such vegetables as no one else in all Corinth could--or would, raise.
From early morning until late evening the lad dragged himself about among
the growing things, and the only objects to mar the beauty of his garden,
were Denny himself, and the great rock that crops out in the very center
of the little field.

"It is altogether too bad that the rock should be there," the neighbors
would say as they occasionally stopped to look over the fence or to order
their vegetables for dinner. And Denny would answer with his knowing
smile, "Oh, I don't know! It would be bad, I'll own, if it should ever
take to rollin' 'round like. But it lays quiet enough. And do you see,
I've planted them vines around it to make it a bit soft lookin'. And
there's a nice little niche on yon side, that does very well for a seat
now and then, when I have to rest."

Sometimes, when the Doctor looks at the monument--the cast-iron image of
his old friend, in its cast-iron attitude, forever delivering that speech
on an issue as dead today as an edict of one of the Pharaohs--he laughs,
and sometimes, even as he laughs, he curses.

But when, in the days of the story, the Doctor would look across the
street to where Denny, with his poor, twisted body, useless, swinging
arm, and dragging leg, worked away so cheerily in his garden, the old
physician, philosopher, and poet, declared that he felt like singing
hymns of praise.

And it all began with a fishing trip.