shed the partin’ tear. I’ll leave you to figger out whether to spend this week’s profits in government bonds or trips to Europe and go and lay my weary bones in the tomb, meanin’ my private vault on the second floor of the Poquit. Adieu, Beanblossom," I says; "remember me at my best, won’t you?" 

He didn’t seem to sense what I was drivin’ at. He lifted his head out of the books and papers, heaved a sigh that must have started somewheres down along his keelson, and says, sorrowful but polite—he was always polite—"Er—yes? You were addressin’ me, Cap’n Snow?" 

"Nothin’ in particular," I says. "I was just askin’ if you intended spendin’ your profits on a trip to Europe this summer." 

Would you believe it, that little storekeepin’ man looked at me through his specs, his pale face twitchin’ and workin’ like a youngster’s when he’s tryin’ not to cry, and then, all to once, he broke right down, leaned his head on his hands and sobbed out loud. 

I looked at him. "For the dear land sakes," I sung out, soon’s I could collect sense enough to say anything, "what is the matter? Is anybody dead or—" 

He groaned. "Dead?" he interrupted. "I wish to heaven, I was dead." 

"Well!" I gasps. "Well!" 

"Oh, why," says he, "was I ever born?" 

That bein’ a question that I didn’t feel competent to answer, I didn’t try. My remark about goin’ to Europe was intended for a joke, but if my jokes made grown-up folks cry I cal’lated ’twas time I turned serious. 

"What is the matter, Beanblossom?" I says. "Are you in trouble?" 

For a spell he wouldn’t answer, just kept on sobbin’ and wringin’ his thin hands, but, after consider’ble of such, and a good many unsatisfyin’ remarks, he give in and told me the whole yarn, told me all his troubles. They were complicated and various. 

Picked over and b’iled down they amounted to this: He used to have an income and he lived on it—in bachelor quarters up to Boston. Nigh as I could gather he never did any real work except to putter in libraries and collect books and such. Then, somehow or other, the bank the heft of his money was in broke up and his health broke down. The doctors said he must go away into the country. He 

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