Dwellers in the Hills

Then he said a lot of things that I did not understand. He said that when one grew out of childhood, he lost his sympathy with events, and when that sympathy was lost, it was possible to live in the world only as an adventurer with everything in one's hand.

He said a sentinel watched to see if a man set his heart on a thing, and if he did the sentinel gave some sign, whereupon the devil's imps swarmed up to break that thing in pieces. He said that sometimes a man beat off the devils and saved the thing, but it was rare, and meant a life of tireless watching. From every point of view, indifference was better.

Still, he said, it was a mistake for a man to allow events to browbeat him. He ought to fight back, hitting where he could. An event, once in a while, was strangely a coward. Besides that, if Destiny found a man always ready to strip, she came after a while to accord to him the courtesies of a duellist, and if he were a stout fellow, she sometimes hesitated before she provoked a fight. Of course the man could not finally beat her off, but she would set him to one side, as a person with whom she was going to have trouble, and give him all the time she could.

He said a man ought to have the courage to strike out for what he wanted; that the ship-wrecked who got desperately ashore was a better man than the hanger-back; that a great misfortune was a great compliment. It measured the resistance of the man. Destiny would not send artillery against a weakling. It was sometimes finer to fight when the lights were all out; I would not understand that, men never did until they were about through with life. But, above everything else, he said, a man ought to go to his ruin with a sort of princely indifference. God Almighty could not hurt the man who did not care.

Then he gave me a friendly direction about the cattle, to put them in his boundary on our road home, bade me remember our contract of no tales told, and got into his saddle.

I watched him cross the bridge, and ride away through the Hills with his men, humming some song about the devil and a dainty maid, and I wished that I might grow up to have such splendid courage. His big galleon had gone down on the high seas with a treasure in her hold that I could not reckon, and he went singing like one who finds a kingdom.