In the ego of to-day how much endures of the ego of those dead times? I could not say. And as for the man once so strong, and so gleeful in winning his game, how much of him remains in the old man for whom the death-pang is lying in wait?
Meanwhile, the slope of memory declined farther and farther down the past. Some years—those that bridged the space between early infancy and youth—fled away as if their dust had left no trace. I saw my father again, still younger, more robust, and gruffer as well, surrounded by other faces, the features of which seemed half-effaced like those of old daguerreo-types. I recalled him as he looked on the night of a fire, protecting the house and the singed horses from the flames that were devouring the farm buildings, shouting out orders in a loud voice like a sea-captain in a tempest. I recalled another night, when, with head bent, and hands clasped behind him, and sighing heavily, he paced the room in a corner of which I crouched, terrified and trembling at being for the first time in the presence of death which had just swept my mother away from me. I felt on my forehead the scalding moisture of his tears as he took me in his arms, murmuring, "Poor little one! you do not know! You do not know!"
I heard his grumbling voice reproaching my grandmother, so kind and so wrinkled, who
