those events are matters of uncertainty he gets not a bidding to the
feast?" This question, not a new one, baffling in its mystery and
chilling to the marrow, George Henry classed with another he had heard
somewhere: "Who is more happy: the hungry man who can get nothing to
eat, or the rich man with an overladen table who can eat nothing?" The
two problems ran together in his mind, like a couple of hounds in leash,
during many a long night when he could not shut out from his ears the
howling of the wolf. He often wondered, jeering the while at his own
grotesque fancy, how his neighbors could sleep with those mournful yet
sinister howlings burdening the air, but he became convinced at last
that no one heard the melancholy solo but himself.

"'The wolf's long howl on Oonalaska's shore' is not in it with that of
mine," said George Henry--for since his coat had become threadbare his
language had deteriorated, and he too frequently used slang--"but I'm
thankful that I alone hear my own. How different the case from what it
is when one's dog barks o' nights! Then the owner is the only one who
sleeps within a radius of blocks. The beasts are decidedly unlike."

Not suddenly had come all this tribulation to the man, though the final
disappearance of all he was worth, save some valueless remnants, had
been preceded by two or three heavy losses. Optimistic in his ventures,
he was not naturally a fool. Ill fortune had come to him without
apparent provocation, as it comes to many another man of intelligence,
and had followed him persistently and ruthlessly when others less
deserving were prospering all about him. It was not astonishing that he
had become a trifle misanthropic. He found it difficult to recover from
the daze of the moment when he first realized his situation.

The comprehension of where he stood first came to George Henry when he