his direction.  “Hello,” I cried, “what has become of you?”

The chair was empty.  I turned on all the lights.  He was nowhere in sight.  I shook the hangings.  I looked under my desk, for perhaps the lad was hiding from me in jest.  It was unlikely that he could have passed me to gain the door, but I listened at the sill for any sound upon the stairs.  The hall was silent.  I called without response.  Somewhat bewildered I came back to the hearth.  Only a few minutes before, as it seemed, there had been a brisk fire with a row of orange peel upon the upper log.  Now all trace of the peel was gone and the logs had fallen to a white ash.

I was standing perplexed, when I observed that a little pile of papers lay on the rug just off the end of my desk as by a careless elbow.  At least, I thought, this impolite fellow has forgotten some of his possessions.  It will serve him right if it is poetry that he wrote upon the hilltop.

I picked up the papers.  They were yellow and soiled, and writing was scrawled upon them.  At the top was a date—­but it was twenty years old.  I turned to the last sheet.  At least I could learn the boy’s name.  To my amazement, I saw at the bottom in an old but familiar writing, not the boy’s name, but my own.

I gazed at the chimney bricks and their substance seemed to part before my eyes.  I looked into a world beyond—­a fabric of moonlight and hilltop and the hot fret of youth.  Perhaps the boy had only been waiting for the fire upon the hearth to cool to enter this other world of his restless ambition and desire.

Reader, if by chance you have the habit of writing—­let us confine ourselves now to sonnets and such airy matter as rides upon the night—­doubtless, you sit sometimes at your desk bare of thoughts.  The juices of your intellect are parched and dry.  In such plight, I beg you not to fall upon your fingers or to draw pictures on your sheet.  But most vehemently, and with such emphasis as I possess, I beg you not to rummage among your rejected and broken fragments in the hope of recasting a withered thought to a present mood.  Rather, before you sour and curdle, it