Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/248



HE grandest stories ever written were the stories of two men. That holds good up to our times, from Sidney Carton and Charles Darnay to Tennessee's Partner and Tennessee.

I can always see Sidney Carton mounting the scaffold to the guillotine, his hands tied behind, a dreamy, far-away expression in his eyes; his hair bound back in its ribband, much more carefully than was usual with him; himself clothed more tidily than was usual with him, because he was supposed to be the man for the sake of whose wife and little girl he was about to die. Poor Sidney was a drunkard, and perhaps that is why some of us are drawn to him all the more.

And Tennessee's Partner at the Court of Judge Lynch: "An' I answers you fair and square, Jedge, as between man and man, 'What should a man know about his partner?'" And Tennessee's Partner knew all.

And Tennessee's Partner, with his donkey Jenny and cart, and rough coffin, in the shadow of the trees, after the lynching. He didn't want to hurry the gentlemen at all. "But if yer quite done with  Rh