“Why not?”

“Because, though he puzzled me and I do not understand his case—­his case, so to speak, I have not for a moment thought him insane.”

“Ha, my dear sir, you are right!” exclaimed Keredec, beaming on me, much pleased.  “You are a thousand times right; he is as sane as yourself or myself or as anybody in the whole wide world!  Ha! he is now much more sane, for his mind is not yet confused and becobwebbed with the useless things you and I put into ours.  It is open and clear like the little children’s mind.  And it is a good mind!  It is only a little learning, a little experience, that he lacks.  A few months more—­ha, at the greatest, a year from now—­and he will not be different any longer; he will be like the rest of us.  Only”—­the professor leaned forward and his big fist came down on the arm of his chair—­“he shall be better than the rest of us!  But if strange people were to see him now,” he continued, leaning back and dropping his voice to a more confidential tone, “it would not do.  This poor world is full of fools; there are so many who judge quickly.  If they should see him now, they might think he is not just right in his brain; and then, as it could happen so easily, those same people might meet him again after a while.  ‘Ha,’ they would say, ‘there was a time when that young man was insane.  I knew him!’ And so he might go through his life with those clouds over him.  Those clouds are black clouds, they can make more harm than our old sins, and I wish to save my friend from them.  So I have brought him here to this quiet place where nobody comes, and we can keep from meeting any foolish people.  But, my dear sir”—­he leaned forward again, and spoke emphatically—­“it would be barbarous for men of intelligence to live in the same house and go always hiding from one another!  Let us dine together this evening, if you will, and not only this evening but every evening you are willing to share with us and do not wish to be alone.  It will be good for us.  We are three men like hermits, far out of the world, but—­a thousand saints!—­let us be civilised to one another!”

“With all my heart,” I said.

“Ha!  I wish you to know my young man,” Keredec went on.  “You will like him—­no man of feeling could keep himself from liking him—­and he is your fellow-countryman.  I hope you will be his friend.  He should make friends, for he needs them.”

“I think he has a host of them,” said I, “in Professor Keredec.”

My visitor looked at me quizzically for a moment, shook his head and sighed.  “That is only one small man in a big body, that Professor Keredec.  And yet,” he went on sadly, “it is all the friends that poor boy has in this world.  You will dine with us to-night?”

Acquiescing cheerfully, I added:  “You will join me at the table on my veranda, won’t you?  I can hobble that far but not much farther.”

Before answering he cast a sidelong glance at the arrangement of things outside the door.  The screen of honeysuckle ran partly across the front of the little porch, about half of which it concealed from the garden and consequently from the road beyond the archway.  I saw that he took note of this before he pointed to that corner of the veranda most closely screened by the vines and said: