There was a lump in Perry’s throat at that moment, and he stopped his rocking and turned to the fire, so his back was toward me.

“Of course you knocked,” said I, after a silence.

“Of course I didn’t,” he snapped.  “Do you suppose I was wanted then?  ‘No, sir,’ I says, ’for them there is only two people in all the world—­there’s Tim and there’s Mary.’”

Perry was putting on his overcoat, winding his long comforter about his neck and drawing on his mittens.

“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.