Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/273

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LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO
251

these imaginings had no objective counterpart in life took away nothing from their intoxication. Even Lonely himself often came to believe in them. And if, indeed, all these airy


THE CONSTABLE GAVE THE STORY OVER AGAIN


escapes from the cramping and monotonous obligations of an over-stern veracity were lies, pure and simple,—each of them was at least the lie heroic, a shadow of those diviner lies of art and poetry from which spring earth's oldest and highest delights. So vivid could