was drunk with the drunkenness of three weeks steady pouring. He propped
himself against a wall and reproved his tormentors in Latin. "I'm walking
your way, Mr. Fisbee," remarked the journalist, hooking his arm into the
old man's. "Suppose we leave our friends here and go home?"

Mr. Fisbee was the one inhabitant of the town who had an unknown past; no
one knew more about him than that he had been connected with a university
somewhere, and had travelled in unheard-of countries before he came to
Plattville. A glamour of romance was thrown about him by the gossips, to
whom he ever proved a fund of delightful speculation. There was a dark,
portentous secret in his life, it was agreed; an opinion not too well
confirmed by the old man's appearance. His fine eyes had a pathetic habit
of wandering to the horizon in a questioning fashion that had a queer sort
of hopelessness in it, as if his quest were one for the Holy Grail,
perhaps; and his expression was mild, vague, and sad. He had a look of
race and blood; and yet, at the first glance, one saw that he was lost in
dreams, and one guessed that the dreams would never be of great
practicability in their application. Some such impression of Fisbee was
probably what caused the editor of the "Herald" to nickname him (in his
own mind) "The White Knight," and to conceive a strong, if whimsical,
fancy for him.

Old Fisbee had come (from nobody knew where) to Plattville to teach, and
had been principal of the High School for ten years, instructing his
pupils after a peculiar fashion of his own, neglecting the ordinary
courses of High School instruction to lecture on archaeology to the
dumfounded scholars; growing year by year more forgetful and absent, lost
in his few books and his own reflections, until, though undeniably a
scholar, he had been discharged for incompetency. He was old; he had no
money and no way to make money; he could find nothing to do. The blow had