CHAPTER

      I prologue
     II close to nature
    III boy, bird, and snake
     IV growing up with the country
      V grim-visaged war
     VI the Spearing of Alfred
    VII how fiction made fact
   VIII new forces at work
     IX Mrs. Potiphar
      X the building of the fence
     XI settling with Woodell
    XII inclination against conscience
   XIII Farewell to the fence
    XIV A rugged lost sheep
     XV A strange world
    XVI the really ugly duckling
   XVII “Eh, but she’s winsome”
  XVIII the woman
    XIX Purgatory
     XX two fools
    XXI “My little rhinoceros-bird”
   XXII two fools still
  XXIII just A Pang
   XXIV “As to those others”
    XXV nature again
   XXVI adventures Manifold
  XXVII the house wonderful
 XXVIII the ape
   XXIX the first district
    XXX the ninth ward
   XXXI their foolish ways
  XXXII the law of nature
 XXXIII whitest ashes

A MAN AND A WOMAN.

CHAPTER I.

Prologue.

But for a recent occurrence I should certainly not be telling the story of a friend, or, rather, I should say, of two friends of mine.  What that occurrence was I will not here indicate—­it is unnecessary; but it has not been without its effect upon my life and plans.  If it be asked by those who may read these pages under what circumstances it became possible for me to acquire such familiarity with certain scenes and incidents in the lives of one man and one woman,—­scenes and incidents which, from their very nature, were such that no third person could figure in them,—­I have only to explain that Grant Harlson and I were friends from boyhood, practically from babyhood, and that never, during all our lives together, did a change occur in our relationship.  He has told me many things of a nature imparted by one man to another very rarely, and only when each of the two feels that they are very close together in that which sometimes makes two men as one.  He was proud and glad when he told me these things—­they were but episodes, and often trivial ones—­and I was interested deeply.  They added the details of a history much of which I knew and part of which I had guessed at.

He was not quite the ordinary man, this Grant Harlson, close friend of mine.  He had an individuality, and his name is familiar to many people in the world.  He has been looked upon by the tactful as but one of a type in a new nationality—­a type with traits not yet clearly defined, a type not large, nor yet, thank God, uncommon—­one of the best of the type; to me, the best.  A close friend perhaps is blind.  No; he is not that:  he but sees so clearly that the world, with poorer view, may not always agree with him.