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 between the cheese and ‘Not Responsible for Coats and Umbrellas.’ What’d you do it for, Hamp? And ten years, too—geewhilikins!”

“You’re just the same,” said the hermit. “Come in and sit down. Sit on that limestone rock over there; it’s softer than the granite.”

“I can’t understand it, old man,” said Binkley. “I can see how you could give up a woman for ten years, but not ten years for a woman. Of course I know why you did it. Everybody does. Edith Carr. She jilted four or five besides you. But you were the only one who took to a hole in the ground. The others had recourse to whiskey, the Klondike, politics, and that similia similibus cure. But, say—Hamp, Edith Carr was just about the finest woman in the world—high-toned and proud and noble, and playing her ideals to win at all kinds of odds. She certainly was a crackerjack.”

“After I renounced the world,” said the hermit, “I never heard of her again.”

“She married me,” said Binkley.

The hermit leaned against the wooden walls of his ante-cave and wriggled his toes.

“I know how you feel about it,” said Binkley. “What else could she do? There were her four sisters and her mother and old man Carr—you Rh