Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn.  But the next morning, being Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.

“Where are you going?” I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads.

“Trout,” he said, and his face beamed like a full moon.  “I just dote on trout.”

Was there ever such an impossible man!  His whole harvest had gone up in his haystacks and barn.  It was uninsured, I knew.  And yet, in the face of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest of a mess of trout, forsooth, because he “doted” on them!  Had gloom but rested, no matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine countenance grown long and serious and less like the moon, or had he removed that smile but once from off his face, I am sure I could have forgiven him for existing.  But no, he grew only more cheerful under misfortune.

I insulted him.  He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.

“I fight you?  Why?” he asked slowly.  And then he laughed.  “You are so funny!  Ho! ho!  You’ll be the death of me!  He! he! he!  Oh!  Ho! ho! ho!”

What would you?  It was past endurance.  By the blood of Judas, how I hated him!  Then there was that name—­Claverhouse!  What a name!  Wasn’t it absurd?  Claverhouse!  Merciful heaven, why Claverhouse?  Again and again I asked myself that question.  I should not have minded Smith, or Brown, or Jones—­but Claverhouse!  I leave it to you.  Repeat it to yourself—­Claverhouse.  Just listen to the ridiculous sound of it—­Claverhouse!  Should a man live with such a name?  I ask of you.  “No,” you say.  And “No” said I.

But I bethought me of his mortgage.  What of his crops and barn destroyed, I knew he would be unable to meet it.  So I got a shrewd, close-mouthed, tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage transferred to him.  I did not appear but through this agent I forced the foreclosure, and but few days (no more, believe me, than the law allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and chattels from the premises.  Then I strolled down to see how he took it, for he had lived there upward of twenty years.  But he met me with his saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading in his face till it was as a full-risen moon.

“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed.  “The funniest tike, that youngster of mine!  Did you ever hear the like?  Let me tell you.  He was down playing by the edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved in and splashed him.  ‘O papa!’ he cried; ’a great big puddle flewed up and hit me.’”

He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee.

“I don’t see any laugh in it,” I said shortly, and I know my face went sour.

He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light, glowing and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone soft and warm, like the summer moon, and then the laugh—­“Ha! ha!  That’s funny!  You don’t see it, eh?  He! he!  Ho! ho! ho!  He doesn’t see it!  Why, look here.  You know a puddle—­”