I
He sat cross-legged on the roadside beside a heap of stones, and with
slow regularity his hammer swung up and down, cracking a stone into
small pieces at each descent. But his heart was not in the work. He
hit whatever stone chanced to be nearest. There was no cunning
selection in his hammer, nor any of these oddities of stroke which a
curious and interested worker would have essayed for the mere trial of
his artistry.
He was not difficult to become acquainted with, and, after a little
conversation, I discovered that all the sorrows of the world were
sagging from his shoulders. Everything he had ever done was wrong, he
said. Everything that people had done to him was wrong, that he
affirmed; nor had he any hope that matters would mend, for life was
poisoned at the fountain-head and there was no justice anywhere.
Justice! he raised his eyebrows with the horrid stare of a man who
searches for apparitions; he lowered them again to the bored blink of
one who will not believe in apparitions even though he see them--there
was not even fairness! Perhaps (and his bearing was mildly tolerant),
perhaps some people believed there was fairness, but he had his share
of days to count by and remember. Forty-nine years of here and there,
and in and out, and up and down; walking all kinds of roads in all
kinds of weathers; meeting this sort of person and that sort, and many
an adventure that came and passed away without any good to it--"and
now," said he sternly, "I am breaking stones on a bye-way."
"A bye-road such as this," said I, "has very few travellers, and it may
prove a happy enough retreat."
"Or a hiding-place," said he gloomily.