At this the humour of the whole situation dawned on me and I began to revive.  When things grow hopelessly complicated, and we can’t laugh, we do either one of two things:  we lie or we die.  But if we can laugh, we can fight!  And be honest!

“Horace,” I said, “I know what you are thinking about.”

Horace’s face remained perfectly impassive, but there was a glint of curiosity in his eye.

“You’ve been thinking I’ve been wasting my time beating around down there in the swamp just to look at things and smell of things—­which you wouldn’t do.  You think I’m a kind of impractical dreamer, now, don’t you, Horace?  I’ll warrant you’ve told your wife just that more than once.  Come, now!”

I think I made a rather shrewd hit, for Horace looked uncomfortable and a little foolish.

“Come now, honest!” I laughed and looked him in the eye.

“Waal, now, ye see—­”

“Of course you do, and I don’t mind it in the least.”

A little dry gleam of humour came in his eye.

“Ain’t ye?”

It’s a fine thing to have it straight out with a friend.

“No,” I said, “I’m the practical man and you’re the dreamer.  I’ve rarely known in all my life, Horace, such a confirmed dreamer as you are, nor a more impractical one.”

Horace laughed.

“How do ye make that out?”

With this my spirit returned to me and I countered with a question as good as his.  It is as valuable in argument as in war to secure the offensive.

“Horace, what are you working for, anyhow?”

This is always a devastating shot.  Ninety-nine out of every hundred human beings are desperately at work grubbing, sweating, worrying, thinking, sorrowing, enjoying, without in the least knowing why.

“Why, to make a living—­same as you,” said Horace.

“Oh, come now, if I were to spread the report in town that a poor neighbour of mine, that’s you, Horace, was just making his living, that he himself had told me so, what would you say?  Horace, what are you working for?  It’s something more than a mere living.”

“Waal, now, I’ll tell ye, if ye want it straight, I’m layin’ aside a little something for a rainy day.”

“A little something!” this in the exact inflection of irony by which here in the country we express our opinion that a friend has really a good deal more laid aside than anybody knows about.  Horace smiled also in the exact manner of one so complimented.

“Horace, what are you going to do with that thirty thousand dollars?”

“Thirty thousand!” Horace looks at me and smiles, and I look at Horace and smile.

“Honest now!”

“Waal, I’ll tell ye—­a little peace and comfort for me and Josie in our old age, and a little something to make the children remember us when we’re gone.  Isn’t that worth working for?”

He said this with downright seriousness.  I did not press him further, but if I had tried I could probably have got the even deeper admission of that faith that lies, like bed rock, in the thought of most men—­that honesty and decency here will not be without its reward there, however they may define the “there.”  Some “prophet’s paradise to come!”