JOHN IS CLEARLY BEWITCHED To forget one's luck of life, to forget the cark of care and withering of young fingers; not to feel, or not be moved by, all the change of thought and heart, from large young heat to the sinewy lines and dry bones of old age--this is what I have to do ere ever I can make you know (even as a dream is known) how I loved my Lorna.

I myself can never know; never can conceive, or treat it as a thing of reason, never can behold myself dwelling in the midst of it, and think that this was I; neither can I wander far from perpetual thought of it.

Perhaps I have two farrows of pigs ready for the chapman; perhaps I have ten stones of wool waiting for the factor.

It is all the same.

I look at both, and what I say to myself is this: 'Which would Lorna choose of them ?' Of course, I am a fool for this; any man may call me so, and I will not quarrel with him, unless he guess my secret.