“Take some and be happy, my boy.  They are boon-sticks indeed.”  Quell suddenly arose.

“Arved, what were you sent up for, may I ask?”

The poet stretched his big legs, rolled over on his back again, and scratching his tangled beard, smoked the cigarette he had just lighted.  In the hot hum of the woods there was heard the occasional dropping of pine cones as the wind fanned lazy music from the leaves.  They could not see the sun; its power was felt.  Perspiration beaded their shiny faces and presently they removed collars and coats, sitting at ease in shirt-sleeves....  Arved’s tongue began to speed:—­

“Though I’ve only known you twenty-four hours, my son, I feel impelled to tell you the history of my happy life—­for happiness has its histories, no matter what the poets say.  But the day is hot, our time limited.  Wait until we are recaptured, then I’ll spin you a yarn.”

“You expect to get caught for sure?”

“I do.  So do you.  No need to argue—­your face tells me that.  But we’ll have the time of our life before they gather us in.  Anyhow, we’ll want to go back.  The whole world is crazy, but ashamed to acknowledge it.  We are not.  Pascal said men are so mad that he who would not be is a madman of a new kind.  To escape ineffable dulness is the privilege of the lunatic; the lunatic, who is the true aristocrat of nature—­the unique man in a tower of ivory, the elect, who, in samite robes, traverses moody gardens.  Really, I shudder at the idea of ever living again in yonder stewpot of humanity, with all its bad smells.  To struggle with the fools for their idiotic prizes is beyond me.  The lunatic asylum—­”

“Can’t you find some other word?” asked Quell, dryly.

“—­is the best modern equivalent for the tub of Diogenes—­he who was the first Solitary, the first Individualist.  To dream one’s dreams, to be alone—­”

“How about McKracken and the keepers?”

“From the volatile intellects of madmen are fashioned the truths of humanity.  Mental repose is death.  All our modern theocrats, politicians,—­whose minds are sewers for the people,—­and lawyers are corpses, their brains dead from feeding on dead ideas.  Motion is life—­mad minds are always in motion.”

“Let up there!  You talk like the doctor chaps over at the crazy crib,” interrupted Quell.

“Ah, if we could only arrange our dreams in chapters—­as in a novel.  Sometimes Nature does it for us.  There is really a beginning, a development, a denouement.  But, for the most of us, life is a crooked road with weeds so high that we can’t see the turn of the path.  Now, my case—­I’m telling you my story after all—­my case is a typical one of the artistic sort.  I wrote prose, verse, and dissipated with true poetic regularity.  It was after reading Nietzsche that I decided to quit my stupid, sinful ways.  Yes, you may smile!  It was Nietzsche who converted me.  I left the old crowd, the old