in a second I should have planted him fairly on his back, but his brother, like him a lank, wiry lad and singly more than my match, ran at me.  My head swam beneath his blows, and I released my almost vanquished enemy to face the new foe with upraised fists.  Then Tim came.  A black head shot between me and my towering assailant.  It caught him full in the middle; he doubled like a staple and with a cry of pain toppled into the snow.  This gave me a brief respite to compel my fallen enemy to capitulate, and when I turned from him, his brother was still staggering about in drunken fashion, gasping and crying, “Foul!” Tim did not know what he meant, but was standing alert, with head lowered, ready to charge again at the first sign of renewed attack.  He knew neither “fight foul” nor “fight fair”; he knew only a brother in trouble, and he had come to him in his best might.

That was the real Tim!

“I guess me and you can whip most anybody, Mark,” he said, as he looked up at me from his silly spelling-book that day.

“As long as we stick together, Tim,” I whispered in return.

He laughed.  Of course we would always stand together.

That was long ago.  Life is an everlasting waking up.  We leave behind us an endless trail of dreams.  The real life is but a waking moment.  After all, it was the real Tim who had gone singing by as I crouched in the shadow of the school-house.  The comrade of my school-days, who had fought for me with eyes closed and with the fury of a child, the companion of the hunt, racing with me over the ridges with Captain singing on before us, the brother at the fireside at night, poring over some rare novel—­he was only a phantom.  Between me and the real man there was no bond.  He had grown above the valley; I was becoming more and more a part of it, like the lone pine on Gander Knob, or the piebald horse that drew the stage.  His clothes alone had made wider the breach between us.  At first I had admired him.  I was proud of my brother.  But Solomon in all his glory was dressed in his best; from Dives to Lazarus is largely a matter of garments.  Tim had made himself just a bit better than I, when he donned his well-fitting suit and pulled on his silly gloves.  Beside him I was a coarse fellow, and to me he was not the old Tim.

This fine man had come back to the valley to take from me all that made life good.  He had struck me over the heart and stunned me and then gone singing by.  In Mary’s eyes he was the better man of the two.  To my eyes he was, and I hated him for it.  He could go his way and I should go mine, for we must stand alone.  In the morning he would go away and leave me with the Tim I loved, with the boy who sat with me at yonder desk, who raced with me over the ridges, who read with me at the fireside.

The shadows deepened in the school-room, for a curtain of clouds was sweeping across the moon.  Peering through the window, over the flats, I saw a light gleaming steadily at the head of the village street.  It was my light burning in the window, and I knew that Tim was there, waiting for me.  All the past rose up to tell me that he was still the comrade of my school-days, my companion of the hunt, my brother of the fireside.