That evening he spoke no more of her.  Yet I felt that I had been admitted to an intimacy.  And, as the habit grew upon me thereafter of dropping in to listen to the remote, restful, unworldly quaintnesses of his philosophy, fragments, dropped here and there, built up the outline of the tragedy which had left him stranded in our little backwater of quiet.  She whom he had cherished since they were boy and girl together, had died in the previous winter.  She had formed the whole circle of his existence within which he moved, attended by Willy Woolly, happily gathering his troves.  Her death had left him not so much alone as alien in the world.  He was without companionship except that of Willy Woolly, without interest except that of his timepieces, and without hope except that of rejoining her.  Once he emerged from a long spell of musing, to say in a tone of indescribable conviction: 

“I suppose I was the happiest man in the world.”

Any chance incident or remark might turn his thought and speech, unconscious of the transition, from his favorite technicalities back to the past.  Some comment of mine upon a specimen of that dismal songster, the cuckoo clock, which stood on his mantel, had started him into one of his learned expositions.

“The first cuckoo clock, as you are doubtless aware, sir”—­he was always scrupulous to assume knowledge on the part of his hearer, no matter how abstruse or technical the subject; it was a phase of his inherent courtesy—­“was intended to represent not the cuckoo, but the blackbird.  It had a double pipe for the hours, ‘Pit-weep!  Pit-weep!’ and a single—­”

His voice trailed into silence as the mechanical bird of his own collection popped forth and piped its wooden lay.  Willy Woolly pattered over, sat down before it, and, gazing through and beyond the meaningless face with eyes of adoration whose purport there was no mistaking, whined lovingly.

“When the cuckoo sounded,” continued the collector without the slightest change of intonation, “she used to imitate it to puzzle Willy Woolly.  A merry heart! ...  All was so still after it stopped beating.  The clocks forgot to strike.”

The poodle, turning his absorbed regard from the Presence that moves beyond time and its perishing voices, trotted to his master and nuzzled the frail hand.

The hand fondled him.  “Yes, little dog,” murmured the man.  His eyes, sad as those of the animal, quested the dimness.

“Why does she come to him and not to me?  He loved her dearly, didn’t you, little dog?  But not as I did.”  There was a quivering note of jealousy in his voice.  “Why is my vision blinded to what he sees?”

“You have said yourself that there are finer sensibilities than ours,” I suggested.

He shook his head.  “It lies deeper than that.  I think he is drawing near her.  He used to have a little bark that he kept for her alone.  In the dead of night I have heard him give that bark—­since.  And I knew that she was speaking to him.  I think that he will go first.  Perhaps he will tell her that I am coming....  But I should be very lonely.”