I had not heard a silence before in years.  It was absolute.  I raised myself on my elbow and listened to it.  Sleep!  I thought that if I only could hear a star twinkle or a blade of grass sharpen itself I could compose myself to rest.  I thought once that I heard a sound like the sail of a catboat flapping as it veered about in a breeze, but I decided that it was probably only a tack in the carpet.  Still I listened.

Suddenly some belated little bird alighted upon the window-sill, and, in what he no doubt considered sleepy tones, enunciated the noise generally translated as “cheep!”

I leaped into the air.

“Hey! what’s the matter down there?” called John from his room above mine.

“Oh, nothing,” I answered, “except that I accidentally bumped my head against the ceiling.”

The next morning I went out on the porch and looked at the mountains.  There were forty-seven of them in sight.  I shuddered, went into the big hall sitting room of the house, selected “Pancoast’s Family Practice of Medicine” from a bookcase, and began to read.  John came in, took the book away from me, and led me outside.  He has a farm of three hundred acres furnished with the usual complement of barns, mules, peasantry, and harrows with three front teeth broken off.  I had seen such things in my childhood, and my heart began to sink.

Then John spoke of alfalfa, and I brightened at once.  “Oh, yes,” said I, “wasn’t she in the chorus of—­let’s see—­”

“Green, you know,” said John, “and tender, and you plow it under after the first season.”

“I know,” said I, “and the grass grows over her.”

“Right,” said John.  “You know something about farming, after all.”

“I know something of some farmers,” said I, “and a sure scythe will mow them down some day.”

On the way back to the house a beautiful and inexplicable creature walked across our path.  I stopped irresistibly fascinated, gazing at it.  John waited patiently, smoking his cigarette.  He is a modern farmer.  After ten minutes he said:  “Are you going to stand there looking at that chicken all day?  Breakfast is nearly ready.”

“A chicken?” said I.

“A White Orpington hen, if you want to particularize.”

“A White Orpington hen?” I repeated, with intense interest.  The fowl walked slowly away with graceful dignity, and I followed like a child after the Pied Piper.  Five minutes more were allowed me by John, and then he took me by the sleeve and conducted me to breakfast.

After I had been there a week I began to grow alarmed.  I was sleeping and eating well and actually beginning to enjoy life.  For a man in my desperate condition that would never do.  So I sneaked down to the trolley-car station, took the car for Pineville, and went to see one of the best physicians in town.  By this time I knew exactly what to do when I needed medical treatment.  I hung my hat on the back of a chair, and said rapidly: