yes, though Grayson did it, actually
smiling all the way from peak to ravine,
and though he was my best friend
--best loved then and since. I believe
he was the strangest man I have ever
known, and I say this with thought;
for his eccentricities were sincere. In
all he did I cannot remember having
even suspected anything theatrical but
once.

We were all Virginians or Kentuckians
at the Gap, and Grayson was a
Virginian. You might have guessed
that he was a Southerner from his voice
and from the way he spoke of women
--but no more. Otherwise, he might
have been a Moor, except for his color,
which was about the only racial
characteristic he had. He had been educated
abroad and, after the English habit, had
travelled everywhere. And yet I can
imagine no more lonely way between
the eternities than the path Grayson
trod alone.

He came to the Gap in the early
days, and just why he came I never
knew. He had studied the iron question
a long time, he told me, and what