The mountains are the
andirons. Over them, piled sky high, the cloud-logs are glowing, and
never logs burned like those, all gold and red. Night after night I
can sit here and warm my heart at that fireside. Could you, tea-king,
buy for my eyes a picture more wonderful? The fire is dying. The
cloud coals grow fainter--now purple; and now in ashes they float away
into the chill blue. But they will come again. Could your millions,
tea-king, buy for me a sweeter music than the valley's heart throb as
it rocks itself to sleep?
"No," Tim answers, "but suppose----"
"And could I have better company to watch and listen with?" I exclaim.
"For with you a tea-king, Tim, and I a lawyer, it would be just the
same, would it not?"
"That's just what I was trying to get at," says Tim. "Suppose that day
of the fox-hunt you had not carried Weston----"
I hold up my hand to check him.
"Were it to happen a hundred times over, I would take him to Mary's," I
cry. "Else he would have died."
"You are right, Mark," Tim says.
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