Hindsight is better than foresight.  A foolish saying.  By foresight we do God’s will.  By hindsight we would seek to better His handiwork.  Things are right as they are, I say, as I sit quietly of an evening smoking my pipe on my porch, watching the mountains in the west bathe in the gold and purple of the descending sun.  What might have been, might also have been all wrong.  A foolish saying, says Tim, for if what might have been should actually be, then we should have the realization of our fondest dreams.  And with that realization might come a dreadful awakening from our dreams, say I. You might have become a tea-king, Tim, and measure your fortune in millions.  I might have turned lawyer instead of soldier; I might have made a great name for myself in Congress by long speeches full of dry facts and figures, or short ones puffed up with pompous phrases.  The fact that Six Stars existed might have gone beyond our valley because here you and I were born, and for a time we honored the place with our presence.  Suppose all that had been, and you the tea-king and I the great lawyer sat here together as we sit now, smoking, could you add one note to the evening peace; would the night-hawk pay us homage by a single added ring as he circles among the clouds; would the bull-frogs in the creek sing louder to our glory; would the bleating of the sheep swing in sweeter to the music of the valley?  And look at God’s fireplace, I cry, pointing to the west, where the sun is heaping the glowing cloud coals among the mountains.  God’s fireplace? says Tim, with a queer look in his eyes.  Yes, say I, and the valley is the hearthstone.  The mountains are the andirons.  Over them, piled sky high, the cloud-logs are glowing, and never logs burned like those, all gold and red.  Night after night I can sit here and warm my heart at that fireside.  Could you, tea-king, buy for my eyes a picture more wonderful?  The fire is dying.  The cloud coals grow fainter—­now purple; and now in ashes they float away into the chill blue.  But they will come again.  Could your millions, tea-king, buy for me a sweeter music than the valley’s heart throb as it rocks itself to sleep?

“No,” Tim answers, “but suppose——­”

“And could I have better company to watch and listen with?” I exclaim.  “For with you a tea-king, Tim, and I a lawyer, it would be just the same, would it not?”

“That’s just what I was trying to get at,” says Tim.  “Suppose that day of the fox-hunt you had not carried Weston——­”

I hold up my hand to check him.

“Were it to happen a hundred times over, I would take him to Mary’s,” I cry.  “Else he would have died.”

“You are right, Mark,” Tim says.

* * * * * *