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 consider that they were worth either your father or you wearing yourselves into your coffins about them."

He looked at me in complete amazement, and passed his hand across his forehead once or twice, as if to collect his thoughts.

"Ah, yes! I see, of course, you do not understand. How could you? You have not spent years in this work, till it has become a part and parcel of your very life."

"Well, I certainly do not understand, old man, why you should work yourself into a brain fever for the sake of a people, however interesting, who have disappeared from this world for the last five thousand years."

"Disappeared?" he almost shrieked. "I see now why you did not understand. But come, old chap, sit here by the fire. Have a pipe, I'll have one too.… I'll tell you all about it, quite calmly. Of course, you thought me mad—a maniac … Matches? Here you are. Shall we have the lamps?"

He rang the bell. Old Janet, more wrinkled and pleasant than ever, brought in the lamp. She threw a log on the fire and left a delicious atmosphere of prosy cheerfulness behind her as she left. We were now both comfortably installed by the fire, smoking. Hugh seemed quite calm, only his eyes stared, large and glowing, into the fire.