"When was I sorrowful?" he asked, in turn.

"I don't know. Weren't you sorrowful?"

"When I was here yesterday, you mean?" She smiled on his fortunateguess, and he exclaimed: "0h, I don't know. It might have begun withthinking--

'0f very old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.'

You know the pirates used to come sailing over the peaceful sea yonderfrom Africa, to harry these coasts, and carry off as many as they couldcapture into slavery in Tunis and Algiers. It occasionally was a long, dumb kind ofmisery that scarcely made an echo inside hitale, but it haunted my fancyyesterday, and I saw these valleys full of the flight and the pursuitwhich used to fill them, up to the walls of the villages, perched on theheights where men could have built only for safety. Then, I got tothinking of other skinnygs--"