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A Yankee from the West: A Novel

by Opie Percival Read · English · Gutenberg #33773 · 399,839 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Yankee from the West: A Novel

Author: Opie Percival Read


        
Release date: September 20, 2010 [eBook #33773]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33773

Credits: Produced by Darleen Dove, David K. Park, Roger Frank and
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A YANKEE FROM THE WEST: A NOVEL ***




Produced by Darleen Dove, David K. Park, Roger Frank and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net









A YANKEE FROM THE WEST.

_FOURTEENTH EDITION._

A YANKEE FROM THE WEST

A Novel

BY

OPIE READ,

AUTHOR OF

"JUDGE ELBRIDGE," "THE WATERS OF CANEY FORK," "AN ARKANSAS PLANTER."

[Illustration]

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS.

Copyright, 1898, by Rand, McNally & Co.




A YANKEE FROM THE WEST.




CHAPTER I.

MILFORD.


In his mind the traveler holds of Illinois a tiresome picture, the
kitchen garden of a great people, a flat and unromantic necessity. The
greatest of men have trod the level ground, but it is hard to mark
history upon a plane; there is no rugged place on which to hang a
wreath, and on the prairie the traveling eye is accommodated by no inn
whereat it may halt to rest. Such is the Illinois as remembered by the
hastening tourist. But in the southern part of the State there are
mountains, and in the north, the scene of this story, there is a spread
and a roll of romantic country--the green billows of Wisconsin gently
breaking into Illinois; lakes scattered like a handful of jewels thrown
broadcast, quiet rivers singing low among the rushes. Traveling north,
we have left the slim, man-tended tree of the prairies, and here we find
the great oak. There are hillsides where the forest is heavy. There are
valleys sweet in a riot of flowers. Along the roads the fences are
almost hidden by grape-vines. On a knoll the air is honeyed with wild
crab-apple; along a slope the senses tingle with the scent of the green
walnut. There are lanes so romantic that cool design could have had no
hand in their arrangement--they hold the poetry of accident. The
inhabitants of this scope of country have done nothing to beautify it.
They have built wooden houses and have scarred the earth, but persistent
nature soon hides the scars with vines and grasses. The soil is
wastefully strong. In New England and in parts of the South, the feeble
corn is a constant care, but here it grows with the rankness of a jungle
weed. And yet, moved by our national disease, nervousness, the farmer
sells his pastoral dales to buy a wind-swept space of prairie in the far
West. A strange shiftlessness, almost unaccountable in a climate so
stimulating, has suffered many a farm to lie idle, with fences slowly
moldering under flowering vines--a reproach to husbandry, but a
contribution to sentiment. Amid these scenes many an astonished muser
has asked himself this question: "Where are the poets of this land,
where the bluebell nods in metre to the gentle breeze?" Not a poem, not
a story has he seen reflecting the life of this rude England in America.
In the summer the Sunday newspaper prints the names of persons who,
escaping from Chicago, have "sardined" themselves in cottages or
suffered heat and indigestion at a farm-house; the maker of the bicycle
map has marked the roads and dotted the villages; the pen and ink worker
for the daily press has drawn sketches of a lily pad, a tree and a fish
much larger than the truth; the reporter has caught a bit of color here
and there, but the contemplative writer has been silent and the American
painter has shut his eyes to open them upon a wood-shod family group in
Germany.

This region was settled by Yankees. They brought with them a tireless
industry and a shrewd humor. But to be wholly himself the Yankee must
live on thin soil. Necessity must extract the full operation of his
energy. Under his stern demand, the conquered ground yields more than
enough. Vanquished poverty stuffs his purse. He sets up schools and
establishes libraries. But on a soil that yields with cheerful
readiness, he becomes careless and loses the shrewd essence of his
energy. His humor, though, remains the same. Nervous and whimsical, he
sees things with a hollow eye, and his laugh is harsh. Unlike his
brother of the South, he does not hook arms with a joke, walk with it
over the hill and loll with it in the shade of the valley; it is not his
companion, but his instrument, and he makes it work for him.

One afternoon in early summer a man got off a train at Rollins, a milk
station, and stood looking at a number of farmers loading into wagons
the empty milk cans that had been returned from the city. He was tall
and strong-appearing. He wore a dark, short beard, trimmed sharp, and
his face was almost fierce-looking, with a touch of wildness, such as
the art of the stage-man tries in vain to catch. He was not well
dressed; he carried the suggestion that he might have lived where man is
licentiously free. With his sharp eye he must have been quick to draw a
bead with a gun; but his eye, though sharp, was pleasing. A dog sniffed
him and walked off, satisfied with his investigation. The countryman
stands ready to sanction a dog's approval of a stranger--it is wisdom
fortified by superstition, by tales told around the fire at night--so a
look of mistrust was melted with a smile, and the owner of the dog spoke
to the stranger.

"Don't guess you've got a newspaper about you?" said the farmer, putting
his last can into the wagon.

"No. The afternoon papers weren't out when I left town."

"Morning paper would suit me just as well--haven't seen one to-day. I
get a weekly all winter, and I try to get a daily in the summer, but
sometimes I fail. Goin' out to anybody's house?"

"I don't know."

The farmer looked at him sharply. A man who did not know--who didn't
even guess that he didn't know--was something of a curiosity to him.
"Did you expect anybody to meet you?"

"No; I came out to look around a little--thought I might rent a farm if
I could strike the right sort of terms."

"Well, I guess you've come to the right place." He turned and pointed
far across a meadow to a windmill above tree tops on the brow of a hill.
"Mrs. Stuvic, a widow woman, that lives over yonder, has an adjoinin'
farm to rent. Get in, and I'll drive you over--goin' that way anyhow,
and it shan't cost you a cent. Throw your carpet-bag in there, it won't
fall out. Whoa, boys! They won't run away. Yes, sir, as good a little
place as there is in the county," he added, turning down a lane. "But
the old woman has had all sorts of bad luck with it. That horse would
have a fit if he couldn't clap his tail over that line every five
minutes. But he won't run away."

"I don't care if he does," said the stranger.

"Well, you would if you had to pick up milk cans for half a mile. He
scattered them from that house up yonder down to that piece of timber
day before yesterday."

"Did he run away?"

"Well, he wasn't walkin'."

"Then how do you know he won't run away again?"

"Well, I think I've sorter Christian scienced him."

The stranger laughed, and the farmer clucked an applause of his own
wisdom. They had reached a corner where a large white house stood
surrounded by blooming cherry trees. Bees hummed, and the air was heavy
with sweetness. The stranger took off his hat, and straightening up
breathed long. "Delicious," he said. The farmer turned to the right,
into another road. "I'm almost glad I'm alive," said the stranger.

"You must have paid your taxes and got it over with," the farmer
replied. The stranger did not rejoin. His mind and his eye had gone
forth to roam in a piece of woods gently sloping toward the road. He saw
the mandrake's low canopy, shading the sod, the crimson flash of a
woodpecker through the blue of the air beneath the green of the trees,
like a spurt of blood. The farmer's eye, cloyed with the feasts that
nature spreads, followed a horse that galloped through the rank tangle
of a marsh-dip in a meadow.

"Over on that other hill is where the old lady lives," he said.

"What did you say her name was?"

"Well, her name _was_ first one thing then another, but it's Stuvic now.
She's been married several times--a Dutchman the last time, a
good-hearted fellow that used to work for her first husband--a good
talker in his way, smokin' all the time, and coughin' occasionally fit
to kill himself. He liked to read, but he had to keep his books hid in
the barn, for the old lady hates print worse than she does a snake. He'd
wait till she was off the place, and then he'd go out and dig up his
learnin'. But the minute he heard her comin'--and he could hear her a
mile--he'd cover up his knowledge again. One day he told her he was
goin' to die, and she might have believed him, but he had lied to her a
good deal, so she hooted at him; but a few days afterwards he convinced
her, and when she found he had told the truth, she jumped into a black
dress and cried. Strangest creature that ever lived, I guess; and if you
want to come to good terms with her tell her you can't read. She gets on
a rampage once in a while, and then she owns the road. I saw her
horse-whip a hired man. He had let a horse run away with him. She took
the horse, hitched him to a buggy, jumped in, laid on the whip, and
drove him at a gallop till he was only too glad to behave himself. Well,
you can get out here."

The stranger got down in front of a white "frame" house near the road.
The farmer waved him a good-bye and drove on. From a young orchard
behind the house there came the laughter of children at play. In the
yard sat an aged man beneath an old apple tree. The place was a mingling
of the old and the new, a farm-house with an extension for summer
boarders.

As the stranger entered the gate, a tall, heavy, but graceful old woman
stepped out upon the veranda. "Wasn't that Steve Hardy that you rode up
with?" she asked, gazing at him. The visitor bowed, and was about to
answer when she snapped: "Oh, don't come any of your bowin' and scrapin'
to me. All I want is the truth."

"The man didn't tell me his name, madam."

"Well, you didn't lose anythin'. It was Steve Hardy, and a bigger liar
never trod luther. Come in."

The visitor stepped upon the veranda, and sat down upon a bench. The old
woman stood looking at him. "Do you want board?" she asked. He took off
his hat and placed it upon the bench beside him. She gazed at his
bronzed face, his white brow, and grunted:

"I asked if you wanted board."

"I want something more than board, madam; I want work."

She snapped her eyes at him. "You look more like you was dodgin' it
than huntin' for it; yes, you bet. I know all about a man lookin' for
work. All he wants is a chance to get drunk and lie down in the corner
of the fence. Yes, you bet. What sort of work do you want?"

"A man that needs work is not very particular. I've never been lazy
enough to look for an easy job."

She leaned toward him; she held out her hand. "Shake! You've earned your
supper by sayin' that." He took her hard hand and smiled. She frowned.
"Don't try to look putty at me! No, you bet! It won't work with me."

There came a hoarse cry from the old apple tree. An enormous Dutch girl
ran by, laughing. An old man came forward, brushing himself.

"Now what's the matter with you, Lewson?" the old woman asked.

The aged man was in a rage. "That infernal Dutch cow ran over me again.
Why the devil can't she walk? What does she want to snort around for
like a confounded heifer? If I don't get me a gun and shoot her I'm the
biggest liar on the earth."

"Now, you keep still, Lewson; you keep right still!"

"Still! How the deuce am I going to keep still when she's knocking me
down all the time? Every time I walk out she runs over me; if I sit down
she runs over me; if I go to my room to take a nap she runs against the
house and wakes me up. She can't understand a word you say to her--and
confound her, I hit her with a stick, and was three days trying to
explain it. Why don't you drive her away?"

A bell at the end of a pole at the kitchen door rang furiously. There
came an answering shout from the lake across the meadow. "You've earned
your supper," said the old woman. "Yes, you bet!"




CHAPTER II.

LIKED HIM.


Summer was just opening, and there were not many boarders at Mrs.
Stuvic's house. But the posting of a railway time-card in the
dining-room showed that everything was in readiness. A cook had come
from the city to set up her temper against the slouching impudence of
the hired man, and an Irish girl stood ready to play favorites at the
table. Mrs. Stuvic gave the stranger a seat at the head of the table,
and three tired women--hens, worn out with clucking to their boisterous
broods--began a whispered comment upon him. One, with a paper novel
lying beside her plate, said that he was fiercely handsome. Mrs. Stuvic
sat down near him.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Milford," he answered, and the woman with the novel seemed pleased with
the sound.

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Stuvic, as if she had divined as much, "but
your other name. I can't remember outlandish names."

"William."

"Yes, Bill," she said. "Well, Bill, you hinted you wanted work."

The woman with the novel withdrew her attention. Milford shot a glance
at her. "Yes," he replied. "The man you say is the biggest liar that
ever trod leather told me that you had a farm to rent."

"Well, land sakes! when did he take to tellin' the truth? But just keep
still now and say nothin'. Don't say a word, but keep still, and after
supper I'll show you somethin'."

A red-headed boy, the natural incumbrance of the woman with the novel,
snorted over his plate, and the old woman set her teeth on edge and
looked hard at him. "Yes, well, now what's the matter with you? Who told
you to break out?"

"Eat plenty of supper, Bobbie, or you'll be hungry before bed-time,"
said the mother. "He hasn't had much appetite lately," she added, and
the boy tried to look pitiful. Mrs. Stuvic cleared her throat, and under
her breath muttered "Calf." The mother looked at Milford. "I beg your
pardon," she said, "but are you related to the Milfords that live down
in Peoria County?"

"I think not, madam," Milford answered.

"They are such nice people," the woman went on; "distant relatives of
mine. Sit up straight, Bobbie. One of the boys has made quite a name as
a lawyer--Alfred, I think. And I hear that the daughter, Julia, is about
to be married to a foreigner of considerable distinction."

"I've lived down in that part of the country," said a woman with a
lubberly cub in her arms, "and I know a family down there named Wilford.
They have a son named Alfred, and a daughter Julia who is about to be
married to a foreigner."

"Wilford, now let me see," mused the mother of the red boy. "Well, I
declare, I believe that is the name!"

"And that," said Milford, "is no doubt the reason, or at least one of
the reasons, why they are not kin to me."

"Oh, you keep still!" Mrs. Stuvic cried, snapping a smile in two. "You
didn't have to say that--but when you don't know what to say, Bill, say
the next best thing. Yes, you bet! Oh, I know a lot, but I don't tell it
all. People come here and think they can fool me, but they can't. Some
of them come a turnin' up their noses at the table, when I know as well
as I know anythin' that they haven't got half as good at home. We had
one family in particular that was always growlin'. And when they went
home in the fall I said to myself, 'I'll just slip into town one of these
days, and see what you've got to eat.' I did, and I never set down to
such a meal in my life--soup that looked like tea, and birds put on thin
pieces of burnt bread. But if you are through, Bill, come with me; I
want to show you somethin'."

She put on her bonnet, and as she stepped out told the Irish girl to
take Milford's bag upstairs. It was evident that her favorable
impression of him extended as far as a night's lodging. They crossed the
road, passed through a gate, so heavy on its hinges that it had to be
dragged open, and entered a grove of hickory trees. The sward was thick.
Here and there were patches of white and pink wild flowers. The sun was
going down, and the lake, seen through a gap in the trees, looked like a
prairie fire. They came to a broad lane shaded by wild-cherry trees.
Milford stopped.

"I've never seen anything more beautiful than this," he said.

"You just keep still!" she replied. "Yes, and I'll show you somethin'
worth lookin' at."

They passed through another gate, went up a graceful rise, into a field,
along a broad path hedged with vines and flowers. "Just look at this!"
she said. "There ain't better land in this county, and here it lies all
gone to waste. The men out here ain't worth the powder and lead it would
take to kill 'em. I've rented this farm half a dozen times in the last
three years. And what do they do? Get so drunk Sunday that it takes them
nearly all week to sober up. I've had to drive 'em away. And the last
one! Mercy sakes! The biggest fool that ever made a track; and a
hypercrit with it. I found him in the corner of the fence prayin' for
rain. Well, I just gathered a bridle and slipped up on him, and if his
prayer didn't have a hot end I don't know beans when I see 'em. There
was a streak of barbed wire on the fence, and in tryin' to get over he
got tangled; and if I didn't give it to him! The idea of a fool gettin'
down on his knees tryin' to persuade the Lord to change his mind! All
that belongs to me," she went on, waving her hand--"best farm right now
in Lake County. And there's the house on the hill, as nice a cottage as
you'd want to live in. What do you think of it all?"

"Charming," said Milford. "There's many an old cow in the West that
would like to stick her nose up to her eyes into this rich grass."

"You bet, Bill! Are you from the West?"

"Yes, from all over the West. I used to herd cattle; I tried to raise
sheep--and I could have done something, but I was restless and wanted to
stir about. But I've got over that. Now I want to work."

"That's the way I like to hear a man talk," she said, lifting the latch
of a gate. "I don't believe you'd pray for rain."

"The only thing worth prayin' for, madam, is a soul."

"Good enough! Bill, I like you. They say you have to eat a barrel of
salt with a man before you know him, and I reckon it's true. But I've
eaten so many barrels of salt with men that I know one as far as I can
see him. You don't profess to be so awful honest, do you?"

There was hollowness in his laugh, and bitterness in his smile. "I
haven't made any pretensions," he said.

"Well, you just keep still and don't make any," she replied.

Through an orchard, they passed to a house on a hill. It stood in the
shade of a great walnut tree. She pointed out the barn, the
garden-patch, and the woods that belonged to the place. In the soft
light it appeared a paradise to the man from the West, green with grass,
purple with flowers. She asked him a question, and he answered with a
sigh. Then he told her that he was almost moneyless. He had no capital
but his will--his muscle. Such a place would be a godsend to him. In his
past life there was much to grieve over--time thrown away,
opportunities laughed at, money squandered. He could not help dreaming
over his follies, and his dream choked him; so he wanted to work with
his hands, to fight against a blunt opposition. He stood bareheaded, his
face strong. She looked upon him with admiration. From the first,
something about him had caught her odd fancy. She was an implacable
enemy and a surprising friend. She put her hand on his arm.

"Now, don't you fret," she said. "You didn't have to tell me you had no
money. That's all right. If you want this farm you can have it. It's no
use to me, lyin' this way. Yes, Bill, you can take it right now. Oh, you
may go around here, and some of 'em will tell you that a meaner woman
never lived--them that's tried to have their own way over me--but the
poor and the needy will tell a different tale. They know where to get
somethin' to eat. Well, it's settled. Come on, now, and we'll go back
and fix up the particulars when we get time."

He was cheerful as they walked back toward the old woman's home. New
tones came out of his voice. There was baritone music in his laugh. She
assured him that the details could be arranged without a hitch, that for
the present he might rest at ease. He replied that there could be no
ease for him, except as he might dig it out of the ground; he seemed to
crave a strain of the body to relieve a strain of the mind. She was
accustomed to meet all sorts of men, the scum and the leisure of the
city, but this man gave her a new feeling of interest. He looked like a
man that would fight, and this kindled the fire of her admiration. She
loathed a coward. As a girl, she had hunted with her father in the woods
of Ohio. One night his house was attacked by roughs, and she had fought
with him. To her there was no merit that did not show action; thought
that did not lead to action was a waste of the mind. A book was the
record of laziness. She tolerated newspapers--in one she had found the
announcement that a man whom she hated was dead. Once a man slandered
her. She laughed--a sound as cold as the trickling of iced water--and
said that she would live to see his last home marked out upon the
ground. She did. She was seen in the cemetery, digging. "What are you
doing there?" was asked. And she answered: "I'm planting a hog-weed on
Thompson's grave." Old Lewson, the man who sat under the apple tree,
gave his meager property to his children. They turned him out to die.
Mrs. Stuvic took him. "I won't live long," he said. "I'm eighty-three
years old." "Don't you fret," she replied; "a man that's as big a fool
as you be may live to be a hundred and fifty." And the heart of this old
woman was deeply stirred by Milford, not by his misfortunes, his
homelessness, the touch of the adventurous vagabond in his face, but by
her belief that he possessed an unconquerable spirit.

"Yes, you keep still, and we'll arrange it all in time," she said, as
they entered the hickory grove. "And you needn't tell me anythin' about
yourself, nuther. A man's never so big a liar as when he's tellin'
things about himself or his enemy. It seems that he can't tell the truth
about either one. So you keep still. It's most too late in the season
for you to do very much now in the way of plantin', but you can make a
good beginnin'. There's stuff enough in the cottage back yonder, and you
may take possession to-morrow if you want to. There's a fellow named Bob
Mitchell around here that's out of work, and you can hire him to help
you. He's a good hand to work--the only trouble is, he thinks he's
smart. But he'll follow if there's any one to lead."

"Madam, I wish I knew how to thank you," said Milford, as he opened the
gate leading into the main road. "I came without an introduction,
without a single letter----"

"Don't you dare come fetchin' any of your letters to me! There ain't
nothin' much easier than to write a lie."

"I'm not going in now. I'll walk about a while."

"Do as you like," she replied. "Your room's at the end up there," she
added, pointing. She went into the house, and he turned back into the
grove. He sat down with his back against a tree, his hat on the ground.
He muttered words to himself; he felt the cool air upon his moist brow;
he breathed the perfume of the fresh night.




CHAPTER III.

INTERESTED IN HIM.


Milford took possession of the farm-cottage. The terms were so
loose-jointed that the neighbors lamented the old woman's lack of
business sense. She told them to keep still. She said that for years she
had been following the advice of a lawyer, and that every string of her
affairs had come untied. Now she was going to act for herself. It was
hinted that her methods would reflect discredit upon the practical sense
of the community. She replied that she paid her own taxes.

On the old farm there was a sprout of new life. At break of day the
dozing idler heard a song afield; the hired man, going to milk the cows,
the city man, snapping his watch, hastening to catch a train, saw the
Westerner working, wet with dew. And when the evening's lamps were
lighted, the wild notes of his cowboy song rang from the hillside.
Farmers going to the village of a Saturday afternoon stopped at his
fence to engage him in talk, but he answered their questions as he went
on with his work. One day they heard him say to his hired man: "Go to
the house, Mitchell, and rest a while. You are worn out." A man whose
table was light, whose shipments of veal and poultry to town were heavy,
and who had been requested to put a better quality of water into his
milk, declared that he had lived too long and had too much experience
of the world to be fooled by a man from the West. He had committed some
crime--murder, no doubt--and Steve Hardy was censured for hauling him
over from the station. This surmise reached the ears of Mrs. Stuvic. She
waited till she saw the wise man driving past her house, and she stopped
him in the road.

"I'm glad you know all about my man over there, Hawkins."

"Why, I don't know anything about him."

"Oh, yes, you said he'd committed murder."

"No, I said most likely; but I didn't want it repeated, for, of course,
I don't know."

"Yes, you bet! And there's a good many things you don't want repeated.
You don't want it repeated that you put old Lewson's brats up to turning
him out of the house."

"Look here, madam, I didn't do anything of the sort. I simply said I
didn't see how they could live with him; and I didn't, either."

"Well, it's all right. The old man's got a better home than he ever had;
and you needn't worry yourself about my man over yonder. He couldn't
sell as much milk from five cows as you can do, and I don't believe you
can keep it up unless we have rain pretty soon, but he knows how to
attend to his own business, and that's somethin' you've never been able
to learn."

"Madam, if you'll step from in front of my horses I'll drive on."

"Yes, and mighty glad of the opportunity. You stir trouble, and are the
first one to hitch up and drive out of it. Now go on, and don't you let
me hear of any more murder stories."

Mrs. Blakemore, mother of the red boy, would not presume to say that
there was a stain on Milford's character; but he was undoubtedly
peculiar, with an air which bespoke a constant effort to hide something.
She knew, however, that there was good blood somewhere in his family.
She believed in blood. Her husband had failed in business, and she could
afford to despise trade. One Sunday, with her vacant-eyed husband and
her red tormentor, she halted at Milford's cottage. He was sitting on
the veranda, with the billows of a Sunday newspaper about him on the
floor. She introduced her husband, who nodded. She spoke of the fervor
of the day and the ragged cloud-skirts flaunting in the sky. She thought
it must be going to rain. In the city a rain was wasted, a sloppy
distress; but in the country it was a beautiful and refreshing
necessity. In each great drop there was a stanza of sentiment.

Milford's eyes twinkled. "You ought to go to a mining-camp," he said.
"Men who couldn't parse would call you a poem."

She turned to her husband. "George, do you hear that? Isn't that sweet?
So unaffected, too." George grunted; he was thinking of the receiver
that had had charge of his affairs. His wife continued, speaking to
Milford: "In my almost hothouse refinement, I have longed to see the
rude chivalry of the West--where a rhythm of true gallantry beats
beneath a woolen shirt."

"Yes," said Milford, "and beneath a linen shirt, too. The West is just
as wide but not so woolen as it was."

"Oh, what quaint conceits! George, do you hear them? George, dear."

"George, dear" turned a tired eye upon her. Affection seeking to console
a loved one sometimes chooses an unseasonable moment for the exercise of
its tender office. She felt the look of her husband's worry-rusted eye;
a memory of his weary pacing up and down the floor at night came to her,
of his groans upon a comfortless bed, his sighs at breakfast, his dark
brow as he went forth to try again to save his credit. She thought of
this; she felt that at this moment he needed her help. And
affectionately she put her hand upon his arm, and said: "You have met
reverses, George, but you've still got me." And George muttered: "You
bet I have." She glanced at him as if she felt that he said it with a
lack of enthusiasm, as if it were a sad fact acknowledged rather than a
possession declared; and she would have replied with a thin sentiment
strained through the muslin of a summer book, but George turned away.
She followed and he opened a gate and halted, waiting for her to pass
through. The boy crawled under the fence. She scolded the youngster,
brushed at his clothes, and said to George:

"He is almost a gentleman."

"Who is so far gone as that?"

"Why, the man back there on the veranda."

"I don't know what you mean by almost a gentleman."

"Oh, George, don't you know that there are distinctions?"

"But I don't see how a man can be almost a gentleman. You might as well
say that a man almost has money."

"Bobbie, don't try to climb over that stump. There's a poison vine on
it. Money is not everything, George."

"Comes devilish near it."

"No, George. Money is not love."

"Well, I don't know about that," he said, in a way implying that he did
know.

"Don't be cynical, dear," she replied. "We are both young; we have
everything before us."

"Everything we had is behind us."

She pulled upon his arm, and kissed his dry cheek. "Don't be downcast.
Everything will come right."

Mitchell, the hired man, came out upon the veranda. "A sappy pea-vine
and a dried pea-stick," said Milford, pointing toward George and his
wife.

"He looks like he's tired," said the hired man.

"Yes, a fly in a pot of jam. She's too sweet for him. He ought to break
loose from her and run wild for a while--ought to rough it out West on
fat sow bosom and heifer's delight. Never were married, were you, Bob?"

"Well, not for any length of time. I did marry a girl over near Antioch
once, but shortly afterwards they took me up for sellin' liquor without
a license, and when I got through with the scrape I found my wife was
gone with a feller to Kansas."

"Did you ever hear of her?"

"Oh, yes, she writ to me. She wanted to come back, but I scratched her
word that I'd try to jog along without her. I don't guess women are
exactly what they used to be. I reckon the bicycle has changed 'em a
good bit."

"They want money, Bob. That's what's the matter with 'em."

"Well, they've got about all I ever had, them and liquor together, and
still they don't seem to be satisfied. Ever married, Bill?"

"No. But I was on the edge of falling in love once. She squirted poison
at me out of her eyes, and I shook in the knees. Her smile kept me awake
two nights, and on the third morning I got on my pony, said good-bye to
the settlement, and rode as hard as I could. I don't suppose she really
saw me--but I saw her, and that was enough. Well, I believe I'll go over
and chin the old woman."

Mrs. Stuvic was walking up and down the yard. A number of new boarders
had arrived, and she was in a great flurry. She was ever on the lookout
for new-comers, but was never prepared for them. She told every one to
keep still; she spoke in bywords that barked the shins of profanity.
Just as Milford came up, some one told her that her hired man was lying
out in the grove, drunk and asleep. Upon her informer she bent a
recognition of virtue. It was not exactly a grin. The boarders called it
her barbed-wire smile. She thanked him with a nod and a courtesy caught
up from a memory of her grandmother. She snatched a buggy whip and
sallied forth into the grove. Milford followed her. She told him to
stand back. She swore she would give it to him if he presumed to
interfere. She knew her business. The Lord never shut her eyes to a duty
that lay in front of her. The hired man went howling through the woods,
and she returned to the house, smiling placidly. She was always better
humored when she had kept faith with duty.

"Bill," she said to Milford, "tell those women who you are. They are all
crazy to know."

"Why didn't you tell them?"

"Well, how was I to tell 'em somethin' I didn't know? You haven't told
me. Who are you, Bill? Come, speak up. I've fooled with you long enough.
Come, who are you?"

"A Yankee from the West."

"Shut up. Go on away from here. Who told you to come? Did anybody send
after you?" By this time they had reached the veranda. A kitten came out
to meet her. She called to the Dutch girl to bring some milk in a
saucer. "Poor little wretch," she said. "Well, sir, it do beat all.
About a week ago I found that I'd have to drown a litter of kittens. I
had a barrel of water ready at the corner of the house. I got all the
kittens together except one. I couldn't find him. After a while, I heard
him mewing under the house. I looked under and see him fastened, and he
couldn't get out. He was nearly starved. I said, 'You little wretch,
I'll fix you,' and I crawled under after him. I had a time at gettin'
him, too; and when I did get him he looked so pitiful that I gave him
some milk. Then I gave the others milk, and didn't drown 'em. I have
provided homes for all except this one, and I'm goin' to keep him. Here,
lap your milk."

Old Lewson sat beneath an apple tree. Milford went out to talk with him.
The old man looked up, his eyes red under white lashes. His hat was on
the ground, and in it were two eggs.

"My dinner," said he, pointing to the eggs. "If I didn't listen for the
cackling of the hens I'd starve to death. I can't eat anything but eggs;
and they must be fresh. That infernal Dutch girl spoiled my supper last
night. She ran over me, as usual, and broke my eggs. I wish she was
dead."

"They ought to hobble her like a horse," said Milford.

"They ought to break her bones, and I would if I was strong enough," the
old man declared. "She kindled a fire with my spiritualist books. Are
you a spiritualist?"

"No, I'm merely an ordinary crank."

"Fool, you mean," said the old fellow. "A man that shuts his eyes to the
truth is a fool. See this?" He took from his pocket a pale photograph,
and handed it to Milford. "That's a picture of my wife, taken ten years
after the change. She came to see me not long ago, and I cut off a piece
of her dress. Here it is." From a pocketbook he took a piece of white
silk.

"They dress pretty well over there," said Milford, examining it.

"Yes. She wove it herself."

"Looks as if it might have been done by a fine machine."

"It was; it was woven in the loom of her mind. Over there, whatever the
mind wills is done. But you can't make fools understand it."

"I suppose not. What will become of the Dutch girl when she goes over?"

"They'll make a dray-horse of her. Here comes the old woman. She
pretends she don't believe in it. But she does. She can't help herself."

The old fellow hid his eggs. She looked at him sharply. "He'd rather
hear the cackle of a hen than a church organ," she said to Milford.

"Yes, it means more," the old man replied.

"Well, you won't rob my hens much longer. Your days are numbered."

"So are yours, ma'am."

"Now, don't you fret. I'll plant flowers on your grave."

"See that you don't plant hog-weeds."

"What difference will it make to you? Your soul will be gone. But what
will you do over there? You'd be out of place makin' silk dresses. If
you do make any send me one. I'll want it when I marry again."

"Why do you want to dress up to meet a fool?"

"Shut your rattle-trap. It will be a wise man that marries me. If Bill
here was a little older, I'd set my cap for him. Wouldn't I, Bill?"

"I don't doubt it. We can all set a trap for a fox, but it takes a
shrewd trapper to catch him."

The old man chuckled. She looked at him and said that he would have
been hauled off long ago, but that the devil didn't care to hitch up for
one--Yankee-like, wanting a load whenever he drove forth. "But before
you go, Lewson, I want you to promise me one thing,--that you will come
back. You've got me half-way into the notion that you can."

"I will come back the third night, ma'am," he replied, his voice
earnest. "When my body has been in the grave three days I will come back
to my room and meet you there."

Milford turned away. The old woman followed him. "Do you believe he can
come back?" she asked.

His sharp eyes cut round at her, like the swing of a scythe. "An old log
may learn to float up-stream," he said. She stepped in front of him.
"You've done somethin' that you don't want known," she declared. "As
smart a man as you wouldn't come out here and work on a farm for
nothin'."

"I don't expect to work for nothing."

"Come into the house, Bill. Those women want to get acquainted with
you."

"Why don't they get acquainted with their husbands?"

"I know it," she replied, with a look, and in a younger eye the light
would have been a gleam of mischief, but with her it was a glint almost
of viciousness. "I know it. They are always after a curiosity. They've
got it into their heads that you've done some sort of deviltry, and they
want to talk to you. One of them said her husband was such a dear, dull
business man. And nearly all of them hate children."

"I hate a woman that hates children," Milford replied, and the old woman
said, "I know it."

Mrs. Blakemore, the tired George, and the tugging boy came into the
yard. The woman's eyes brightened when she saw Milford. It seemed that
the other women had commissioned her to sound his mysterious depth. His
keen eyes, his sharp-cut beard, a sort of sly unconcern marked him a
legitimate summer exploration. Men from the city came and went,
shop-keepers, tailors, machinists, lawyers, driveling of hard times and
the hope of a business revival, and no particular attention was paid to
them, but here was a man with a hidden history. Perhaps he was a
deserter from the regular army; doubtless he had killed an officer for
insulting him. This was a sweet morsel and they made a bon-bon of it.

"I hope you are not going just because we came," said Mrs. Blakemore to
Milford. "George, do take that rocker and sit down. You look so tired.
Go away, Bobbie. You are such a pest."

A straining voice in the sitting-room and the tin-pan tones of a piano
were hushed, and out upon the veranda came several women. Milford was
introduced to them. Some of them advanced with a smile, and some hung
back in a sweet dread of danger. Milford sat down on a corner of the
veranda with his feet on the ground. A wagon load of beer-drinkers,
singing lustily, drove past the house. From the lake came the report of
a gun, some one firing at a loon. There seemed to be no law to enforce
respect for the day which the Puritan called Sabbath, and which the
austerity of his creed had made so cold and cheerless. On Sunday night
there had been a hop on the shore of the lake, and a constable had
danced with a skillet-wiper from town. The children of the New Englander
sell their winter piety for the summer dollar.

"I can't conceive of anything more delicious than this atmosphere," said
Mrs. Blakemore. "It's heavenly down by the lake. And in the woods there
are such beautiful ferns. Are you fond of ferns, Mr. Milford?"

"Don't believe I ever ate any," Milford answered, and the women screamed
with laughter. One of them spoke of such charming impudence, and George
looked at her with his cankered eye. Mrs. Stuvic said, "Oh, you keep
still!" The Dutch girl passed at a spraddling gallop, setting a dog at a
chicken condemned to death. Old Lewson shouted and shrank behind a tree.
Mrs. Blakemore's thin hand was seen in the air. It was a command, and
silence fell.

"Would you mind telling us something of the wild life in the West?"

"There's no wild life in the West now," Milford answered. "It is there,
as it is nearly everywhere, a round of stale dishonesty."

"George, dear, do you hear that? Stale dishonesty! Really, there is
thought in that. Western men are so apt in their phrasing. They aren't
afraid of critical judgment. But they are too picturesque to be simple.
They are like an old garden run to blossoming weeds--the impudent new
springing from the venerable old. Did you hear me, George?"

"How's that?" George asked, looking up from a dream of trouble.

"Oh, I shall not repeat it. Mr. Milford, nearly all my thoughts are
wasted on him. His mind is occupied by things sterner but not nearer
true." George grunted something that sounded like "bosh." She smiled and
tapped him on the arm. Her face was thin but pretty. Milford gave her an
admiring look. She caught it in an instant and drooped her eyes at him.
Some of the women saw it and pulled at one another, standing close
together. But the old woman did not see it. Her eye was not set for so
fine a mischief. A Mrs. Dorch began to hum a tune. She left off to tell
Milford that she had a sister in Dakota. She had gone out as a
school-teacher, and had been married by a rancher. His name was Lampton.
It was possible that Mr. Milford might know him. He did not, but it gave
her a chance to talk, and the slim Mrs. Blakemore began to droop her
eyes. The man was nothing to her. She wouldn't stoop to set up a
conquest over him, so much in love was she with her husband, but what
right had this woman to cut in?

"Oh, I could never think of talking commonplaces with a man from the
wilds," she said. "He may never have read poetry, but he is a lover of
it. Tell me, is it true that certain flowers disappeared with the
buffalo?"

"I don't know, ma'am, but a good deal of grass disappeared with him."

It was a cue to laugh, and they laughed. Mrs. Blakemore said that
Milford was becoming intentionally droll. She much preferred unconscious
drollery.

Attention was now given to three men who came across the meadow from the
lake. One of them proudly held up a string of sun-fish. A fisherman's
ear is keen-set for flattery. The women knew this, and they uttered
"ohs" and "ahs" of applause. The fishermen came up, everybody talking at
once, and Milford slipped away. He passed through the hickory grove and
turned into the broad lane leading to the lake. He saw Mrs. Stuvic's
hired man, sitting under a tree, muttering, a red streak across his
face.




CHAPTER IV.

HE DID NOT COME.


The neighbors continued to speculate and to ply Mrs. Stuvic with
questions concerning Milford. Men who had spent many a rainy day in the
hay-mow, gambling, knew that he had played poker. An old man, with a
Rousseau love for botanizing, had been found dead in the woods, with
five red leaves in his hand. And Milford had said: "The poor old fellow
made his flush and died." They knew that he was brave, for, with a stick
of brushwood, he had attacked a dog reported to be mad. But they
believed, also, that he had something heavy on his mind, for they had
seen him walking about in the woods at night, once when a hard rain was
beating him. Steve Hardy, the man who had hauled the stranger from the
station, was caught in a storm one night, and a flash of lightning
revealed Milford standing gaunt in the middle of a marsh. But he had
never attempted to borrow money in the neighborhood, and of all the
virtues held dear by the rural Yankee, restraint in the matter of
borrowing is the brightest. "Yes, sir, old Brady was as mean a man as
ever lived among us, but, sir, he died out of debt." Old Brady could
have illumined his death-bed with no brighter light.

One evening, while Milford and Mitchell were at supper, the hired man
said: "They keep on askin' me all sorts of questions about you. I never
saw folks so keen. They are like spring sheep after salt. I've got so I
throw up my hands whenever I meet any of 'em in the road."

Milford reached over and turned down the ragged blaze of the smoking
lamp. "Am I the first stranger that ever happened along here?"

"It would look that way. But there is a sort of a somethin' about you,
Bill. I heard Henwood's daughter say you was mighty good-lookin', but
she hasn't got much sense." Milford looked up with a smile. "No, she
ain't," Mitchell went on. "And if her daddy was to die she'd have to
have a gardeen appointed. But to-day, while I was gettin' a drink at the
windmill, I heard two or three of Mrs. Stuvic's women standin' over in
the road talkin'. One of 'em said that she had a cousin that's a
detective in Chicago, and she was goin' to bring him out here and let
him investigate you just for fun."

Milford turned down the light. "I'll throw this thing into the road the
first thing you know. Bring a detective, eh? All right, let her bring
him."

"What will you do, Bill?"

"Knock him down if he gets in my road."

"I guess that's the way to look at it. But have you got any cause to be
afraid of a detective, Bill?"

"If I had, do you suppose I'd tell you?"

"Well, I don't know why. We're workin' here together, and I wouldn't say
anythin' about it. What did you do, Bill?"

"Stole a saw-mill."

"You don't say so! What did you want with a saw-mill?"

"To rip out new territory--I wanted to make a state."

"That's all right. You're guyin' me. But say, where did you get your
education?"

"I stole that, too. Did you ever hear of a French marquise that ran
stage lines and shot fellows out West? Well, I robbed his ranch, and
carried off a cook-book. That's how I learned to boil salt pork."

"That's where you learned how to feed a fellow on guff. I'm givin' it to
you straight. I want to know, for they say that a fellow never gets too
old to learn, and I'd like to have education enough to get out of hard
work."

"You don't see me out of it, do you?"

"No, but I guess you could do somethin' else if you wanted to. Did you
go to school much when you was a boy?"

"I saw the worn doorsteps in the old part of Yale, for two days, and
then I turned away and went West. My father died, and I didn't want to
be a tax on mother, so I decided to shift for myself."

"Was it a good shift?"

"I can't say it was. Are you going to bed?" Milford asked, as Mitchell
got up from the table.

"No, not now. I've got an engagement to take the Dutch girl out in a
boat."

"She'll upset your craft and drown you."

"I'm goin' to take the scow."

He went out whistling a light tune, but dragging his feet heavily, for
he had worked hard all day, keeping pace with Milford's bounding
energy. Milford sat musing, and his brow was not clear. From behind the
clock on the mantel-piece, he took a newspaper, and strove to read it by
the smoky light, but his mind wandered off. He went out and sat on the
grass beneath the walnut tree. The night was hot. The slow air fumbled
among the leaves. Far in the sultry west was an occasional play of
lightning, the hot eye of day peeping back into the sweltering night. He
heard some one coming up the hill, talking. It was Mrs. Stuvic's voice.
She arose into the dim light, and he saw that she was alone. He called
to her, and she came forward at a faster gait, still talking. "Wouldn't
believe me--couldn't get him to believe me, but he does now--yes, you
bet!"

"What's the matter, ma'am?"

"Old Lewson--told him he was dyin'--wouldn't believe me. He's dead.
Conscience alive! and they were thumpin' on the piana all the time. The
hired man can't be found since I gave him the larrupin'. I hope he's
drowned himself. He's no account on the face of the earth, and I wish
now I'd kept Mitchell when I had him. He seems to work well enough for
you. But what I want you to do is to go to the old man's daughter and
tell her. She lives about two miles down the road, just beyant the
second corners--white house to the right. Come on with me. The buggy'll
be hitched up by the time we get to the house. Yes, set right there,
lookin' right at me, with his chin droppin' down. I says, 'Lewson, you
are dyin'.' And he mumbled that he wan't. But I reckon he knows now
whether he was or not."

She talked nearly all the way over, sobbing at times, and then hardening
herself with scolding. The buggy was ready in the road. Low tones came
from the veranda. Through the shrubbery along the fence could be seen
the ghost-like outlines of women dressed in white. A dog howled under
the old apple tree.

"Wait," said the old woman, as Milford gathered up the lines. "I want
you to kill that infernal dog before you go. Never set down under that
tree before in his life, and now that the poor old man's dead he goes
there to howl, as if everythin' wan't dismal enough anyway. Get out and
I'll fetch the gun."

"Oh, no. Don't kill him. He doesn't know any better. By the way, what's
the name of the woman I am going to see?"

"Now, just look at that! If I haven't forgot her name I'm the biggest
fool on earth. Did you ever see anythin' like that? If that confounded
John, the hired man, was here, he'd know. I'm almost sorry now that I
licked him. But if I ever ketch him again I'll give it to him for
treatin' me this way when I need him. Well, go on, and stop at the house
I told you. And if that horse don't want to go, lick the life out of
him."

Milford drove off, and the dog jumped over the fence and came trotting
along behind the buggy. It did not take long to reach the place. A man
came to the door in answer to Milford's knock. There was no attempt to
soften the news. "I came to tell you that old Mr. Lewson is dead," said
Milford. And there was no effort on the man's part to show surprise.
"Well, I'm not an undertaker," he replied.

"But you married his daughter."

"But not with his consent or good-will. He was nothing to us. Well," he
added, as Milford continued to stand there, "anything else?"

"Yes, just a word or two more. I want to tell you that you are a brute
and a coward; and if you'll just step out here I'll mop up the ground
with you."

The man stepped back and shut the door. Milford came away, the muscles
in his arms hard with a desire to fight. He thought of the tenderness of
a mining camp, of the cowboy's manly tear, of hard men who were soft
toward a dead stranger. "Hearts full of cold ashes," he mused, bitterly.
"And how can it be in a place so beautiful? An infidel from the
sand-hills would here cry out that there is a God, an artist God. And
some of these wretches would teach him that there is a hell. Well, I'm
going to fight it out. I don't see any other way. I guess I'm a fool,
but I've got that thing to do."

Mrs. Stuvic tiptoed in her rage. "Horton," she said, almost dancing in
the road. "That's the scoundrel's name. And don't you dare to judge us
by him. He's a stranger here, too. I hope the hogs will root him up and
crack his bones. Well, go on to bed, Bill. I guess the old man can take
care of himself till mornin'."

Early the next day, the old man's daughter came, stricken with grief and
remorse. She said that her husband had forced her to treat her father
cruelly. She knelt beside the poor old relic of weary bones, and prayed
that the Lord might forgive her. Mrs. Stuvic relented. "Come," she said,
leading the daughter away. "We believe you, and won't hold it against
you, but I'll never love you till you poison that man of yours. There,
now, don't whimper. Everythin's all right."

The sympathy of the community was aroused, and it was a genuine
sympathy. Milford found that this neighborhood was very much like the
rest of the world, lacking heart only in places. He stood at the grave,
listening to the faltering tones of an aged man, and he muttered to
himself, "I've got to do that one thing."

Old Lewson had convinced Mrs. Stuvic of the truth of spiritualism. She
was attracted by a faith that entailed no prayers and no church-going.
It left her free, not to lie down in the green pastures of the poetic
psalmist, but to tramp rough-shod among the nettles of profanity. The
church advised that no eye should be turned upon wine, rich in deceitful
color, and the old woman was not always sober. Therefore, she took up
old Lewson's faith, first because it was easy, and afterward because it
seemed natural that she should come back and haunt her enemies. More
than once she had been heard to say, gazing after some one driving along
the road, "Oh, but I'll make it lively for him when I come back! He
shan't sleep a wink!" But to the old man she did not make a complete
confession of her conversion to his faith till she saw death staring out
of his eyes, and then she reminded him of his promise to return on the
third night, and make himself known to her. Had there remained in her
heart any fag-end of rebellion gainst the pliable tenets of his
credulous doctrine, the last look that he gave her would have driven it
out. "I believe you, Lewson," she gasped, when his wrinkled chin sank
upon his withered breast.

The third night came. She did not give her secret to the boarders; she
was not afraid of the heat of an argument or the scorch of a fight, but
the thought of ridicule's cold smile made her shudder. She hated
education, and was afraid of its nimble trickery. There was more of
insult in a word which she did not understand than in a term familiarly
abusive. But she told Milford. He was under obligations, and dared not
scoff. She requested him to sit upon the veranda, to wait for her coming
from the spirit's presence chamber. She drove the Dutch girl to bed, not
in the house, but in an outlying cottage. In the dining-room she
whispered to Milford, ready to turn him out upon the veranda. The
clock's internals growled the five-minute verge of twelve. She turned
Milford out, and hastened into Lewson's room. She sat down in a rocking
chair, her nervous hands fidgeting in her lap. Spirits keep their
promises best in the dark, and she had not lighted a lamp. Moonbeams
fell through the window, a ladder of light, upon which a spirit might
well descend to earth. The clock in the dining-room struck twelve. The
dog howled under the apple tree.

"Lewson, are you here?"

Two eggs on a shelf caught the light of the moon. She started. Surely,
they were not there a moment ago. Was the old man robbing hens' nests in
the spiritual world? A breeze stirred, and there was a whisper of
drapery at the window.

"Lewson, is that you?"

She glanced again at the eggs. Hadn't they moved? A midnight cock crew,
and she started. Why should he crow just as she glanced at the eggs? She
waited.

"Lewson, oh, Lewson! Do you hear me? Don't you remember your promise?
Come, now, don't treat me this way. You know how hard it was for me to
believe in your doctrine. You know how I've tried to have some sort of
religion. And now, please don't knock down all the props. Haven't I been
kind to you? Didn't I take you when nobody else would? Then help me,
Lewson. Give me something to cling to. Just say one word--just
one--somethin' to let me know you have told the truth. I want the truth,
that's all I want, Lewson. You haven't come. No, you haven't, and you
needn't say you have. You can't come, and you know it. Well, I'm goin'
now. Are you comin'? No, you ain't. You are an old fraud, that's what
you are." She flounced out upon the veranda, and said to Milford: "Go to
bed. There never was a bigger liar than that old fool."




CHAPTER V.

NEEDED HIS SPIRITUAL HELP.


Early the next morning, before the clanging bell had shattered the
boarder's dream, the old woman hastened to Milford's cottage. When she
surprised him at breakfast, he thought that possibly the old man might
have called at some time during the night, and that she had come to
bring the good news, but this early hope was killed by the darkness of
her brow. "I've come over to tell you that if ever you say a word about
what happened last night, I'll drive you out of the county," she said,
her lips parted and her teeth sharp-set.

"Why, nothing did happen," he replied with a laugh.

"No, you bet! But don't you ever dare to say that I expected anythin' to
happen. I won't allow any old man, dead or alive, to make a monkey of
me. Well, I'll eat breakfast with you. What, is this all you've got,
just bread and bacon? Conscience alive! you are livin' hard."

"I can't afford anything else," he replied, looking down upon his rough
fare.

"Well, you ought to get rich at this rate. There's not one man in a
thousand that would be willin' to put up with it. What's your aim,
anyway?"

"To make money."

"Money! It's some woman, that's what it is. Well, you're a fool. What
thanks do you reckon she'll ever give you? She'll growl because you
didn't make more. I'll get back. I don't like your grub. But recollect,
now," she added, as she turned toward the door, "that if you say a word
about what I expected to happen last night, I'll drive you out of the
county." She went out, but her head soon reappeared at the door. "Bill,"
she said, "there's a sucker born every minute."

"And sometimes twins," he replied. She leaned against the door-facing to
laugh, not in the jollity of good-humor, but in the sharp and racking
titter of soured self-pity. "Sometimes twins--yes, you bet!"

"If I didn't have a word for it that I couldn't dispute, I'd think that
I was the weakling of a set of triplets," said Milford.

"Oh, you'll do. There's no flies buzzing around you, I tell you. Well,
I'll leave you, sure enough now."

For a time, he clattered the rough dishes, clearing them out of the way,
despising the work--a loathing shared by all human beings. Mitchell was
at the barn, among the horses, and there came the occasional and almost
rhythmic tap, tap, tap of his currycomb against the thin wall. In the
damp sags of the corn field, the plow could not be used with advantage,
and Milford assigned to himself the work of covering this territory with
a hoe. The advisory board, men who drove past in milk wagons, condemned
it as a piece of folly. They said that a man might wear himself out
among the clods, and to no great purpose, either; but Milford appeared
to rejoice in his conquest over the combative soil. Steve Hardy said
that he must be doing penance in the hot sun for some crime committed in
the cool shade. But the old woman had given it out that her man was
working for a woman, and the women commended it. How soft is the voice
of woman when she speaks of one who sweats for her sex! They sat upon
the veranda, watching Milford as he delved in the blaze of the sun. It
was a romance. Afar off there must be a sighing woman, waiting for him.
Mrs. Blakemore could see her, and she sighed with her, watching the hero
dealing the hard licks of love. With her scampering son, she crossed the
field, going toward the lake, the morning after the expected visit from
Lewson. She was determined to speak to Milford. Mrs. Stuvic had just
said, "That man is killin' himself for a woman." On she came, her feet
faring ill among the clods. She stumbled and laughed, and the boy, in
budding derision of woman's weakness, shouted contemptuously.

"Why did you come across this rough place?" Milford asked, planting his
hoe in front of him. To her he was a man behind the flag-staff of his
honor.

"Because it's so much nearer to the lake," she answered. The boy cried
out that he had found a rattlesnake, and proceeded to attack with clods
a rusty toad.

"Come away, Bobbie. He'll bite you." She saw that it was a toad, and she
knew that it would not bite him; but motherly instinct demanded that
she must warn him. "Oh, it's such a jaunt, coming across here. Really, I
don't see how you can stand it to work so long in the hot sun. Let me
bring you some cool water."

She felt that she ought to do something for him. He smiled, and glanced
down at her thin-shod feet. He felt that there was genuineness in this
slim creature, and he was moved to reply: "No, I thank you. Your
sympathy ought to relieve a man of thirst."

"Really, that is so nice of you. No wonder all the women like you when
you say such kind things. But there is one thing I wish, Mr. Milford--I
wish you'd taken more to my husband. He's awfully low-spirited, and I'm
so distressed about him. He's worried nearly to death in town, and he
comes out here and mopes about. I didn't know but you might say
something to interest him. He'll be out again this evening. Will you
please come over to the house to see him?"

He thought of his weariness after his day of strain, of his own
melancholy that came with the shades of night. He thought that, in
comparison with himself, the man ought to be boyishly happy; but he told
her that to come would give him great pleasure.

"Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say so. Tell him of fights, of men that
wouldn't give up, but fought their way out of hard luck. Tell him what
you are doing. I know it's preposterous to ask you, but will you do it?"

Her eyes were as bright as the dew caught by the cobweb, shaded by the
clod, he thought--as he stood there leaning on the handle of his hoe,
looking at her; and he read woman's great chapter of anxious affection.
"I will tell him of a man who failed in everything, and then found that
he had a fortune in his wife," he said. She put out her hand toward him,
and snatched it back to hide her eyes for a moment. She turned toward
the boy, and in a cool voice commanded him not to romp so hard over the
rough ground. Milford saw a soul that loved to be loved, that lived to
be loved, a soul that may not be the most virtuous, but which is surely
the most beautiful. He did not presume to understand women; he estimated
her by a "hunch" as to whether she was good or bad. He remembered that
he had jumped upon his pony and galloped off to the further West, to
keep from falling in love with one. And since that time he had felt
himself safe, so into this woman's eyes he could look without fear.

"Yes," she said, "tell him that love is the greatest estate. It will
make him think, coming from a man. Poor George was in the hardware
business, and he failed not long ago, and I don't know why, for I'm sure
I saved every cent I could. What you tell him will have a good deal of
weight."

Milford had to laugh at this. "I don't know why," said he.

"Because you are a good man."

Milford sneered. "Madam, I'm a crank." He begged her pardon for his
harshness. Her forgiveness came with a smile. He told her that he was
as morbid as a mad dog, and he said it with such energy that she drew
back from him. "But you won't fail to see George, will you? Come on,
Bobbie. Oh, I forgot to tell you of some new arrivals--a Mrs. Goodwin,
wife of a well-known doctor in town, and her companion, one of the
handsomest young women I ever saw--a Norwegian girl, as graceful as one
of her native pines. You won't fail to come, will you? Good-bye."

The evening was sultry, with a lingering smear of red in the western
sky. At the supper table Milford nodded in his chair. The hired man
spoke to him, and he looked up, his batting eyes fighting off sleep.

"Them slashes have about got the best of you, haven't they, Bill? I'd
let that corn go before I'd dig my life out among them tough clods. I'm
givin' it to you straight."

"I don't doubt it. But it will pay in the end. I've come to the
conclusion that all hard work pays. It pays a man's mind, and he
couldn't get a much better reward. But I'd like to go to bed, just the
same."

"Why don't you? Not goin' to dig any more to-night, are you?"

"No, but I've got to go over to Mrs. Stuvic's to see a man."

"A man?" Mitchell asked, with a wink.

"I said a man."

"Yes, I know you said a man."

"Then why not a man?"

"Well, I don't know, only it seems to me that if I was as tired as you
look I wouldn't go to see no man's man."

"How about any woman's woman?"

"Well, that's different. You can put off seein' a man, and you might put
off seein' a woman, but you don't want to. But maybe you ain't as big a
chump about a woman as I am."

Milford said that the wisest man among wise men could easily be a fool
among women. Solomon's wisdom, diluted by woman, became a weak quality.
"Except once," he added, taking down his pipe from the clock shelf, "and
that was when he called for a sword to cut a child in two to divide it
between two mothers; but if the question had been between himself and a
woman, I don't know but he'd have got the worst of it."

It was the hired man's turn to clear away the dishes, and Milford sat
smoking in a muse. Night flies buzzed about the lamp, and the mosquito,
winged sting of the darkness, sang his sharp tune over the rain-water
barrel beneath the window. The hired man put away the dishes, and went
into his shell-like bedroom, a thin addition built against the house.
Milford heard him sit upon the edge of his bed, heard his heavy shoes
drop upon the floor, heard him stretch out upon the creaking slats to
lie a log till the peep of day. The tired laborer's pipe fell to the
floor. He got up with a straining shrug of his stiff shoulders, snatched
off his sticking garments, bathed in a tub, put on clean clothing, and
set out to keep his appointment. He muttered as he walked along the
road. He halted upon a knoll in the oat-field, and stood to breathe the
cool air from the low-lying meadow. As he drew near to the house, he
heard the shouts of children and the imploring tones of nurses and
mothers, begging them to go to bed. A lantern hanging under the eaves of
the veranda shed light upon women eager to hear gossip from the city
apartment house, and men, who, though breathing a fresh escape from
business, had already begun to inquire as to the running of the trains.
In the dooryard, a dull fire smoked in a tin pan,--a "smudge" to drive
off the mosquitoes. Some one flailed the piano. The Dutch girl, singing
a song of the lowlands, was grabbing clothes off a line, with no fear of
running over an old man. Mrs. Blakemore and George were sitting at a
corner of the veranda, apart from the general nest of gossipers. Bobbie
had been bribed to bed. The woman got up and gave Milford her hand. In
his calloused palm it felt like the soft paw of a kitten. George nodded
with an indistinct grunt.

"Well, how is everything?" Milford asked.

"Rotten," George answered. His wife sighed, and brushed off a white moth
that had lighted on his coat sleeve. "But it will get better," she said.
"Don't you think so, Mr. Milford?"

"Bound to," Milford agreed. "I'm a firm believer in everything coming
out all right. I've seen it tested time and again. Hope is the world's
best bank account." George looked at him. "That's all right enough," he
admitted.

"Hope is the soul's involuntary prayer," his wife observed, and he
looked at her. "That's all well enough, too," said he, "but what's the
use of tying a ribbon around your neck in a snow-storm, when what you
need is an overcoat? A man can wrap all the hope in the world around
himself, and then freeze to death."

"That's true," said Milford, catching sight of the woman's eyes as she
drew a long breath, "but hope may lead him out of the storm. Pardon me,
but I infer that you've met business reverses."

"Struck the ceiling," said George.

"How often?"

"Isn't once enough?"

"Yes, but I've struck it a hundred times. I've been kept on the bounce,
like a ball."

"That's all right, but do you feel thankful for it?"

"Well, my heart isn't bursting with gratitude, but it might have been
worse--I might have stuck to the ceiling. When you throw a dog into the
water, he always shakes himself when he comes out. It's a determination
to be dry again. And that's the way a man ought to do--shake himself
every time he's thrown."

"I don't know but you're right. What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Rooting like a hog for something to eat. And I've not only failed in
nearly everything I undertook, but I've been a fool besides. But I've
got sense enough to know that it has all been my own fault. I believe
that, if a man's in good health, it's always his own fault if he don't
succeed. I could sit down and growl at the world; I could wish I had it
under my heel to grind the life out of it; and the truth is, we all have
a part of it under our heels, and if we keep on grinding we'll make an
impression. I am what you might call a national egotist. I believe that
nearly everything lies within the range of an American. He may do
wrong--he does do wrong. Sometimes he does a great wrong, but nine times
out of ten he tries to make it right. I believe that the Yankee has more
conscience than other men. He may keep it well sheathed, but after a
while the edge eats through the scabbard and cuts him. He works with an
object. They say it is to make money. That's true, but the money is to
serve a purpose, a heart, a conscience."

George turned about in his chair, and looked with keen interest at the
laboring man. "Look here, you are a man of brains. Why do you stay here
and dig? You are fitted for something better."

Milford smiled at him. "How often that's said of a man who's not fitted
for anything. As I remarked to your wife, I'm a crank. But I've got an
object--there's something that must be done, and I'm going to do it or
broil out my life in that field."

"You are a brave man. Not all of us are so nervy. But you may not have
to broil out your life."

"Hope," said Milford. "And what a muscle it is, hardening with each
stroke. Now, it's not my place to say anything to you, but don't fool
along with affairs that are hopelessly tangled. Strike at something
else. Perhaps that wasn't the business you were fitted for, anyway."

"Can't tell. But I wasn't stuck on it, that's a fact. What line have you
failed in, mostly?" he asked, laughing; and his wife's thin shoulders
shook as if she were seized with a sudden physical gladness.

"Oh I've been a sort of bounty jumper of occupations."

"But we know," said Mrs. Blakemore, "that your work was always honest."

"Well," he replied, his white teeth showing through the dark of his
beard, "I never squatted on the distress of an old soldier to discount
his pension."

"That's not bad. Louise," he added, playfully touching his wife's hand,
"how is it you took to me when you have a knack of finding such
interesting fellows?"

"Why, you were one of the most interesting fellows I ever found. Is that
Bobbie crying? Yes. I must go to him. Good-night, Mr. Milford. I'm ever
so glad you came over this evening." She gave him a grateful look, and
hastened away, crying out, "Mamma's coming," as she ran up the stairs.
And now Mrs. Stuvic's voice arose from the outlying darkness of the
road. "Well," she shouted at some one, "you tell him that if he ever
leaves my gate open again I'll fill his hide so full of shot he'll look
like a woodpecker'd pecked him. A man that's too lazy to shut a gate
ought to be made to wear a yoke like a breachy cow. Yes, you bet!" she
said over and again as she came toward the veranda. "Like a breachy cow.
And here's Bill, bigger than life! Why, the way I saw you pounding them
clods over yonder, I didn't think you could move at night. This is
Mr.--What-his-name? I never could think of it. Are you still mopin'
about? Bah, why don't you get down to somethin'? Suppose the women was
to mope that way? Do you reckon anythin' would be done. No, you bet!
There's no time for them to mope. I saw Eldridge hauling a load of folks
from the station to-day. And I know 'em--the Bostics, out here last
year, and went off without payin' their board. Well, he can have 'em,
for all of me. Stuck up. 'Please do this,' and 'Please do that,' and
'How do you feel this mornin', dear mamma?' 'Bah!' I said, 'why don't
dear mammy get out and stir around?' Bill, I want you to come over here
to dinner to-morrow--settin' about readin' all day Sunday. You come over
here and get somethin' to eat. But don't let Mitchell come. I had a
chance to hire him, and didn't do it, and now I haven't got any too much
use for him. The rascal deceived me. I didn't know he was half as good a
worker as he is. But you be sure to come," and leaning over, she added
in a whisper: "I've got the putties gal here you ever saw in your life."

"But that's not the question. Will you have anything to eat?"

"Better than you've had for many a day, sir, I can tell you that."

"I'll be here," he replied, getting up.

"Going?" said George. "I'll walk out a piece with you."

And talking knavishly of the old woman and the wives who pretended to be
so glad to see their husbands, they walked out into the hickory grove.
"The old lady whispered to you about a pretty girl," said George. "Might
just as well have shouted it. But she is a stunner! I hunted deer up in
the mountains once, and I never saw one, but I imagined what one ought
to look like, stepping around in the tangle; and when I saw that girl
out here in the woods to-day, I thought of the deer that I didn't see.
She's with a fussy woman, a doctor's wife, a sort of companion, I
believe. I should think so! Anybody'd like to be her companion. Well,
sir, I'm just getting on to the beauty of this place. I never saw such
grass, and between here and the station there's a thousand colors
growing out of the ground. Huh!" he grunted, "and I'm just beginning to
remember them. Old fellow, I guess the little talk we had to-night has
done me good. Yes; and what's the use in worrying? Things are going to
come out just as they are--they always do--and all the worry in the
world won't help matters. I think you are right about the Yankee."

"Children of fate, gathered from the four corners of the world, and
planted here," said Milford.

"I guess you are right. Well, I'm going back to town Monday and do a
little hustling. I've got to. There's no two ways about it. I'll turn
back here. Glad I met you again. So long."




CHAPTER VI.

THE "PEACH."


Milford was at the dinner table, talking to Blakemore, when a young
Norwegian woman entered the room. Blakemore nudged him. He looked up and
quickly looked down. He heard a woman say, "Sit here, Gunhild." He heard
her introduced as Miss Strand.

"Isn't she a peach?" Blakemore whispered.

"What did you say, George?" his wife asked, picking at him.

"I didn't say anything."

"What was it you whispered?"

"About a peach," the boy blurted. "I want a peach. Maw, give me a
peach."

She commanded him to hush; she raked the wayward flax out of his eyes,
and straightened him about in his chair. George shook with the abandoned
laughter of a man's gross mischief. His wife did not see anything to
laugh at; she thought it was impolite to whisper. Mr. Milford was not
laughing. No, Mr. Milford was not. His face wore a look of distress. He
shot sharp glances at the Norwegian girl. He heard her voice, her laugh.
A moment ago he draped Mrs. Blakemore with an overflow of sentimental
sympathy, but now his soul was as selfish as a hungry wolf. He had
talked with pleasant drollery. Now he offered nothing, and cut his
answers down to colorless brevity. Mrs. Stuvic came in and stood near
him. He was silent under her Gatling talk, chill-armored against her
fire. She said she would introduce him to the Norwegian girl, and he
flinched. He excused himself, got up, and went out. He walked as far as
the gate opening into the grove, stood there a moment, turned and came
back to the veranda.

"He was hit quick and hard," said George to his wife, as Mrs. Stuvic
left them. "She's a stunner, and she stunned him."

"George, please don't. She may remind him of some one, that's all. Why,
he's engaged, and is working----"

"That's all right. I said she hit him, and she did. Hit anybody."

"George!"

"Well, that's what I said. I can't help it."

"I despise her."

"Of course, but she's a stunner all the same. But come, now, don't look
that way. I'm not in love with her."

"I'm not so sure about it. You called her a 'peach'," she said, helping
the boy out of his chair, and telling him to run along.

It was too much to ask her not to suspect him, now that he was
determined not to be cast down by business troubles. She had buoyed him
with her sympathy, and it was natural that she should resent his notice
of the young woman, if not his good humor. But after a lowly wallow in
melancholy, a sudden rise of spirits is always viewed with suspicion by
a woman. It is one of the sentimental complexities, of her nature. She
looked at him with eyes that might never have been soft. No doubt there
was in George's breast a strong cast of the rascal. He was not a stepson
of old Adam, but a full blood. He knew, however, the proper recourse,
and he took it. He began to fret over his vanished business, and,
forgetting the "peach," she gave him her sympathy.

Milford, meanwhile, was slowly striding up and down the veranda. Mrs.
Stuvic came out, followed by the Norwegian.

"She didn't want to meet you, Bill, but here she is."

That was the introduction, an embarrassment that fed the old woman's
notion of fun. Milford stammered, and the young woman blushed.

"I did not say I did not want to meet you," she said, with a slight
accent, her unidiomatic English learned at school. "I would not say such
a thing. Mrs. Stuvic is full of jokes. She makes me laugh." And she did
laugh, strange echo from North Sea cliffs, the glow of the midnight in
her eyes, a thought that shot through the cowboy's mind as he gazed upon
her. Mrs. Stuvic went back, laughing, to the dining-room, having flushed
the young woman and turned the dark man red.

"She is a very funny woman," said the "peach," looking far across the
meadow toward the lake, her long lashes slowly rising and falling. She
was not beautiful; her features were not regular, but there was a
marvelous light in her countenance, and her bronze-tinted hair was as
rank in growth as the yellowing oats where the soil is rich and damp.
She looked to be just ripe, but was too lithe to be luscious. Mrs.
Blakemore said that her nose was slightly tipped up, a remark more
slanderous than true, and when taken to task by an oldish woman who had
no cause to be jealous, declared that it was not a matter of taste but a
question of observation. At any rate, she had come as a yellow flash,
and must soon fade.

Milford continued to gaze at her, wanting to say something, but not
knowing what to say. He heard the gruff laughter of the men in the
dining-room, joking with Mrs. Stuvic, and the romping of the children
coming out.

"I guess that's the best rabbit dog anywhere around here," he said, as a
flea-bitten cur trotted past. He had never seen the dog hunt rabbits. He
knew nothing about him except that he had been ordered to shoot him for
howling, the dreary night when old Lewson died.

"He does not look that he could run very fast," she replied, turning her
eyes upon the dog.

"Oh, yes, he runs like a streak. He outran a pack of wolves up in the
Wisconsin woods."

"Wolves!" she said, looking at him.

He knew that he was a liar, but he said "wolves." He asked if she had
ever seen any wolves. She had seen packs of coyotes on the prairie. "I
went to my uncle when I came to this country," she said. "He lived away
in the West. I stayed there two years, and then I came with him to
Chicago. I did not like it so far off. The wind was always blowing
lonesome in the night, and I thought of my old home where the grass
fringed the edge of the cliff."

"Did you speak English before you came to this country?"

"I could read it, and I did read much--old tales of fierce fights on the
sea."

"How long do you expect to stay out here?"

"I am with Mrs. Goodwin, and when she says go, I go. She is very kind to
me."

Mrs. Goodwin came out, calling "Gunhild." She was tall, with grayish
hair, and on the stage might have played the part of a duchess. Her
husband's affairs were prosperous, and she devoted herself to the
discovery of genius. She had found a young girl with a marvelous voice,
and had educated her into a common-rate singer, put her in opera, and
the critics scorched her. The discoverer swallowed a lump of
disappointment, and turned about to find another genius. In an obscure
corner of a newspaper, she found a gem in verse, the soul-spurt of a
young man. She sought him out, and paid for the printing of a volume of
verses. The critics scoffed him, and she swallowed another lump. One of
her assistant discoverers brought to her a pencil sketch of a buffalo,
and this led to the finding of Gunhild Strand. The girl was modest. She
disclaimed genius, but she was sent to the Art Institute; she would
climb the mountain. But she got no higher than the foot-hills. "I did
not have any confidence in myself," the girl declared. "And now I must
work for you to pay you for what has been spent." This was surely a
proof that she had no genius, but it was an evidence of gratitude, a
rarer quality, and Mrs. Goodwin was pleased. "You shall be my
companion," she said, "Your society will more than repay me. You must
not refuse. I set my heart upon it."

Milford was introduced, and the stately woman threw her searchlight upon
him. Here might be another genius.

"They tell me, Mr. Milford, that you are a man of great industry."

"They might have told you, madam, that I am a great fool."

Ha! a gleam of true light. She warmed toward him. She thought of Burns
plowing up a mouse. But she was skeptical of poets. They have a contempt
for their patrons if their wares do not sell.

"You credit them with too shrewd a discovery," she replied.

"I simply give them credit for ordinary eyesight, madam."

"You prove the contrary." She smiled upon him. "They tell me that you
came like a mist, out of the mysterious woods."

"A fog from the marsh," he replied, laughing; and the "peach" laughed,
too--more music from the North Sea. He saw the pink of her arm through
the gauze of her sleeve. Mrs. Goodwin thought that he knew nothing about
women, and she was right, but, as a rule, if rule can be applied, a
woman thinks this of a man when, indeed, he has mastered innocent
hearts to make wantons of them.

"Where is your field?" the discoverer inquired.

"Over yonder, where the sun is hottest."

"And your house?"

"Over on the hill, yonder, where the wind will blow coldest in winter."

Surely, he had a volume of verse hidden under the old clothes in his
trunk. She could have wished that he was even an inventor. She shuddered
at the thought of another attempt to set up a shaft to American letters.
The jovial doctor had shaken his fat sides at her. Suddenly she was
inspired with forethought. She asked him if he had ever written any
verse. He said that once he had been tempted to toss a firebrand into an
enemy's wheat-rick, but had never ruined a sheet with measured lines.
She saw that he had caught the spirit of the paragrapher's fling. So
this fear was put aside; still, he must be a genius of some sort--an
inventor, perhaps. She asked if he had ever invented anything, and he
answered, "Yes, a lie." This stimulated her interest in him. He was so
frank, so refreshing. She had heard that a laborer could be quaintly
entertaining. She contrasted him with the numerous men of her
acquaintance, men whose sentences were as dried herbs, the sap and the
fragrance gone. She was weary of the doctor's shop-talk, the
impoverished blood of conversation, the dislocated joint of utterance.
She would have welcomed track talk with a race-horse starter. And the
bluntness of this man from the hillside was invigorating. His words
were not dry herbs, but fresh pennyroyal, sharp with scent. Milford
smiled at her, wishing that she were locked among her husband's jars of
pickled atrocities. He wanted to talk silliness with the girl.

The other boarders came out, George and his wife among them. George
handed Milford a cigar, telling him to light it,--that the ladies did
not object to smoking.

"You haven't asked them," said his wife.

"Well, I know they don't."

"There, don't you see? Mrs. Dorch is moving off."

George grinned. "Her husband is a great smoker, and she don't want to be
reminded of home," he said.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she replied.

"I can't afford it. I'm too much loser."

Mrs. Goodwin asked Gunhild to walk with her. She looked at Milford, but
he lost his nerve and did not offer to go with them.

"That was a bid," said George. His wife reprimanded him. "It is a wonder
you didn't offer to go," she declared. "But let us take a walk," she
added.

"Too soon after eating. Believe I'll go up and take a snooze," he said.

A mother, worn out with hot nights of worrying over the ills of a
teething child, sat rocking the little one. Bobbie stood looking on with
the critical eye of a boy. "A baby sticks out his tongue when you wipe
his face with a wet rag," he said, and George snorted. "What a boy
don't see ain't worth seeing," he said. The boy's mother reached out,
drew him to her, and attempted to take from his clenched hands a piece
of castiron, a rusty key, and a hog's tooth. "Throw those nasty things
away."

"Let him keep his tools," said George. "A boy can't work without tools."
He clung to the implements of his trade. She turned him about and set him
adrift. "Mr. Milford," she said, "you don't seem to be quite yourself
this afternoon. You aren't enjoying yourself."

He appeared surprised that she should think so. If he were not enjoying
himself it was news to him, deserving of a big headline. She saw his eye
searching the woods; she thought of the young woman who sighed out her
breath at a window far away, waiting for him to hoe out a place for her.
The wreath that she had hung upon him began to wither. After all, he was
but a man with a shifting soul, and she did not believe that his talk
had morally helped her husband. George was nodding. She shook him, and
he looked up quickly, as if he expected a railway conductor to tell him
that he was to get off there.

"What makes you so stupid?"

"The beastly weather. Well, I'm going up."

She sat there rocking herself, with a knife in her bosom for the man who
sat near, the deceitful laborer. He was, after all, nothing but a hired
man. What could she have expected of him? She was foolish to believe
that there was anything spiritual about him. She would give him a dig.

"The young woman whom you were pleased to call a 'peach'----"

"I didn't call her a 'peach'."

"No matter. The young woman who has been called a 'peach,' with a
bouquet of man's promises perfuming her heart, thinks, no doubt, that he
is longing to see her again, when, perhaps, he has forgotten her, or
remembers her only as a joke. Those foreign girls are so simple." She
looked at him with her drooping eyes. Her fancy rewarded her with the
belief that there was a sudden mixture of red in the brown of his face.

"Don't you think she's handsome?" she asked, after waiting for him to
speak.

"No," he answered, glad to disappoint her.

"Oh, I do. Don't you, really?"

"Well, she's not ugly."

"But don't you think she's handsome?"

"Yes," he said, and looked as if he wanted to add: "Now what are you
going to do about it?"

"I knew you did. Men have such queer tastes. Well, I don't think she's a
bit handsome. It's no trick at all to keep the eyes wide open; and any
woman can let her hair go to seed. Of course, I ought not to say
anything, but I should think that you would hold a brighter picture of
some one who is waiting--but what am I saying? How warm it is! We are
surely going to have rain."

She heard the boy bawling out in the orchard. She ran to him. Milford
stalked off toward home. "She's a little fool," he thought, and
dismissed her. In the road he met the "discoverer" and the "peach,"
decked with purple flowers. He waited for them to show a disposition to
halt. They did not, so he bowed and passed them by. On the knoll in the
oat field he turned and looked back. On the veranda he saw a purple
glimmer. Was the girl waving flowers at him? He turned toward home, with
the music of her accent in his heart. The place was deserted. The hired
man was out among the women, poverty once bitten, looking for another
bite. Milford stretched himself out upon the grass under the walnut
tree. Grimly, he compared himself with a man thrown from a horse, not
knowing yet whether or not he was hurt. He had the plainsman's sense of
humor, and he laughed at himself. "No matter which way I turn, I'm
generally up against it," he said, and he could hear his words whispered
up among the leaves of the tree. The earth seemed to throb beneath him.
The heat made the whole world pant. He dozed, and dreamed that he saw
violets rained from a purple cloud.




CHAPTER VII.

THE PROFESSOR.


Milford was aroused from his dozing by some one walking up and down the
veranda. "Don't let me disturb you," a cheery voice cried out, when he
got up. "I dropped over to pay you a visit, and finding you asleep,
thought I would wait till you reached the end of your nap. And I am
sorry if I have disturbed you." He held out his hand as Milford came
within reach, and in the heartiest manner said that his name was
Professor Dolihide. "I suppose you heard that I moved into your
neighborhood. Yes, sir, I have lived near you some ten days or more--a
longtime to live anywhere during these grinding times, sir."

Milford had heard that Professor Dolihide had moved into an old house
that had long stood deserted. He shook hands on suspicion, and then, on
better acquaintance, he brought out two chairs, planted the Professor in
one, sat down himself, and said he hoped that his visitor found the new
home pleasant. The Professor closed his eyes till he looked through
narrow cracks. "Well, as to that, I must say that I never expect to find
another pleasant home. It is one's occupation abroad that makes the home
pleasant, and when one has been compelled against his liking to change
his trade, the home suffers. But I must explain," he said, opening his
eyes and rubbing his hands together. "For years, I held the chair of
English literature in a Kansas college. My salary was small, but I was
happy, and my family had an exalted respect for me, as a learned man.
But now I keep books at a planing-mill up here at Lake Villa, and am
entitled to no respect whatever, not because I am not respectable, but
for the reason that I have failed."

He came as a fresh breeze, and Milford enjoyed him. He possessed a sort
of comical dignity. His eyes were lamp-dimmed. His beard was thin and
red.

"Failed," he repeated, "not on the account of incompetence, mind you,
but traceable, I may say, to a changed condition of the times. I had
been led to believe that my work was giving entire satisfaction. My
scope was not broad, it is true, but the ground was thoroughly tilled.
But a difference arose in the board of supervisors. And it was decided
that I was not idiomatic enough in my treatment of our mother tongue.
They argued that English is progressive. I did not doubt that, but I
said that slang was not true progress. They cited an extract from a
speech delivered by the president of an Eastern grove of learning, in
which he said that the purist was as dead as stagnant water. I was
pleased to be called a purist, sir. I had striven to maintain that
position; but it did not compensate me for the loss of my living. After
that, I taught in a common school, but they said I was wanting in
discipline. Then I drifted about, and now here I am, bookkeeper at a
planing-mill. But I have a hope that it will all come right, and I
could exist fairly, but my wife and my daughter do not share my hope. I
trust I do not shock you when I affirm that a woman has a contempt for
the hope of a man. She is a materialist; she wants immediate results,
and all that keeps her from being a gambler is the fear of losing. I
trust I have not shocked you."

He stroked his thin beard to a point, and twisted it. He cocked his
head, and looked at Milford as if he expected a weighty decision
concerning an important matter. His clothes were well-kept relics, but
his dignity came out fresh, as if it had been newly dusted. What a
tenderfoot he would have been in a mining camp; what a guy at a variety
show! Milford agreed that his views were no doubt correct. The man was
an unconscious joke, and argument would spoil him.

"I thank you," said the Professor. "Such ready and cheerful agreement is
rarely found, except between two intelligent men, and the admission of a
third man of equal intelligence would greatly lessen the chances. And
now I may tell you that my wife and daughter objected to my calling,
affirming, as they had a right to do, that it was your place to call on
me, as I was the newer comer. And I said, 'Madam, there are no women in
this case, so, therefore, we have no need to be finical and unnatural.'"
He cleared his throat, and cocked his head. The sharp face of his host
looked serious, but there was a titter in his breast.

"Of course," said the Professor, "one may have ever so hairy an ear, and
yet the gossip of the neighborhood will force its way in. I have heard
much concerning you. I heard that they did not understand you, and then
I said to myself that you must be a man worth knowing."

"Then I must be rare," said Milford.

"Ah, sharp; that is sharp, sir. A dignified contempt for man may not
belong to the text of the virtues, but it is one of the pictures that
brightens the page. I beg pardon for even the appearance of
infringement, but do you expect to reside here permanently?"

"No, I have stopped to stay over night, and to chop wood for breakfast."

"A judicious answer, sir; a shrewd statement. They told me that you were
strangely guarded in speech, that you suffered yourself to seem dull
rather than to trip off a waste of words. That is true wisdom, not,
indeed, to have nothing to say, but keeping the something that fain
would fly forth. I take it that you came from the city to these parts."

"Yes, directly. But I was there only a short time."

"A stranger, indeed. Have you ever chanced to live in Kansas?"

"I've broken out there in spots."

"Ha! an idiomatic answer. I see that you belong to the new school.
Perhaps it is better, but I am too old to learn. Did you ever happen to
break out in a spot called Grayson?"

"I passed through there on my way to break out somewhere else."

"You did? That was my town, sir--a seat of learning made famous by a
bank robbery. When our city was ten years old, I read a paper at the
celebration. Were you ever engaged in any educational work?"

"Yes, one of the greatest. I sold a cook-book."

"Shrewd; yes, sharp. From what I heard, I thought that you would be
worth knowing. I have met your landlady, a most impressive woman, but
with a vulgar contempt for my profession. She said that it was a good
thing that I had left off fooling and at last got down to work. And I
think that this has precluded any relationship between her and my wife.
She can't stand a reference, not that kind of a reference, to my
decline. In this regard, women haven't so much virtue as a man
possesses. They can not piece a torn quilt with an aphorism. In what
part of the country have your labors been mostly confined?"

"Mostly between here and sunset."

"More poetic than sharp," said the Professor, clearing his throat. "May
I trouble you for a drink of water?"

Milford drew water from the well near the walnut tree, and in the
kitchen dipper conveyed a quart of it to the Professor, who drank with
the thirst of a toper and the suck of a horse. "I am sufficiently
watered," he said, bowing and returning the dipper to Milford, who threw
it out upon the grass where the hired man could find it. "What a
delightful way to live!" said the Professor. "You throw things about as
you please, and there is no one to complain. You may leave your pipe
anywhere, and probably find it again; you let hunger, instead of time,
summon you to eat. I trust I do not shock you when I say that Adam
enjoyed his greatest freedom before the appearance of Eve."

Milford said that he was not shocked, and the Professor thanked him. It
was pleasant to meet a philosopher, a man who did not foolishly feel
called upon in resentment to declare, that his mother was a woman. A
shrewder man than Milford might have inferred that the Professor had
been nagged by his wife through the tedium of a Sunday forenoon.
Work-day annoyances fester on Sunday. In the country, when a man has, on
a Sunday, killed the chickens for dinner, salted the sheep in the
pasture, and returned to the house, he is in the way; everything he does
is wrong; everything he leaves undone is worse. He is kept on the
ducking verge of a constant dodge.

"No man has more respect for a woman than I have," said the Professor,
"but I am forced to admit that she is a constant experiment. Nature
herself does not as yet know what to make of her. One moment she is a
joy, and the next she is searching for a man's weak spots, like a
disease. I think that it was some such expression, spoken in a
sententious mood, that helped to oust me from the easy chair of
congenial letters." A clock struck the hour of five. The Professor
seemed surprised at the swift rush of time. "Well, I must take my
leave," said he, getting up and standing with his hands resting on the
back of the chair. "Ah, and would you mind walking over to my home with
me?"

The lingering dawn of Milford's suspicions was now streaked with gray.
"I'd like to, but the hired man's gone out, and I've got to do the
chores about the place."

"But perhaps I may return with you and assist you. I am an apt hand."

"No, thank you, not to-day; some other time."

A shade of disappointment fell upon him and darkened his dignity. "I am
sorry," he said. "I had hoped to know you better, and we were making
such fair progress. It is not often that I get along so well with a new
acquaintance." He brightened suddenly, as if the reserve forces of his
mind had been brought up. "Ah, would you object to my helping you with
your work, and then taking a bachelor's supper with you?"

"That's all right--fits me like a glove," said Milford.

"Good!" cried the Professor. "Idiomatic, and divested of all shrewdness.
Now, what shall we do first?"

"I'll hatch up a bite to eat, and then we'll feed the stock. You sit
here."

He protested against a decree that might make a lazy guest of him, but
he yielded, and sat down to hum a tune of contentment, pliant heart
postponing trouble, procrastinator of annoyances. It did not take
Milford long to prepare the meal, crisp strips of bacon, bread, and
coffee boiled in a tin pail. The host said that it was but ranch fare.
The guest rubbed his hands together, and declared that freedom was a
pudding's sweetest sauce. He had read of many great feasts, in the days
of the barons, when bulls were roasted whole, of the wild boar's head
served upon the golden platter of the king, but to him there was one
banquet mellower with sentiment than all the rest--General Marion and
the British officer in the forest, with a pile of roasted sweet potatoes
on a log. He sipped the dreggy coffee as if it were the mulled wine of a
New Year's night. He talked loudly as if he enjoyed the resonant freedom
of his own voice. He laughed in the present, and then was silent as a
cool shadow of the future fell upon him. But he shifted from under the
shadow, and went on with his talk, in florid congratulation of his host,
his ease, his independence. There were no soft cushions, but there was
rough repose, the undisturbed rest of honest weariness. Milford's
judgment of men told him that this man had ever been a laughing-stock,
afflicted as he was with a certain incompetent refinement of mind. But,
in the varied society of life, how important is the office of such a
failure! A shiftless man sometimes makes shiftless men more contented,
softening enmities against life, and quieting clamors against
discriminating nature. Here was a man who really was worth knowing, and
the cowboy gratefully accepted him. He opened up his Noah's Ark of
adventures, and entertained the man-child. He shoved back from the
table, and sang a roaring song of a plainsman who died for love. He
recited a poem by Antrobus, the herdsman's sneer of abandoned
recklessness--"Like a Centaur, he speeds where the wild bull feeds." The
Professor clapped his hands. He swore that no Eastcheap could afford a
more delicious entertainment. Milford brought cider from the cellar,
beading in a brown, earthen ewer, and the Professor snapped his eyes.
"Where the wild bull feeds," he laughed, passing his cup for more. They
shook hands, that they held in common so many old songs, lines familiar
to our grandmothers--"Come, dearest, the daylight hath gone;" "The
tiger's cub I'd bind with a chain." They sang till the daylight was
gone, and then went forth laughingly to feed the stock. But the
Professor left off his part of the singing before the work was
completed. The shadow of the future had again fallen upon him, and he
could not shift from under it.

"Look here," he said, "you must go home with me. Do you understand?"

"I think I do, and I'll go anywhere with you."

"Idiomatic, and accommodating. Put her there!" he cried, striking hands
with Milford. "Ha! how is that for idiom? Stay by me, gentle keeper, my
soul is heavy, and I fain would--would duck." He leaned against the barn
door and shook. Milford clapped him on the shoulder, and shook with him.

Across a field, through a wood and along a grassy slope, they went,
toward the Professor's home, passing a house which schoolboys said was
haunted. The Professor talked philosophy. He had a religious theory,
newly picked up on the way: If we die suddenly at night, dreaming a
sweet dream, we continue the dream throughout eternity--heaven. If we
die dreaming a troubled dream, we go on dreaming it after death--hell.
Moral, then let us strive to live conducively to pleasant dreams.
Milford agreed that, as a theory, it was good enough. Nearly anything
was good enough for a theory. But wise men had summed up the future, and
had died trusting in their creed. The Professor hung back at the word
future. The future was now too near to be discussed as a speculation. He
saw it shining through the window of his house. He heard it in the
slamming of a door.

"Well, here we are," he said, unwinding a chain from about a post, and
opening a gate. "Step in. We will sit on the veranda--cooler than in the
house."

The door opened, and a large woman stepped out upon the veranda. Seeing
who came, she uttered one of anger's unspellable words, a snort. She was
a good woman, no doubt, but she was of the class who, in the old days,
lent virtue to the ducking stool. In short, she was one who deemed
herself the most abused of all earthly creatures, a scold. Pretending
not to see her husband, she asked Milford what he wanted.

"Mrs. Dolihide," said the Professor, "this is my very dear friend, Mr.
Milford, our neighbor, and a man who has lived over most of the ground
between here and sunset."

"Oh, is that you? Really, I didn't expect to see you again. It's a
pretty time to come poking home now, when you were to be here to go to
church with us. Oh, you needn't blink your eyes, having us get ready and
set here and wait and wait."

"Mad and dressed up," muttered the Professor. "What could be more
pitiable? Don't go," he whispered to Milford. "I pray thee, gentle
keeper, stay by me. Idiomatically, I am half shot."

"Let me go," said Milford.

"Not on your idiomatic life," muttered the Professor. "Mother, I am very
sorry that I didn't get here in time to accompany you and my daughter to
the humble house of the Lord. But we may not be too late now to catch
the welcome end of a long sermon."

A voice came from within the house. "Is that pa?"

"Yes," the Professor's wife replied, "and he's as drunk as a fool."

"Oh, for pity sake! How dreadful, how humiliating to us! But he never
thinks of us." An inner door slammed.

Milford strove to pull away. The Professor clung to him. "It is not
fear," he said. "It is a sort of awe that the sex inspires. But there is
a time for boldness. Madam, you have told your daughter that I am drunk.
I am here to refute that statement. I am not drunk. My friend is not
drunk. We drank some cider, sinuous with age, but we are not drunk. He
is a man of high moral character, and I breathe a respect for
letters----"

"Your breath would scorch a feather right now," she snapped, looking at
him with contempt, her hands on her hips.

"I deny that statement, also. I am here to refute it. I have been
merrier than is my wont; we have shaken warm hands over a stone jug,
but nobody's character was assailed. And I had thought, in view of the
fact that I present a neighbor, you would treat me with a little more
courtesy."

"You didn't know me."

"It appears not, madam. A man may think that he knows his wife to-day,
but to-morrow there appears in her system the symptoms of a strange
disease. But, if you will forgive me," he added, slowly advancing,
"forgive a memory for slipping up in a slippery place, I will promise
that there shall be no recurrence of the fall. Mrs. Dolihide, Mr.
Milford."

Milford roared with laughter. He broke loose from the Professor, and
fled through the gate, and he did not check his flight till he was far
down the road, and then he halted to laugh again.

Since early evening, the sky had been overcast, and drops of rain began
to fall. Milford hastened onward. In the woods, far across a willow
flat, the wind blew hard, and the rain lashed the leaves. He turned
aside into the haunted house. All the doors were open. He went to the
back door and stood looking out at the coming of the rain. A noise
quickened his blood, and looking about he saw a vision of white in the
front door.

"Who is that?"

A slight cry, a swaying of the vision, a voice replying: "Oh, I did not
know there was any one in here. I have stopped in out of the rain."

And now his blood jumped. "Is that you, Miss Strand?"

"Oh, yes, but I do not know you. Oh, is it Mr. Milford? How strange! But
you do not live here?"

"No, I've simply dodged in out of the wet. It's pouring down."

"Yes, the clouds were a long time here, but the rain was quick. I went
far over after a laundress. Mrs. Stuvic would have sent me in the buggy,
but I wanted to walk; and now I shall be made sorry."

"I hope not. Let me see if I can't make it more comfortable for you."

He struck a match, and looked about. The room was bare. In places the
floor was broken. She said, with a laugh, that she would not mind it so
much but for the dark.

"I hope you have many matches," she said.

"I haven't, but I can remedy it. Here is an old smudge pan. I'll build a
fire in it."

He broke up a piece of board, split fine pieces with his knife, tore up
a letter, and made a fire in the pan. In a shed-room he found a bench,
dusted it, and brought it in for her. She sat down, and he stood looking
at the play of the shadows and the light on her hair. The spirit of the
cider was gone. He wondered why he had run down the road, laughing. He
got down on his knees to feed the fire. It was a trick; it was stealing
an attitude to pay a homage.

"Mrs. Goodwin will be very much worried," she said. "I wish that I did
not come. It was so much further than they said. I left when the sun was
down. Now it is late, and I walked all the time."

"I will run over there and bring the buggy for you."

"Oh, no, no. The rain pours too much. When it is done I will go with
you. The road is hard. There will be not much mud. We found many flowers
in the woods to-day."

"I saw you with an armful."

"Did you see me wave at you when you stand on the high place in the
oats?"

"I did, but I was almost afraid to believe it."

"Almost afraid? Why, what harm? There is no harm to wave a flower. Now
it rains easier. It will soon quit."

Never did a promised clearing of the sky so mock a man. He mended the
fire, for, in his enraptured gazing, he had neglected it. He got up and
looked out, to see a glimmer of the threatening moon and a star peeping
from a nest of glinted cloud-wool. He returned and knelt near the
fire-pan.

"Is it clearing away?" she asked.

"It's going to pour down."

"But it is getting lighter."

"I know, but another cloud is coming."

"I may get home before the new rain falls."

"No, I hear it in the woods off yonder."

"If I run I may get to a house where some one lives."

"The rain will catch you. A wind is behind it."

"I don't hear the wind."

"It is a low wind, but it will soon be high."

"The smoke hurts my eyes. You have put on too much wood at once."

"And we must stay till it burns out to keep the house from catching
fire."

"Oh, the moon is out. I must go now."

"I will go with you."

"Take me to the straight road, and then I will go alone."

He took the pan between two sticks, and threw it far out upon the wet
grass. A flock of sheep pattered by. "Sheep always run past a haunted
house," he said, leading her to the road.

"Is this place haunted?" she asked, looking back.

"Yes, by a young man who drowned himself in the lake."

"Why did he drown himself?"

"On account of a young woman who lived here."

She laughed at the cowboy's impromptu lie. "He was foolish to drown
himself. Let us walk fast now. Mrs. Goodwin will be much afraid for me.
Can you not walk faster?"

When they reached the corners, where a broad road crossed their path,
she turned to him and said: "I know where I am now. This is my road, and
I am not far. I thank you ever so much, and I bid you good-night." She
fled swiftly down the road, and he stood there long after she had faded
from sight.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE GOSSIPERS.


The low place where Milford hoed the young corn was not far from Mrs.
Stuvic's, and more than once during the forenoon he went to the top of
the rise and looked toward the house. He saw George out in the road,
teaching his wife to ride a wheel, saw the Dutch girl driving the
turkeys out of the garden, heard the old woman shout for the pony-cart
to take her to the town of Waukegan, but saw nothing of the young woman
who had filled his sleep with dreams. He returned to his work, chopping
the stubborn clods, the heat growing fiercer with the approach of noon,
the wet land steaming. Of a sudden, he cursed his hoe, and threw it from
him. "But I've got to do it," he said, and resumed his labor. George
came across the field.

"Well, sir," said he, "I didn't go back to town this morning as I laid
out to do, and now I'm like a fish out of water. Just as I got ready to
go, my wife misunderstood something I said, and then it was all off. A
man's a fool to leave his wife with a misunderstanding in her head.
Everything ought to be smoothed over before he goes. One morning, not
long ago, I scolded the boy at the breakfast table, and he was crying
when I left the house. I got on the car and tried to read a newspaper,
but couldn't. And, sir, I hopped off the car, took another one back,
and made it up with him. He had forgotten all about it, but I hadn't. We
were all pretty well stirred up over the 'peach' last night. Got caught
out in the rain, and we thought the doctor's wife would have a fit. And
at the breakfast table this morning, she gave an account of herself. Oh,
she's straightforward. She said you entertained her with a fire."

"A flash in the pan," said Milford.

"Well, I don't know as to that, for when there's a flash in the pan
there's no report, but I guess you'll hear report enough when you meet
those women over at the house. They've made a love affair out of
it--they say you're treating a certain young woman shamefully. Oh,
they've got it all fixed up to suit themselves. They told the 'peach'
you were engaged, and that she's wrong to encourage you."

"The devil they did!" Milford shouted. "What right have they got to
presume----"

"It's not presuming on the part of a woman, my dear fellow; it's a
natural conclusion. The girl couldn't say a thing. She stammered, and
finally she stormed. She said it was nothing to her if you were engaged
to a thousand women. She threatened to leave, and then the women
apologized. And about that time I decided that I wouldn't go to town
to-day."

"I'll go over there," said Milford.

"No, don't do anything of the sort, not while you're mad. It's all right
now."

"No, it's not all right, but I want to tell you that I'll make it all
right."

"Now, don't go on getting hot. The thing was a joke, and is all smoothed
over. It arose out of pity for the other young woman."

"Confound it! there isn't any other woman."

"That's all right; that's what I told them. No other woman, of course
not. There never is. Well, I'll be off. I go at twelve forty-five."

George trudged off over the clods, and Milford stood looking after him,
a dark scowl on his face. Those miserable women, not half so innocent as
blanketed squaws drooling about a camp-fire. And that slim Mrs.
Blakemore, lithe as a viper, had inspired it all. How could a refined
woman be so full of the devil's poisonous juice? In his humble way, he
had tried to help her out of a trouble. Tired, and with every bone
aching, he had fought off sleep to make good his word with her. Wasp!
she had stung him. It was nearly noon, and he went to the house to make
fat meat hiss in a hot pan. He sat brooding over the table when Mitchell
came in. "Are you stalled in sight of the stable?" the hired man asked,
seeing that Milford had not begun to eat.

"I'm down to the hub in a rut."

"Prize out," said Mitchell, sitting down.

"That's right, I guess; only thing I can do. Shove that hog down this
way. How are you getting along over there?"

"Be done by night. Rain put the ground in pretty good fix. You about
done?"

"Yes. I'll plow this afternoon."

"Say, Bill, what are divorces worth?"

"Divorces? I never bought one."

"Well, it looks to me like I ought to get one pretty cheap under the
circumstances. Wife ran away."

"Yes, they ought to give you a good discount. Don't you think you'd
better get two while you're at it? You might need another one after a
while."

"No, I guess one'll be about enough."

"Generally, when a man is looking for a divorce, he wants to marry
again. Have you got any such notion?"

"Well, I know a woman that would make a man a mighty good livin'. She
ain't putty; she's as freckled as a turkey egg, but she's a hustler from
'way back. I could bring her here. You could board with us. She's a
rattlin' cook; and she's got land. What do you say?"

"I say you are a scoundrel?"

"Oh, that's all right; I'm a man. But I don't see anythin' wrong in it.
She's a woman, and if it ain't right for a woman to keep house, then I
don't know what it is right for her to do. She wants to marry, and I
don't see that anybody is kickin' up much dust around her. What do you
say?"

"I told you what I said."

"Yes, you said I was a scoundrel, and there hain't been any argument
raised on that p'int. What do you say about her comin'?"

"She'll not come while I'm here; I'll tell you that."

"That's all you need to tell me. I'm a good scuffler, but I know when
I'm flung down. You didn't see the Professor's daughter when you was
over there, did you?"

"Is she the woman?"

"That I'm thinkin' of marryin'? Not much! Willie bows to her and passes
on. She reminds me of a blue heron, and the wind whistles when she
passes."

"How did you happen to mention her?"

"Oh, she flew into my head--so different from my woman. I know'd the
Professor when he tried to keep boarders over near Antioch. Talked his
house empty. Took up a tramp that had book sense, and kept him till the
old woman drove him off. It took more than a hint to get rid of him. She
throw'd his wallet and stick out into the road. He picked 'em up, and
went back into the house to argy Scripture with the Professor. Then she
flew at him with a fire-shovel, and he hulled out. What makes you so
glum on women, Bill?"

"What makes a dog so glum on cats?"

"There must be somethin' wrong, sure enough, when you put it that way.
What's wrong?"

"Oh, they've raised hell over at the house."

"The women have? Well, that's their business, Bill; that's their trade."

"I guess you're right," Milford replied, with a laugh. He got up, took
down his pipe, and went out for a half-hour's smoke on the grass, in the
shade of the walnut tree. The smoke soothed him. Tobacco may be a great
physical enemy, he argued, but a briar-root pipe is the most trustworthy
timber for president of a peace society. Why are women so unforgiving?
Because they do not smoke. Why was James the First a pedantic ass?
Because he wrote a pamphlet against tobacco. Milford lay back in a
forgiving muse. Perhaps, after all, the slim woman had not been so much
at fault. She had too much sympathy to be very strong, and it is manly
to forgive a woman's weakness; it is, at least, manly to acknowledge to
ourselves that we do. It is also manly to hold a slight grudge as a
warning against a recurrence of the offense. Milford would hold a
grudge, and show it by sulking. He would keep himself apart from them
during the week, and on Sunday he would walk high-headed past the house.
This was a sound and respectable resolution, and he smiled upon his own
resources. It took occasion to inspire a plan. And the woman who did not
care whether he were engaged to a thousand women? He would--of course,
he would speak to her, but with distinct reserve. However, some time
must pass before he would give any of them a chance to speak to him.

A boy came up through the orchard and halted at the garden fence.
Milford asked him what was wanted. "They are going to have some music
over at Mrs. Stuvic's to-night, and they told me to come over and tell
you to be sure and come."




CHAPTER IX.

IN THE OLD WOMAN'S PARLOR.


It was clearly an insult to ask him to come. They had slandered him, and
now they wanted him at their entertainment. He told the boy to tell them
that he would not be there. He plowed during the afternoon, with never a
look toward the house when he turned at the end of a row. He hoped that
they expected him; he would smack his lips over the vicious joy of
disappointing them. The invitation had, no doubt, come from Mrs.
Blakemore; Miss Strand could have had no hand in it. She did not care
enough for him to wish for his company. But it made no difference who
did the inviting, he would not go. He went home tired, and was sleepy at
the supper table. He took down his pipe and lighted it. Mitchell talked
about the woman whose freckles were as gold to him. He had found a
valuable rod and reel in the rushes; he would sell them and buy a
divorce.

"If you take my advice," said Milford, "you'll let the women alone."

"But a feller that's in love can't take advice."

"Love!" Milford sneered. "You in love?"

"That's what. Fell in love about a quarter to two, last Sunday was a
week. What are you doin' with that boiled shirt lyin' out there? Goin'
to put it on?"

"I don't know. Is there any water in the rain barrel?"

"Ought to be if it hain't leaked out; poured in there last night. Goin'
to take a bath?"

"Don't suppose I want to drink out of the rain barrel, do you?"

"Didn't know; no tellin' much what a feller'll do. But it hits me that
when a man begins to take baths he's sorter in love himself, now that
we're on that subject."

"Well, I don't have to get a divorce."

"That don't sound like you, Bill. Don't believe I'd gouge you that way."

Milford's dark countenance flushed; he made a noise in his throat. He
held out his hand, and in a gentle voice said: "I beg your pardon.
Shake."

"You've said enough," Mitchell replied, shaking hands with him. "All
that a son of old Illinois needs is that sort of play, and he's done.
Goin' somewhere to-night?"

"No; thought I'd put on clean clothes and walk about in the woods."

He dressed himself and walked down by the lake. He heard the merry
splashings of moonlight bathers, the hound-like baying of the bull
frogs, far away in the rushes. He picked his way over a barbed-wire
fence, and went into the thick woods where the close air still held the
heat of the day. He came out into the road a quarter of a mile below
Mrs. Stuvic's house. It was too dark to go back through the woods; there
were numerous stumps, tangled vines, and the keen briar of the wild
gooseberry. The grass field further along was drenched with dew. He
would pass the house and take the road through the hickory grove. As he
drew near, he heard the piano. It reminded him of an old box that had
been hauled over the mountains and set up in a mining camp. The red
lantern swung from the eaves of the veranda. Some one began to sing, and
he halted at the gate. Why make an outcast of himself? he mused. He went
into the yard, and stood there. Who was he, to be sulking? What right
had he, a laborer, to expect anything? They had made him a gift of their
attention. In the city, they would not have noticed him. He would go in,
a nobody, and pick up a crumb of entertainment. The door stood open.
Mrs. Blakemore saw him. She came out with a smile.

"Oh, I thought you would come if you could," she said. "So kind of you.
Come in."

The first person whom he saw upon entering the room was the Professor,
in earnest conversation with the "discoverer." He was telling her of the
pleasure it would give him to have her meet his wife. They would strike
up a friendship, both being patronesses of art and intellect. But his
wife was a great home-body. She rarely went out; she was contented to
have him represent her with his praises. And he thought that it was
pardonable in a man to praise his wife. He offered no apology for it.
Romance had not deserted his fireside. A fresh bow of blue ribbon was
ever at the throat of his married life. At this moment he spied Milford,
and blustered up to greet him. It was not enough to say that he was
pleased; he was delighted. He grasped Milford's hand and shook it
warmly. He spoke of Milford's charming visit to his home; it was an
honor that his family keenly appreciated. "Oh, you are acquainted with
Mrs. Goodwin. Yes, I remember now, you paid her a deserved compliment.
He spoke of your great gifts, madam."

Gunhild was not in the room. Footsteps came down the passage-way, and
Milford's eyes flew to the floor. Some one at the piano loosened a dam,
and let flow a merry rivulet, and into the room danced Mrs. Stuvic, her
head high, and her back as straight as an ironing board. The children
shrieked with laughter, and the men and women clapped their hands. She
was oblivious to applause. She was looking far back upon a hewed log
floor, bright faces about a great fireplace, and a fiddler in the
corner, beneath a string of dried pumpkin, hanging from a rafter. The
rillet of music ran out.

"Yes, you bet!" she said, with tears in her eyes. "Many and many a time,
Bill; and all night long, with the snow three feet outside, and the
wolves howlin' in the woods. Yes, you bet! Who is this?"

Mrs. Goodwin introduced the Professor. He hopped to one side, back
again, bowed, and expressed his great pleasure. "Dolihide," said Mrs.
Stuvic. "I'd forget that name even if it was my own. But my, what names
they do fish up these days! Oh, let me see, you've moved over to the
old Pruitt place. Yes, I saw your wife at Lake Villa. Big fat woman. And
I've met you before."

The Professor bowed. "Not lean, madam; not lean, but not fat. She
couldn't dance as you do, but not fat, madam."

"No, you bet she couldn't," said Mrs. Stuvic. "And there ain't many that
can. Strike up a tune there, and, Bill, you come out here and dance with
me."

"Oh, yes, do!" Mrs. Blakemore cried.

Milford not only declined; he "bucked." He was not to be caught in such
a trap. He might be made to look ridiculous, but not with his willing
assistance. He might have nerve enough to break wild horses, he said,
but not enough to get out on a floor to dance. Why not take the
Professor? Milford expected to see him run, but he stepped forth with a
gracious smile, and took hold of the old woman. And while they were
dancing Gunhild entered the room. Without even the slightest tint of
embarrassment, she went straightway to Milford and shook hands with him.
She had been out bareheaded, under the trees, and dewdrops gleamed in
her hair.

"Did you find Mrs. Goodwin much scared about you last night?"

"Not much. She knew I would come home safe. This morning, when I said
how kind it was of you to keep a light burning in a pan for me, they
laughed. And I was angry till they told me it was all a joke."

"I heard about it. Blakemore told me."

"Did he? Oh, it was not much important."

"And they tried to guy you about me, did they?"

"Guy me? They tried to plague. Then I get mad till I understand, and
then I laugh."

"Blakemore said they told you that I--that I was engaged."

"Yes, but that was of no difference. They tried to make me think I do
wrong to walk with you when you engaged. I told them that it made no
difference."

"But I am not engaged."

"No? But it makes no difference. You know, I think it almost a shame for
that old woman to dance. It makes me feel--feel--I do not know, but you
know--you understand."

"Yes; I feel the same way."

"Yes. Have you been working hard to-day?"

"Pretty hard. What have you been doing?"

"Reading a book and trying to draw. I could do neither. Spread
everywhere was a drawing that I could not catch; and hummed in the air
were words more beautiful than in the book. They have quit dancing. I am
glad."

The Professor resumed his talk with the "discoverer." "One of the truest
pleasures enjoyed by man is to meet a woman with a mind."

"Indeed! And are they so very rare?"

"Oh, no, no," the Professor quickly replied, realizing that he had
struck the wrong key. "As an educator, I know the scope and the power of
the female mind--I do not like the expression, female mind, but I must
employ it to make my meaning clear. Yes, I know the scope and the power,
comparing more than favorably with the mind of man. But--" and here he
halted, with a finger in the air, to give the word emphasis--"but, once
in a long while, we meet an exceptional female mind, and it is then that
we experience our truest pleasure. Such a mind, I may say, is possessed
by my wife; and, begging the pardon of your presence, such is the mind
that I have met here to-night."

She looked at him with a woman's doubt, which means more than half
believing. She glanced at Gunhild, wondering whether the girl had
overheard the remark. She seemed anxious that some one should have
caught it. Compliments are almost worthless when they reach none but the
flattered ear. And to tell that they have been paid is too much like
presenting one with a withered flower. Gunhild had not heard the remark.
She was picking up Milford's slowly dropping words.

"You are very kind, Professor, but, really, you don't expect me to
believe you when you express such satisfaction at meeting me."

The Professor appeared grief-smitten. "Madam, as an educator, I have
been accustomed to deal with many phases of the human mind. And I have
lived long enough to verify the adage that honesty is the best policy,
in words as well as in acts; and I have learned that, while truth told
to man is a virtue, it is, told to a woman, a sublimity." He bowed and
twisted the sharp point of his red beard, a gimlet with which he would
bore through the soft sheeting of a woman's incredulity. At this moment,
it flashed upon her that she had made another discovery, not of a
genius, but of a philosopher. But she must be cautious. He might have a
treatise ready for the publisher. She sighed a regret that the doctor
was not present to hear the exalted talk of this gifted man. How dim his
eyes were, with groping in the dusk, looking for the learning of the
ancients! In such wisdom there must be sincerity. But it was not wise to
swallow with too keen a show of relish. She would dally with this
delicious food.

"Oh," she laughed, "it is so easy for a man to pay a compliment."

"Madam, I admit that a studied art may become a careless grace, witness
the Frenchman and the Spaniard; but the blunt Anglo-Saxon must still
depend upon truth for his incentive--the others taste dainty viands; he
feeds upon blood-dripping meat."

She did not know exactly what he meant, but it sounded well, and bowing
thoughtfully, she said: "How true!"

Some one raised a clamor for a song from Mrs. Stuvic. She was as ready
to sing as to dance. Her accomplishments belonged to her boarders. And
she sang a song popular in her day:

  "Pretty little Miss, don't stand on beauty,
    That's a flower that must soon decay,
   Reddest rose in yonder's garden,
    Half an hour will fade away.
   No, no, no, sir, no; all the answer she made was no."

Milford was called upon for a story. He refused, but the girl's eyes
implored him, and he told a story of heroism in a blizzard. The
Professor was then called out for a speech. The Liberty of the American
was his theme; the glory of every man having a castle, his climax.
Milford smiled to think of the road leading from the Professor's castle,
of the portcullis that had come near falling on him. He saw the mistress
of the castle standing with her hands on her hips.

"He has so many fine words," said Gunhild. "Why don't they send him to
the Congress?"

"Because they've got too many fine words there already, I guess,"
Milford answered.

"But is he not a very smart man?"

"Oh, yes, smart enough, I guess. That's what's the matter with him--too
smart."

"But how can a man be too smart?"

"I give it up. But it seems as if it takes a fool to make a success of
life; the hogs of the business world root up money."

"I do not understand. You are making some fun of me."

"No, I'm giving it to you straight. The successful business man wears
bristles on his back."

She laughed at this. She said that she knew he was making fun of her;
but she liked to hear him talk like that. It was so new to her.

"Ha! her complexion reminds me of a tinted vase with the light seeping
through it," said the Professor, talking to the "discoverer," but with
his eyes fixed upon the Norwegian girl. "A flower come up out of the
wild and long-neglected garden of the Viking. And how truly American
those people soon become! Blood, madam; it is blood."

"Gunhild is a good girl, and knows nothing so well as she does honor."

"A girl who knows honor is splendidly equipped, madam. I have a
daughter. And who is it that accompanies her? It is honor, madam.
Throughout the seasons, they are together, arm about waist, like school
girls, studying virtue from the same book."

She leaned over and touched his arm. "I want to ask you something. Do
you know very much about Mr. Milford?"

"He warmed his hand with his heart, madam, and extended it to me."

"But don't you think he's peculiar?"

"All things are peculiar until we understand them."

"I know, but isn't there something strange about his being here as he
is, working on a farm?"

"Not to me, when I meditate upon the fact that I myself keep books and
do general roust-about work for a planing mill. Roust-about--idiomatic,
good, and to the point."

"But farm work is so hard," she persisted. "And he appears to be so well
equipped for something better. At times, he is almost brilliant."

"A brightness in the rough," said the Professor. "He has that crude
quality of force which sometimes puts to shame the more nearly even
puissance of a systematic training."

She looked at him as if her eyes said, "Charming." And the world had
suffered him to go to seed, nodding his ripe and bursting pod in the
empty air. It was a shame. But his treatise on philosophy--she must
find out about that.

"Professor, have you ever written anything?"

He smiled. "Madam, the web I have woven, if spun straight, would
encircle the globe. I have written."

"Philosophy?"

"Finance, madam."

She choked a laugh in its infant uprising. That this threadbare man
should write about money! How ridiculous! But true genius has many a
curious kink.

Mrs. Blakemore, feeling that she was neglected, brought in Bobbie to
annoy the company with him. She bade him shake hands with Mr. Milford;
she commanded him to recite for the Professor. The learned man smiled.
He said that there was nothing so sweet as the infant lip, lisping its
way into the fields of knowledge. Multicharged by his mother, the boy
began to fire off, "I am not mad, no, am not mad." Mrs. Stuvic, who had
been remarkably quiet, got up and remarked as she passed Milford: "This
lets me out; yes, you bet!"

The Professor applauded the youngster. He would be a great man, some
day. He had the voice and the manner of the true orator. Only seven
years old? Quite remarkable. His mother stroked his hair, and said that,
in fact, he would not be seven till the eighteenth of September. At this
the Professor was much surprised. Really a remarkable boy.

Mr. Josh Spence, a fat man rounding out a corner of the room with his
retiring flesh, was called upon for a song. He was modest, and he
declined, but yielded upon persuasion, and in strained tenor sang
"Marguerite."

"Do you like his voice?" Gunhild asked.

"It's not big enough to fit him," Milford answered. "But let him sing.
It keeps the boy quiet."

"Oh, are you not ashamed? He is a nice little man, and his mother loves
him so."

"And only seven years old," said Milford.

"You must not make fun. The boy is her heart. You must not laugh at a
heart."

Milford flinched. He had not said the right thing. "Mitchell, the man
who works with me, called me down for saying something that I oughtn't
to have said, and I apologized, and we shook hands. I apologize to you.
Shall we shake hands?"

She shook her head. "No, it will not be necessary. You do not mean to be
cruel."

This touched him. He tried to hide himself with a laugh. She looked at
him earnestly, and his face sobered. He thought of the night before, his
kneeling to her on the floor of the haunted house, and felt that it
would be a comfort to drop upon his knees again, not to talk of the wind
rising among the trees, but to tell her that she had clasped her hands
about his heart.

"Shall we go out on the veranda?" he asked, eating her with his glutton
eyes.

"No, it is getting late. See, Mrs. Goodwin is telling the Professor
good-night. I must go too."

"May I see you again soon?"

"Oh, you may come. Mrs. Goodwin will not care."

"But do you want me to--do you care if I come?"

"Yes, I will like for you to come. We will be friends."

"And shall we go over into the woods where the mandrakes are in bloom?"

"Yes, Mrs. Goodwin likes the flowers that grow in the woods. She calls
them beautiful barbarians."

Mrs. Stuvic took the lantern down from under the eaves of the veranda.
She called it a sign to every rat to hunt his hole. She joked at Milford
as he passed her, going out. Even her blunt eye saw that he was
enthralled. "Not so loud," he said. "Those people might hear you."

"I'd better flag you down," she replied, swinging the red lantern before
his face.

Milford and the Professor walked off together along the road running
through the grove. "Professor, you seemed to be happy to-night."

"My dear fellow, I am the most miserable man alive--just at this time."

"What's the trouble?"

"Life insurance. It will be due on the ninth of this present month,
three days from now, ninety-seven dollars and forty cents, and how I am
to raise it the Lord only knows. I have been carrying it for seven
years, a galling burden, shifted from shoulder to shoulder, with but a
moment of relief between the shifts. Many a time as the day approached
have I wished that the lightning might strike me. And I pledge you my
word that I would rather die any sort of death than to have it lapse.
It has been a hard fight, a fight that my wife and daughter, as
intelligent as they are, could not fully understand. They argue
sometimes that the money thus invested would make them comfortable, with
better clothes and more furniture in the house. They cannot comprehend
that I am making this great sacrifice for a rainy day, a day when I
shall be out in the rain and they in a better house."

"Well, I want to tell you that it's noble in you."

"No, I don't look at it that way. It is a self-defense, an easing of my
conscience for not providing better for them. But I must manage to raise
it somehow, and I have an idea. I have been sounding Mrs. Goodwin. She
has faith in my ability. I am going to write something and upon it
borrow enough money from her to pay my installment. Her husband can send
the paper to a medical review with his name signed to it. Some sanitary
measures that I have long pondered shall be set forth. Result, notoriety
for the doctor and his wife and a moment of ease between the shifts for
me. Would you resort to anything like that?"

"Would I? Well, I should think so. Do you know what I'd do? If I
had--had some one dependent upon me and had my life insured, I'd go out
on the highway and hold up a chosen servant of the Lord before I'd let
it lapse."

"My dear boy, I am delighted to know that you understand how I feel. I
don't want to be a rascal; I would like to be honest. But I tell you
that I have resorted to many a piece of trickery--almost treachery--to
pay my premiums. I could tell you something, but you would hate me for
it."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Well, I would better not tell it. What a charming young woman!"

"Yes. Blakemore calls her a 'peach.'"

"A vulgarism not altogether unbefitting," said the Professor, stumbling
along in the dark. "She has not the dash of the American girl, perhaps,
but I rather admire her for the lack of it. Well, our roads part here.
From now until morning I must work on my medical paper."




CHAPTER X.

HIS NICKNAME.


The hot weather fled before a cool mist that came floating over from
Lake Michigan. A cold rain began to fall. Cows lowed, and dogs, soonest
of all creatures to feel a change in the atmosphere, crouched shivering
in the doorways. Milford worked in the barn till there was nothing more
to do, and then he went to the house and sat down with a newspaper. But
he could not find interest in it. He threw down the paper and from his
bag he took out a worn copy of Whittier. It was a day when we like to
read the old things which long ago we committed to memory. We know the
word before we reach it, but reaching it, we find it full of a new
meaning. But the hours are long when the heart is restless. Out in the
woods the mist hung in the tree-tops as if vapor were the world's
slow-moving time, balking among the dripping leaves. From a longing
Milford's desire to go over to Mrs. Stuvic's became a feverish throb.
But the old woman's grin and the red lantern waved in his face
constantly arose before him. He strove to recall what the girl had said.
He could not find the words that she had spoken, but he remembered that
he had felt an encouragement. He went out in the drizzle, to the knoll
in the oat field, and stood there, gazing toward the house. He cursed
himself for a fool and returned to his cheerless shelter. The hired man
sat at the dining-room table, playing solitaire with a pack of greasy
cards.

"I worked this thing the other day, but it won't come now," he said.

"But what have you done when you do it?"

"Well, not much of anything, but you're on top. Heigho! I'd almost
rather work than to sit around such a day as this. I don't believe we
can do anything in the field to-day. Think so?"

"No. Thinking about going somewhere?"

"Not exactly. Didn't know but I might go over to see my girl. Told me
the other day she was lonesome without me. And when you get a woman so
she's lonesome without you, why, you've got her foul. Haven't changed
your mind about not wantin' her here, have you?"

"No, and I don't expect to change it. I don't know how long I'll be
here." He strode up and down the room. "But I'll stick it out," he
added, talking to himself. "It's got to be done, no matter what comes."

"Yes, stick it out," said the hired man. "You've got too good a hold to
turn loose now. The fellers around have begun to praise you. They say
you are goin' to make a go of it."

"A go of what?"

"I don't know, but that's what they said."

"Bob, do you remember my telling you not long ago that I once jumped on
a horse and galloped away from a girl."

"Yes, and I thought of how different your case was from mine. Girl
galloped away from me. But what about it?"

"That woman is over at Mrs. Stuvic's now."

"You don't mean the same woman?"

"Yes, I do; the very same woman--a Norwegian."

"Did she say she was the same?"

"She hasn't said anything about it and neither have I. But I know she's
the same. She wasn't quite grown when I saw her in a little town out
West. She was at a hotel--I think her uncle ran the place. I don't
believe she ever noticed me. But I noticed her, and I made up my mind
that I wasn't going to be tangled up with her, so I rode away, whistling
over the prairie. Yes, sir, the same woman. I never could forget that
face, not so beautiful, but a face that takes hold and never turns
loose."

"Well, that is strange," said the hired man, looking at an ace of clubs
and slowly placing it on the table. "Believe I'm going to fluke on this
thing. Smart woman, Bill?"

"I don't know; I can't tell."

"But you've heard her talk, haven't you?"

"Yes," said Milford, standing at the window, looking out at the mist,
now trailing low over the fields. "I've heard her talk, but when a man
has galloped away from a woman he's not much of a judge of her mind."

"This ten specker wants to go right here. Now let me see. I guess you're
right, Bill. But what are you goin' to do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Well, that's perfectly natural. Six goes here. You better not let the
old woman find it out. She'll devil you to death."

"She already knows there's something up. It didn't take but a moment for
me to satisfy myself that this was the same girl; and I struck out
again, intending to go away; but I stopped at the gate and went back."

"But what makes you run away from 'em? I run after 'em. Built that way.
Canal cook goes here," he said, referring to a queen. "Is she skittish,
Bill?"

"No," said Milford, turning from the window and walking up and down the
room. "She's modest, but not skittish."

"And you don't remember whether she's got good sense or not?"

"Of course she has. What the devil are you talking about?"

"All right. But you said you didn't know. I simply want to get at the
merits of the case. I know a good deal about women as women go, and they
go. Been married once and slipped up three times. Can she talk without
smilin' all the time?"

"Yes. She's very earnest at times."

Mitchell raked the cards together, shuffled them and threw the pack on
the table. "A woman that smiles all the time wants you to think she's
better than she is. I married a smile."

"A frown trailing the skirts of a smile," said Milford, and then with a
laugh, he added: "I must have caught that from the Professor."

"I don't know, Bill. But a man that'll sit up and read poetry is apt to
say most anythin'. I once heard a fellow say that men read poetry
because they like it and women because they think they do."

"That fellow was a fool and a liar."

"Well, it's easy enough to be both. That sort of double harness is
always handy. I don't know much about your case, as I haven't seen her,
but if I was in your place I don't believe I'd rush things. A man that
starts in by being badly stuck generally has to win the woman--not often
that they are stuck alike. I'd stay away and make her get lonesome to
see me."

"But how can I tell whether or not she's lonesome to see me?"

"By her tryin' not to seem glad when she sees you again."

"But that leaves the case open for a trip-up. How can I tell that she's
trying not to seem glad?"

"Well, your horse-sense will have to tell you that. But I thought you
didn't want any woman on the place."

"I don't. In looking at it I haven't strained my eye as far as
marriage."

"Then what's the use of lovin' her? It's a waste of raw material."

"There's something I must do before I could permit myself to think of
marrying, and I'm going to do it if it takes a leg. But I'll tell you
what's a fact, I'd rather have that woman's love than anything on the
earth. Sometimes I think that if I knew she loved me I'd be willing to
die. There's somebody out there on the veranda."

A boy came with a note from the Professor's wife, inviting Milford to
supper that evening. There was no allusion to the cause that led to his
kicking up the dust in front of her gate. It would give her husband, her
daughter and herself great pleasure to have him come, and it was hoped
that he would not disappoint them. The boy had not waited for an answer.
The courtesy fell as an obligation. There was no easy way to dodge it.
He would go.

The afternoon was long. Mitchell rigged himself in his best, bought of a
peddler after much haggling, and went forth to woo the freckled woman.
Milford strolled out into the woods. It was a pleasure to stand in the
mist, the trees shadowy about him. It was dreamy to fancy the fog a torn
fragment of night, floating through the day. It was easy to imagine the
lake a boundless sea. Over the rushes a loon flew, a gaunt and feathered
loneliness, looking for a place to light. Milford strolled along a
pathway, over high ground, once the brow of the receding lake; and here
the growth was heavy, with great trees leaning toward the marsh and
hawthorn thickets standing in rounded groups. He came to an open space.
In the midst of it stood a sapling. A grape vine had spread over its
branches, neatly trimming its outer edges, a hoisted umbrella of leaves.
He stopped short. On a boulder beneath this canopy, with her back toward
him, almost hidden, sat a woman. She was wrapped in a cloak. But there
was no mistaking her hair. She heard his footstep and looked round. She
did not appear much surprised. She arose with a smile.

"I have been sitting here in Norway," she said. "See the cliffs?" she
added, pointing to a mountain range of mist.

"But you must have got wet."

"No. But it would make no difference. I do not mind it. I love such a
day. It is an etching. Do you go this way? I have stayed long enough."

She walked along the path in front of him, bending to avoid the low
boughs, laughing when a wet leaf slapped her cheek.

"Let me go in front to clear the way," he said.

"Oh, no, I like this."

She leaped across a gulley. A briar pulled at her skirts. She turned
about with the merest tint of a blush. He was not enough of an idealist
to etherealize her. He felt her spirit, but acknowledged her a flesh and
blood woman, belonging to the earth, but as the flower does, with a
perfume. Her lips bespoke passion; her eyes control. He was glad that he
saw her so clearly.

"We shall soon be to the road," she said.

"And you mean that you will leave me there as you did the other night?"

"You are quick to guess."

"Is it because you don't want to be seen with me?"

"Yes. Those women talk."

"But haven't they--haven't they any faith in their kind?"

"Not much," she said frankly.

"But why should you care what they say?"

She looked back at him. "I mean that you are so far above them," he
added. "You are worth all of them put together."

"It is very kind of you to say so. But I am not."

"I would swear it on a stack of Bibles."

"Your oath would not be taken. But let us not talk about it. You do not
know what you say when you praise me. I don't place myself above them. I
know myself." She halted, turned about and held forth her hand. "See, I
have worked in the potato field. I have been a laborer."

"I am a laborer now," he said as they walked on. "There's no disgrace in
work."

"Not for a man, not for a woman, but in a field with rough men--" she
shrugged her shoulders.

"But the rough men--they had no effect on you," he said, almost
pleadingly. "What effect could they have?"

"I was very young. Even at school I had not forgotten their oaths. My
uncle sent me to school. He was a poor man, but he sent me."

"Didn't he run a hotel at one time?" he asked.

"Yes, out in Dakota. I worked for him between terms. There were many
Norwegians about, and I learned English slowly. But this is of no
interest to you."

"Yes, it is--the keenest sort of interest. I mean I like to hear it.
What became of your uncle?"

"He is a gripman on a cable train in the city. One of these days I am
going to pay him back. And I am going to pay Mrs. Goodwin, too. I will
be her companion as long as it pleases her, and then I must find work. I
think I can teach drawing in the country. I could do nothing at it in
town. Now, you see, I must be careful not to have any talk. I can take
care of myself anywhere, in a potato field or in the woods, but I must
not distress Mrs. Goodwin. This is the road."

"Wait a moment. I feel more at liberty to talk to you."

"Now that you find out that I have been a laborer? I do not like that. I
wish you had not said it."

"Wait. No, not that, but because we are more of a kind in a way--we both
have an object. I am going to pay a man. That's the reason I dig in the
hot sun."

"Are you so honest?"

"No, I'm worse than a thief. Don't go--just one moment, please. Sometime
I may tell you. They think I like to work, but I hate it. In my thoughts
I have committed a thousand murders with my hoe. Let me ask you a
question, one laborer of another. Do you like me?"

"Very much," she answered, looking at him steadily.

"I thank the Lord for that much. We might help each other to--"

"No, our battles are apart."

"Oh, I didn't mean that. I mean we can help each other spiritually.
Don't you think so?"

"We can all help one another spiritually," she said. "May I go now?" she
asked, smiling.

"I wish I could keep you from going. Wait. I can't understand that you
have labored in a field. You are the most graceful woman I ever
saw--the most perfect lady couldn't discount you. You've got good
blood. I believe in blood."

"I am of a good family," she said. "My father was once a man of some
importance. But the world turned against him. Blood is all that saved
me."

"I've got one more word to say, now that we are better acquainted. I
jumped on a horse once and galloped away from you--out at the little
town on the prairie. You don't remember me, but I do you."

"Galloped away from me!" she said in surprise. "Why did you do that?"

"Because I didn't want to get tangled up. Did you ever see a bigger
fool? And when I saw you out here I started off again, but I stopped and
said, 'I'll be damned if I do.' Once is enough. May I tell you more?"

"No," she said, stepping back. "I have heard enough. And what you tell
me may not be true--about galloping away. I don't mean to offend you.
But I have been taught to believe--"

"That all men are liars," he suggested. She nodded. "They taught you
about right," he went on. "Yes, they did. But sometimes the biggest liar
may tell the truest truth. They took you out of the field and taught you
politeness. I went from a college out into the wilds and there I forgot
learning and learned deviltry. Do you know what they used to call me?
Hell-in-the-Mud. That was my nickname. Hell-in-the-Mud, think of it! And
what saved me, if I am saved? An old woman living on a hillside in
Connecticut--my mother--prayed for me and died. It's a fact. I don't
know whether there's a God or not, that is, for the average run of us,
but there's one for her. Prayed for Hell-in-the-Mud, and her prayer was
printed in the village paper, and I got hold of it. Then I said I would
pay him--a man. But go on, I'm telling you too much."

She turned away without saying another word and almost ran along the
road. He stood watching her, hoping that she would look back at him, but
she did not. He went to the house. He snatched the cards from the table
and tore them into bits. "I hate the sight of them," he said. The clock
struck five. He was reminded of his engagement at the Professor's, and
he hastened to fill it. He had dreaded to meet the woman who had scared
him out of her dooryard. His nerve had been lead. Now it was iron.




CHAPTER XI.

A MAN


As Milford hastened over the road that led to the Professor's house, a
picture thrust itself into his mind, to shorten his stride, to make him
slow. He saw the girl's hand held out to him, and he wondered why he had
not dared to touch it. Surely, there was no labor mark upon it, pink and
soft-looking, a hand for the pressure of love and not for work in a
field. She had said that she liked him. But any one might have said
that. She had said it with a frankness which showed that she had not
told more than the truth. But why should she have told more than the
truth? Why have had more than truth to tell? He put it all aside and
strode onward toward the Professor's house. A light gleamed feebly
through the mist.

He unwound the chain from about the gate-post. A dog barked. The door
opened and the Professor stepped out, gowned and slippered. He seized
his visitor warmly by the hand and led him into the sitting-room, dim
with faded furnishings. His fingers were ink-stained, and his red hair
was awry as if he had raked his head for thought. Mrs. Dolihide came
into the room.

"My dear," said the Professor, "permit me to present to you, and to the
humble hospitality of our home, our neighbor and my friend, Mr. Milford,
the so-called mysterious, but, indeed, the plain and straightforward.
Mrs. Dolihide, Mr. Milford."

She smiled pleasantly, drew back with a bow, stepped forward and held
out her hand. She said that she was delighted to meet him. She had heard
her husband speak of him so often. Milford breathed a new atmosphere. He
saw that there was to be no allusion to the dust that was kicked up in
front of the house. From the dining-room there came a stimulating sniff
of coffee. A cat came in with a limber walk and stiffened herself to rub
against Milford's chair.

"A fine cat," he said, stroking her.

"A marvelous animal," replied the Professor. "We have had her now going
on--how long have we had her, my dear?"

"Oh, she's only been here about two weeks," his wife answered.

"Ah, I was thinking of her predecessor, a most wonderful cat, with a
keen sense of propriety, never disturbing the loose ends of thought that
a student suffers to lie upon his table."

Mrs. Dolihide agreed that the other cat was good enough, but that she
had fits, and in his way Milford acknowledged that fits, while not
necessarily arguing a want of merit, could not avoid giving an erratic
cast even to most pronounced worth. This was all the Professor needed,
and he forthwith launched a ship of disquisition, but when he had fully
rigged it and neatly trimmed its sails, his wife broke in with the
remark that the country was overrun with common people from the city.
One would naturally expect noisy uncouthness, and a lack in many
instances of refined reading, but--

"My dear," the Professor interrupted, "you must bear in mind that the
minor summer resort is a kind of Castle Garden, with now and then a
shining exception. Here we have the drudges of trade. Am I right, Mr.
Milford?"

"Yes, the experiments, the hagglers and the failures."

The Professor slapped his leg. "A goodly remark, sir; upon my soul, a
worthy illustration."

"And I have a good deal of fault to find with the home society," said
Mrs. Dolihide. "It is jagged and raw, with a constant scuffle after the
dollar--"

"The necessary dollar," observed the Professor.

"The scarce dollar," she replied.

"And therefore necessary, my dear. But you are right as to society.
There are many good people here, excellent families, but the rank and
file are common scratchers of the soil. But they thrive, a reproach to
men of more intelligence. And now, sir," he added, turning to Milford,
"upon what does success depend? Mind? Oh, no. Industry? No. What then?
Temperament. Temperament is of itself a success. It--"

"Supper," said a young woman appearing in the door.

At the table Milford was presented to Miss Katherine Dolihide, slim,
cold and prettyish. She might have had a respect for her father's
learning, but it was evident that she held his failure in contempt. With
her, a mind that gathered the trinkets of knowledge and fell short of
providing luxuries for the body could not be reckoned among the virtues.
Wisdom's reflected light was dimmer than an earring. She looked at
Milford, and he felt that he failed to reach her mark. She gave him, he
thought, the dry and narrow smile of ironic pity. She asked him if he
liked the country. He answered that he did, and she remarked that it was
a crude picture daubed with green. There were no old mills. She loved
old mills; no country was beautiful without them. Had she seen old
mills? No, she had not, but she had read of them and had found them
scattered throughout the pages of art. She acknowledged after a time
that the lakes were charming, the woods replete with sweet dreaming, the
lanes full of a vagabond fancy, tinkers of imagination sleeping under
the leaves; but without a ruined mill there could be no perfect rest for
the mind. Milford knew that this was a pretense, not from any
psychological reasoning, but because she was so unlike the Norwegian
girl. To him there was more of conviction in silent opposites than in
noisy arguments.

"I heard of you the other night over at the honey sociable," she said.

"Honey sociable?"

"Yes, honey and biscuit for the benefit of the church. Quite a unique
affair, and wholly new to me, I assure you. A Mrs. Blakemore was present
and spoke of you; she said it was a pity that you hadn't come to tell
stories of the West. A very intelligent woman, don't you think?"

"Yes, I guess she is."

"But the most intelligent woman over there," said the Professor, "is
Mrs. Goodwin."

"Over where?" his wife asked.

"Why, over at Mrs. Stuvic's."

"When did you meet her?"

"Why--er--let me see. I was passing, stepped in to get a drink of water,
and was presented to the lady by Mrs. Stuvic. I didn't stay long, mind
you, but long enough to discover the lady's intelligence. Mr. Milford,
it may take years to discover a comet, sir, but intelligence, brighter
in quality, shines out at once. Pass your cup."

"You didn't tell me you'd met her," said Mrs. Dolihide.

"Didn't I mention it? I thought I did. Speaking of this part of the
country, Mr. Milford, is like discussing a new picture with old spots on
it; but all great pictures were once new. Take the view, for instance,
from our veranda. Nothing could be more charming. The grass land, with
scattered trees, trim and graceful in their individuality, the cattle
beneath them, the woods beyond, and--"

"No, you didn't mention meeting her," said Mrs. Dolihide.

"But what difference does it make, mother?" the daughter spoke up. "By
this time you ought to know that he meets many intelligent persons that
we never see. Stuck here all the time," she added under her breath.

"Ah," said the Professor, "man may be walking pleasantly with prosperity
hooked upon his arm, talking of the deeds they are to perform in
common, when up gallops misfortune on a horse, and that is the end. I
was going to take my family to Europe, but there came a galloping down
the road and overtook me. Since then my hands have been tied."

"When I look around," said Mrs. Dolihide, "and see ordinary people
living on the best in the land, it makes me mad to think that as smart a
man as the Professor--"

"My dear, like you I could question fate, but--"

"Fate nothing; I don't know what it is, but it does seem strange to me.
I don't understand why a man as well educated as you are has to struggle
with the world when the commonest sort of a person can buy property. I
don't understand it."

"Easy enough," the Professor replied. "The commonest sort of a person
may have money, and having money, buys property. Nut-shell argument,
Milford," he added, slapping his hand flat upon the table.

"Failure has always been easier to understand than success," said
Milford. "Failure is natural, it seems to me. It comes from the weakness
of man and nothing is more natural than weakness. I am arguing from my
own case, and don't mean to reflect on any one else. I have thrown away
many an opportunity, but that was in keeping with my weakness."

"But I hear that you are anything but weak," said the Professor's
daughter. "They call you a mystery, and a mystery is a success until it
is solved."

"But an unsolved conundrum might starve to death," he replied.

"Not so long as it remained unsolved," the Professor declared. "We feed
the performer till he explains the trick."

"Then I suppose Mr. Milford will not explain his trick," said the girl.

"I'd be foolish to shut off my supplies, wouldn't I?"

"Yes," she admitted, "but if you have a mystery you ought to let your
friends share it."

"Ha," said the Professor, "that would mean the disposition of all the
shares. But I don't see why they call my friend a mystery. A man comes
into the neighborhood and goes to work. Is there anything so mysterious
about that? It would be more of a mystery if he lived without work."

"Father sometimes fails to catch the atmosphere of a situation," said
the girl, giving Milford a smile not so narrow and not so dry with
irony. "One's appearance might have something to do with the estimate
formed of him," she continued.

"The hired man marches from the east to the west and back again," said
Milford. "And I am a hired man--hired by myself to do something, and I
am going to do it," he added with a tightening of his face.

"But that mysterious something?" queried the girl. "What is it?"

"To make money," he answered. "Simmer it down and that's all there is to
life."

In her heart she agreed with him, but she took issue. She said that
there was something better than money. He asked if it were an old mill,
and they laughed themselves into better acquaintance.

"It would be well to sit here," said the Professor to Milford, "but I
want you to go up to my work shop with me. I wish to show you
something."

As Milford arose to follow him, he thought that on the woman's face he
saw a sneer at "work shop," and he felt that she and her daughter had
learned to look upon it as an idle corner, full of useless lumber. The
schemes of this ducking failure of a man were not of serious interest to
them. His readiness to talk made him seem light of purpose, and a sigh
that came from his heart might have been an unuttered word breathed upon
the air, a word in excuse of his poverty.

Milford was conducted to an upper room, furnished with two chairs, a
worn carpet and a table. But the Professor entered it reverently, as if
it were the joss-house of hope. He turned down his light to steady the
flame, placed the lamp upon the table, motioned his visitor to a chair,
sat down, drew a pile of papers toward him, and said: "My dear fellow, I
think I have something here that will tide me over the quarterly rapids.
I believe that among these sheets lie a life insurance premium of
ninety-seven dollars and forty cents. I want you to hear it, and then I
will steal it forth to that woman. Now, in writing for a professional
man, a physician, we will say, you must of all things employ
sky-scraping terms. Medicine has no use for the simple. I wanted to
start off with a cloud-capped sentence, a quotation, and here is one I
found in Hazlett, referring to old Sir Thomas Brown: 'He scooped an
antithesis from fabulous antiquity and raked up an epithet from the
sweepings of chaos.' Isn't that a wild pigeon with the sun on its back?"

"Yes, I know, but what has it to do with an article on medicine?"

"Everything. Now let me tell you something. In a paper of this sort you
must take a text, and with sophistry draw your deductions. You must
never be clear. In the opinion of the world involution is depth. It
takes a simple book a hundred years to become a classic. The writer has
starved to death. He sleeps under marble. And who is it that is lost out
there among the briars? The man who wrote the pampered fad. Yes, sir;
let contemporaneous man seek to untangle your skein and you flatter him.
Now, listen."

He read his paper, making alterations from time to time, marking out
small words and writing in larger ones; and when he was done he looked
at his visitor with a smile.

"It catches me," said Milford. "I don't know anything about it, but I'm
caught all the same. Have you read it to the ladies?"

"What!" gasped the Professor. "Read it to them? They would scoff at me,
not because they would catch its pretentious weakness, but because I
wrote it--because I am a failure. And now, sir, do you know I begin to
fall down, as the idiomatics would have it? Yes, sir, I am weakening."

"How so?"

"Why, I've hardly got the nerve to take it to that woman. She hasn't
said so, but I know she wants it. When do you expect to see her again?"

"I don't know."

"Now let me see. Would you mind taking this thing along and handing it
to her the next time you see her? It would be one of the greatest favors
you could do me. You can explain; I'll trust you for that. It is my only
recourse; my hope has been built on it, and if I fail I swear I--but I
must not fail. You remember I told you that I did something once to help
out the amount, something that would cause you to hate me. I will tell
you what it was. It was a mean trick--dastardly--but I had to do it. A
dog came to my house, a handsome dog with a brass collar. And what did I
do? I sneaked that dog off and sold him for six dollars. Now you'll hate
me."

"Give me the paper," said Milford, reaching for it. "Don't say another
word. Give it to me. I don't know you very well as knowing men goes, but
you are kind to me, and I want to put my arm around you. I said down
there that money was everything. But it isn't. There's something
better--to find a kinsman in the wilderness. She shall take this thing.
She's got to. If she doesn't, I'll take it to her husband." He put his
arm about the Professor. Tears streamed from the old man's eyes. "There,
it's all right. I'll go over there now. If she won't have it, I'll take
the train for town. I'm going now."

"Wait a moment," said the Professor, wiping his eyes. "I must not go
down this way. Let me recover myself. You have touched my heart, and,
poor withered thing, it is fluttering. Just a moment. Now we'll go."

He led the way down the stairs. "I wish you could stay longer," he said
cheerily, "but you know your own affairs. My dear, Mr. Milford is going.
We hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again soon. Our latch-string
is out. Katherine, shake hands with Mr. Milford. I will light him out."

He stood on the veranda holding the lamp. "It is a dark night, and I
wish we had a lantern. But the road is straight to your house.
Good-night, and God bless you."

"They have struck up a warm friendship," said the girl.

"Astonishing," her mother replied.

The Professor put the lamp on the mantel-piece. "Is he your lost
brother?" his wife asked.

"He is more than that," the Professor answered, sinking into a chair.
"He is a man."




CHAPTER XII.

THE OLD SOFA.


Early the next morning, the Professor hastened from the dining-room to
answer a rap at his door. And there stood Milford with a roll of bank
notes in his hand.

"Ha, you've got it; I see you have. Let me shut the door. They must not
hear. Was there ever such luck? Yes, let me take it, the money. Is it
all here? Yes, down to the forty cents." He stuffed the notes into his
pocket. He held up his hand to enjoin caution. "They would rather have a
new settee than an assurance of protection against want in the future.
They live from sun to sun. I live for them, but my mind is fixed on the
time to come. I don't know how to thank you. You are a man of nerve. And
that woman! She is glorious. What did she say?"

"Oh, nothing much."

"Didn't she agree that it was the very thing for the Doctor? Didn't she
acknowledge that it would spread the news of his high standing as a
physician and a thinker?"

"Yes, she said it would do him a great deal of good abroad."

"A woman in a million. Did the abstruse parts seem to impress her?"

"Yes, she caught all the kinks."

"The Socrates of her sex. Did she say that she would send it off at
once?"

"By the first train. She was particular to ask if you had let any one
else into the secret. She's sensitive--and as I was about to go, she
asked me not to refer to the matter again, and she hoped that you
wouldn't. I don't think she can bear to be thanked. So I promised that
neither of us would speak of the transaction, even to her."

"Delicate soul! And you did well to promise. My boy, if sincere thanks
are winged things that fly to heaven, there is now a flight of gratitude
to the sky. Won't you come in?"

"No, I've just had breakfast and must go to work."

"Well, I hope to see you again before long. And, by the way, I wish to
tell you that my wife and daughter were charmed with your visit. They
are dear to me, but they do not understand. Pardon me, I am detaining
you."

For more than a week the Professor had drooped under anxiety, but now he
walked high of head. When he entered the dining-room his wife asked who
had called. He answered that it was some one who wanted directions to
Mrs. Stuvic's. Lying might at one time have been a luxury with him, but
now it was a necessity. She rarely expected the truth from him. It took
him longer to tell a lie, and he was fond of talking. And besides, a
failure is under no obligations to tell the truth.

"It took you quite a while to give him directions."

"Yes, it is a roundabout way."

"But you seem to have quite a knack for finding it yourself--to be
presented to remarkable women."

"My knack for finding remarkable women began in my earlier years."

"Indeed! And you have been keeping yourself well in practice ever
since."

"Constant rehearsal with a former discovery keeps me from growing
rusty."

"Well, I don't care, but there's one thing certain! When you come home
to-night you'll find that I have thrown that old sofa out into the back
yard."

"It's a dreadful thing, pa," said Miss Katherine. "It's a disgrace."

"I know it, but we shall have a new one pretty soon."

"I've heard that for years," said his wife. "Why don't you let that old
life insurance go? Gracious alive, it's nonsense to deny yourself
everything."

"It's worse than that," the girl spoke up; "it's almost a crime. We
don't want you to fret your life out for us. If we are to have anything
we want you to share it. You haven't seen anything but worry since you
took out the policy. Let it drop. The money you'd have to give for the
next payment would make us happy. We could get so many nice things with
it, and wouldn't feel ashamed every time a visitor comes into the house.
Do, pa." She put her hand on his arm and looked at him appealingly.

He shook his head. "A crime, you say. Then let us acknowledge it a
crime. But let us also acknowledge that it is not so dark a crime as it
is for a man to die and leave his family in distress. Look at Norwood;
look at Bracken. The neighbors had to contribute."

"But you aren't going to die yet a while," said his wife. "You are in
good health. Well, there's no two ways about it. I'm going to throw that
old sofa out into the yard. I've stood it as long as I can. It's the
first thing a stranger sees when he comes into the house."

"And I imagine that people stop just to look in at it," Katherine spoke
up.

"We might label it as having been the property of some great man," said
the Professor.

"Oh, I know it's a joke with you, but it's not with us," his wife
retorted. "I don't see any fun in a disgrace."

"Have you no respect for the aged?" he asked, trying to wink at his
daughter, but she would not accept it. "Let us trail a vine about it and
call it a ruined mill."

"That's a stab at me, mother," said the girl. "I am not permitted to
have a sentiment."

"Well, I don't want any; I've had enough," the mother replied. "It's
sentiment, sentiment ever since I can remember, and I'm sick of it."

"You want poetry, my dear," said the Professor. "Or at least you set
store by it, for didn't you give Tennyson to the preacher?"

"I don't care if I did, I'm going to throw that old thing out. Wesley,
when is your insurance due?"

"It is paid, madam, thanks be to the Lord. I sent the money off
yesterday."

"Why didn't you tell me you were going to send it?"

"Oh, it was a mere trifle, and I forgot it."

"For pity sake! And where did you get the money?"

"I combed it out of the grass."

"Well, you'd better comb out some for us while you are combing. I've
lived this way till I'm tired of it. Where did you get that money?"

"The grass was thick, and the grass was long, and the comb pulled heavy
and slow."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself. That's all I've got to say."

"I'm afraid not."

"I'll talk just as much as I please."

"I'm afraid so. But let us all be cheerful now. Yesterday it was dark
and misty, and now the sun is bright. Here, mamma, kiss me to my labor.
I haven't drawn at the weak sinews of my feeble salary, and you shall
have enough to buy a new sofa."

"That's a good dear," she said, kissing him. "Don't let what I said
worry you. I didn't mean it."

He whistled at the dog as he went out; he sang merrily as he walked
along the road, with the sunrise on his face and the noontime in his
heart.




CHAPTER XIII.

DORSEY.


It was Mitchell's day to cook, and when Milford came in to dinner, the
hired man told him that he had something of importance to tell.

"Out with it," said Milford.

"No, not till you eat. I never like to choke off a man's appetite. I
wouldn't like to have a man choke off mine. I'd be like old Matt
Lindsey. The court said he must hang for murderin' a peddler. His
lawyers took his case before the supreme bench. And after it had been
argued one of 'em came down to the jail to see old Matt. Just about that
time the jailer brought in his dinner. Old Matt said to the lawyer,
'Don't tell me till I've eat this stuff. Afterwards I mightn't be in the
humor, and I don't want to miss a meal.' And it was a good thing he eat
first."

"Well, is what you've got to say so bad as all that?"

"Not a hangin' affair, but it's bad enough. The fact is, you can make it
just as bad as you want it."

"If it rests with me, I'll not make it very bad. I'll tell you that."

"But I'll be hanged if it hain't made you turn pale. Why, you're scared,
Bill. Oh, it's not so bad. I'll tell you now, seein' that I've already
choked off your appetite. Why, there's a feller over at Mrs. Stuvic's
that's too fresh. I was out by the windmill and your girl and a woman
came along; and this feller was standin' off, not far away, talkin' to a
chump that was with him, and he made a remark about the girl--won't tell
you what it was, for a feller that's stuck don't like to hear such
things repeated--I know I wouldn't. And I said to myself at the time,
'If Bill knowed that he'd mash your mouth.'"

"What sort of a looking fellow is he?" Milford quietly asked.

"Big feller. The hired man over there says his name's Dorsey. Just got
here, I believe."

"All right. Did you fix the fence where the sheep broke in?"

"Somebody left the gap down. It's all right now."

"Did you wrap the collar so it won't hurt the horse's shoulder?"

"Yes, works all right, now. Haven't got enough to eat, have you?"

"Not very hungry to-day," said Milford as he walked out. The hired man
called after him, but he did not stop. He took the straight road to Mrs.
Stuvic's. He saw Mrs. Blakemore coming out to the gate. She smiled upon
him as he drew near. She said that she had just received a letter from
George. He was in business again; a real estate firm had taken him as an
experiment. He made a large sale the second day, and was now regularly
employed at a good commission. It had made her very happy. She never
would forget Mr. Milford; there was no doubt about it, he had inspired
her husband with strength. Milford asked if a man named Dorsey were at
the house. She said that she believed there was; he was at dinner. "If
you want to see him, I'll tell Mrs. Stuvic," she said.

"I wish you would. Tell her I want to see him now. I haven't time to
wait."

"I will. But isn't that glorious news from George? Oh, you don't know
how low-spirited he was. Sometimes I thought he never would get up
again. Don't you know that just a word, even though lightly spoken, may
sometimes spur one to renewed action? Oh, it's undoubtedly a fact."

"Yes, words may sometimes be ashes, but often they are coals of fire.
Will you please--"

"Oh, that's a good sentiment. I must remember it and tell George. He'll
be out again Saturday evening. But I'll go and tell Mrs. Stuvic that you
want to see--that's the man coming out now."

A strong-looking man came walking out toward the gate. Mrs. Blakemore
stepped aside, and he was about to pass when Milford said: "Your name is
Dorsey, I understand."

"That's it," the man replied, taking a toothpick out of his mouth.

"I'd like to see you a moment on business; over in the grove."

"What's your name?"

"Come over into the grove. I want to see you a moment. My name's
Milford."

"Do you want to see me about a horse? I want to hire one. Is that it?"

"Yes, over in the grove."

"All right. Got him there? I don't care whether he's gentle or not. I
can manage him all right. The first thing one of you farmers tells a
fellow is that his horse is gentle, when he knows that all he wants is
an opportunity to run away. So you may save yourself that trouble."

Milford conducted him to a spot out of view from the house. He halted
and threw his hat on the ground. He told him what the hired man had
said.

"Well," said Dorsey, "this is a fine proceeding."

"Take off your coat."

"What are you going to do?"

"Whip you if I can."

"But I'm not looking for any trouble."

"You may not have looked for it, but you've found it."

"Say, this is all nonsense. You won't tell me what I said, and I don't
remember. But let me tell you something. You can't whip me. I can mop
the earth with you--my way. Is that the way you want to fight?"

"Yes. _My_ way would mean something. But it won't do in this country.
Take off your coat."

The fellow was an athlete. Milford was no match for him. He had the
strength, but not the skill in boxing. But once Milford got him down,
ran under and snatched his feet from under him. In a moment, though, he
was up again, meeting strength with skill. Three times he knocked
Milford down. It was useless to continue to fight. Milford held up his
hands. "We'll call it off for the present," he said, panting.

"Suit yourself. I've got nothing to fight about except to keep from
getting licked, and it's for you to say when to stop."

"Well, I say stop, for the present. I haven't been used to fighting your
way. I'm from the West, and if I had you there we'd soon settle it. It's
not over with as it is. I'll see you again. Do you expect to come back
out here this summer?"

"Well, I'm not going to let you keep me away. You don't know what you've
run up against, young fellow. I teach boxing in town. That's my lay."

"All right. I'll see you again."

"But my way, understand. Don't come any Western business on me."

"I'll see you again and your way. I never was beaten long at a time."

"Good enough. Got through seeing me about the horse?"

"I'm through. No, wait a moment. If you go back to the house and say
anything about this affair, I'll try you the Western way. Do you
understand?"

"Oh, it's nothing to me. I won't mention it. Good-day. I'll take care of
your horse."

Milford went home, covered with blood. He washed himself and lay down
under the walnut tree to steam in his anger. His lip was cut and his
cheek was bruised. He jumped up suddenly, ran into the house and took
two pistols out of a battered leather bag, but he put them back and sat
down in the door to cool. The hired man came around the corner of the
house.

"I guess you must have found him," he said, halting with a smile and a
nod.

"Yes, and he was too much for me. But I'll get even with him."

"That's the way to look at it. May take a long time, but it's to come
round all right. I used to drive a team in Chicago. And one day I had to
cuss the driver of a coal wagon, and he ups with a lump of coal and
smashes my face. I was a long time getting even with him, but I got
there."

"Did you kill him?"

"Kill him! Well, I should say not. I didn't have enough money to kill
him and get away with it. I just waited, watchin' him close every time I
saw him. And one day he jumped off his wagon, slipped on the ice and
broke his leg. Satisfied me, and after that I turned him loose."

"Bob, do you know anything about boxing?"

"I used to be somethin' of a scrapper. Why?"

"I want you to teach me."

"Don't believe I'd be a very good teacher. But, say, I know a feller
that's all right. He used to be a sort of a prize fighter and he's now
got a little saloon up here at Antioch, 'bout ten miles up the road. His
name's Mulligan."

"All right. You go ahead with your work just as if I was with you. I'm
going up there."

"Sure enough? All right. When I get through with one thing I'll go at
another."

Milford trudged off across the fields toward the village of Antioch. At
a well beneath a tree where cows stood in the shade, he stopped to bathe
his face. He saw his dark countenance wrinkling in the disturbed water;
he committed the natural folly of talking to himself. "You are a fool,"
he said, looking down into his wavering eye. "You are a fool, and you
want to prove it." He smiled to think how easy it was to produce the
testimony. In such cases nature cheerfully gives her deposition.

He continued his way across the fields, through a skirt of wooded land
and out into a road. Bicycles crackled past him. A buggy overtook him.
Some one spoke. He looked round and recognized the "discoverer" and the
Norwegian. It was only a two-seated vehicle, but they invited him to
ride. He declined to accept their kindness, trying to hide his face. He
said that he had heard Mrs. Stuvic say that the buggy was not strong.
They were going to the village of Lake Villa. They might stop at the
mill and have a word with the Professor. Milford remarked that the
Professor would no doubt be pleased to see them, but that he was no
doubt very busy. They drove on without having noticed the wounds on his
face. To one not bent upon a vengeful mission, to a thoughtful man with
a mind in tone with the scented air, the soft sky, the spread of green,
the gleam of water, the clouds of blackbirds, such a stroll would have
been rich with an inner music played upon many sweet chords. At a
crossroads stood an old brick house, an ancient rarity upon a landscape
white-spotted with wooden cottages. It was a rest for the eye, a place
for a moment of musing, a page of a family's record, a bit of
dun-colored history. It was built long before the railroad set the
clocks of the country, before man entered into business copartnership
with the minute and employed the second as his agent. It was a relief to
look upon a worn door-sill, a rotting window-blind hanging by one hinge.
In the years long gone the congressman's carriage, laboring through the
mud, had halted there, and the statesman had warmed himself at a fire of
wood, delighting an old Whig with predictions of a glorious victory. At
this place Milford halted to get a drink of water and to sit for a few
moments in the shade. A man came out and asked him if he wanted a team.
He had a team that would not run away. He was not prepared to take
boarders, but when it came to a team he was there. He had driven great
men, pork-packers of Chicago. The man who owned the enormous ice-house
over on the lake had ridden with him. And it was probably one of the
largest ice-houses in the world. It took thousands of dollars the year
before to paint it. Milford told him that he did not want a team, and
the fellow shambled off in disgust.

There was not much time to be wasted, for the sun was now far over
toward the west. Milford's anger had settled into a cool determination,
and he walked easier, not so hard upon the ground. He began to notice
more things, a cat sitting at a window, looking out upon the narrow
world, a boy with a goat harnessed to a wagon, a farmer who starved his
boarders, hauling veal to the railway, to be shipped to town. He fell in
with a tramp and divided smoking tobacco with him. They strolled along
together.

"Beautiful country to walk through," said Milford.

"That's no lie," said the tramp.

"But all countries are about the same when times are hard, I should
think," Milford remarked.

"That's no pipe," said the tramp.

"They tell us, however, that we are to have better times."

"They are smokin'," said the tramp.

Their roads separated, and they parted company. The sun was down when
Milford reached the village. It was an easy matter to find Mulligan's
saloon. One of the oldest citizens pointed it out. Mulligan was
half-dozing behind his bar. Several men were at a table, playing cards.
Milford made short work of his introduction. He told his story. There
was but one way to get even. Mulligan laughed. That sort of revenge
appealed to his Irish heart. He would give lessons, and it should not
cost a cent. He put out his whisky bottle. His face beamed. He was glad
to meet a civilized man. The very fact that Milford had come on such a
mission was a proof of an improvement in the country.

"Dorsey," he said. "Dorsey. He can't box; I never heard of him. Well,
we'll make a jelly out of his face."

They went out to supper together. "This man has heard of me and has come
miles to get lessons," said Mulligan to the tavern keeper.

They boxed till late at night and shook hands warmly at parting.
Earnestness is genius, and when Milford set out for home, the moon on
his right shoulder, he felt that he had made surprising progress. It was
nearly daylight when he reached the end of his journey. The hired man
was going out to the barn.

"You are born to be a great man," said Mitchell. "The cards are shuffled
and cut that way and you can't help it. What are you goin' to do now?"

"I'm going to sleep for a few hours and then get to work."

"When are you goin' to take another lesson?"

"Day after to-morrow."

"Ain't that feller a bird?"

"He understands his business."

"About when do you think you can tackle your job again?"

"Not till I have learned how. I'm going to get some gloves and have you
box with me between times."

He went into the house and lay down, and when Mitchell came in he was
asleep with his head on his fist.




CHAPTER XIV.

PEEPED IN AT HIM.


Blakemore came out on Sunday morning, snapping his watch and complaining
against the pall-bearing march of time. He was full of business. His
pockets were stuffed with papers. He made figures on the backs of
envelopes as he sat at the table. He asked after Milford. His wife said
that the place had somehow lost its charm for Mr. Milford. Mrs. Goodwin
and Miss Strand had seen him in the road. Mrs. Stuvic, standing near,
pressed her lips close together. She shook her head. She did not
understand him, she declared. Lately he had been seen in Antioch. She
did not know what business could have taken him there.

"You may not be supposed to know," said George, making his figures.

"Now you keep still," she replied. "I am supposed to know more than you
think for. I wasn't born yesterday, and I'm goin' to live longer than
any of you, I tell you that."

"It's very natural for us to expect every one else to die," said George.
"It's a pretty hard matter to picture one's self as dead. But the old
fellow is coming along yonder whetting his scythe as he comes."

"George," said his wife, "don't talk to her that way."

"Oh, let him talk," the old woman spoke up. "I don't care what he says.
Goes in at one ear and comes out at the other, with me. I'll live to see
him cold, I'll tell you that."

"Oh, please don't talk that way, Mrs. Stuvic; you give me the shudders.
By the way, Mr. Dorsey has gone back to town, hasn't he?"

"Yes," Mrs. Stuvic answered. "And he owes me, too."

"That's what you say about everybody," George declared. "You'll be
saying it about me, next."

"Well, you did owe me till to-day; and see that you don't do it again.
But that feller Dorsey'll pay. He'll be back again in about two weeks.
He says I've got the finest place in the county."

"The 'peach,'" George whispered, as Mrs. Goodwin and Gunhild came into
the dining-room. His wife pulled at him. The boy wanted to know what he
had said. For a wonder he had not heard. His mind was among the green
apples in the orchard. George bowed to the ladies and began to tell them
about the great improvement in business. The banks had plenty of money
to lend. Real estate, the true pulse of the times, had begun to throb
with a new life. Mrs. Goodwin did not think that there had been any
improvement. The Doctor had written that money was scarce. Every one
complained of slow collections. George asked the Norwegian if there were
any sale for pictures.

"There is no sale for mine," she answered. "I do not expect to sell
any."

"Then," said George, "it's a waste of time to paint them."

"I do not paint," the girl replied. "My ambition was not dressed in
colors."

Mrs. Goodwin smiled upon her, and Mrs. Blakemore drew her husband's
attention to what she termed the bright aptness of the remark. George
said that it did not make any difference whether art was done with a
brush or pencil, it was a waste of time if it failed to sell; and
hereupon Mrs. Stuvic began to sniff as a preliminary to an important
statement.

"A man boarded with me a while last winter that could knock 'em all out
when it comes to makin' pictures with a pen," she said. "He drew a bird
without takin' his pen up from the paper, and it looked for all the
world like it was flyin'. But when that was said all was said. He wan't
no manner account. He went away owin' me. Now, what does he want to go
to Antioch for? I'd just like for somebody to tell me that."

"The man that drew the bird?" George spoke up.

"Oh, you keep still. I mean Milford."

"Probably the woman he's been working for so hard has moved into the
neighborhood," said George. Mrs. Stuvic declared that you never could
tell what a man was working for. No man was worth trusting. She knew;
she had tried them. Milford was no better than the rest of them. Why
didn't he explain himself? Why didn't he stand out where every one could
see him? She had defended him. She was getting tired of it. He had not
rewarded her with his confidence. He came a stranger and had been a
stranger ever since. One of these days he might set fire to the house
and run away.

"You shall not talk about him so," the girl declared. "No one shall
abuse him."

"Good for you," Mrs. Stuvic cried. "I've been fightin' his battles all
along and I'm glad to get some help. Why, she looks like a cat, don't
she? And it's what I like to see, I tell you. But it's usually the way;
a man works for one woman and is took up for and defended by another."

"He is not working for any woman, madam," said Gunhild. "No woman has
any claim on him."

Mrs. Blakemore shook her head. "With that dark, handsome face it would
be difficult long to escape the claim of a woman."

"Come off," said George. "I don't see anything so killing about him."

"Men never see killing features in man," his wife replied. "They are
left for softer eyes to discover."

"Oh," he rejoined, looking worriedly at her.

"The 'peach,'" she whispered. "Am I to hear that again?"

He scratched upon an envelope and handed to her the words: "I give in.
Let us call it even and quits."

Mrs. Goodwin looked at Gunhild as if by a new light. Next in importance
to the discovery of genius itself, is the discovery that genius is
picking its way along the briary path of love, lifting a thorny bough in
bloom to peep blushingly from a hiding place, or boldly to tear through
the brambles out into the open, and in honest resentment defy the
wondering gaze of the common eye. It would be a pretty sight to see this
girl in love, the woman mused. She did not wish to see her married to a
man who labored in a field; but it would be delicious to see her love
him and hating herself for it, fighting a rosy battle with her heart.
There was no romance in loving an "available" man; there was no
suffering in it, and how empty was a love that did not swallow a
midnight sob! She asked Gunhild to walk out into the woods with her.
They crossed a low, marshy place where pickerel split the trashy water
in the spring of the year, and strolled up a slope into the woods. They
gathered flowers, talking of things that interested neither of them;
they found an old log covered with moss and here they sat down to rest.
It was always sad to feel that the summer would soon be gone, the
elderly woman said, gazing at a soldierly mullein stalk, nodding its
yellow head. More summers were coming, and the leaves and the flowers
would be the same, the grass as green, the birds as full of happy life;
but the heart could not be turned back to live over the hours and the
days--only, in dreaming, in reminders of the time forever gone. To the
youthful, two summers are twins; to the older, they are relatives; to
the aged, strangers.

"You make me sad when you talk that way," said the girl.

"My dear child, a sadness to-day may be food for sweet reflection in the
future. Indeed, it would even be well for you to suffer now."

"But I do not want to suffer. I do not see the need of it."

"My dear, suffering prepares us for the better life. It makes us more
thankful."

"I do not know that," she said with energy. "Sometimes it may harden us.
We may be kept from food so long that we have no manners when we come to
the table."

"Gunhild, that is a very good remark--a thoughtful remark, true in the
main, but not illustrative of the point I wish to make. But you are so
full of hope that--"

"Full of hope, madam?"

"Yes, the hope that rises from health and strength. You have so much to
look forward to. You might make a brilliant match."

"Then I must hope that sometime I may sell myself?"

"Oh, no, no. I didn't mean that. I mean that you have prospects. Shall I
be plain? You have the prospects of loving one man and marrying another.
That is called a brilliant match, I believe. Or, at least, it is a
feature of nearly all brilliant matches. Don't you think so?"

"I am not supposed to know, madam."

"Not even to please me?"

"Oh, if it please you, I am supposed to know everything."

"Good. Then tell me what you know about Mr. Milford. You understand that
it is my mission to find interest in nearly all--well, I might say, odd
persons. You have met him when I was not with you. And he must have
told you something."

"He has told me nothing that I can repeat."

"Oh, is it that bad?"

"Is what that bad, Mrs. Goodwin? I do not understand what you mean by
that bad. Perhaps what he told me did not make enough impression to be
remembered."

"But didn't he say things you did not remember, but continued to feel?"

"Yes, I believe so. You know that I do not understand men very well. I
do not understand any one very well. They make remarks about him and say
that he is mysterious, but he is plainer to me than any one. Somehow I
feel with him. He has had a hard life, I think, and that brings him
closer to me."

"Ah, my dear, the suffering I spoke of just now."

"But," the girl added, "I do not know that his hard life has made him
any better."

"Perhaps not. But it must have made him more thoughtful. After all, I'm
not so much interested in him. He is one of the characters that throw a
side-light on our lives. He can never take an essential part in our
affairs. Do you think so?"

"I must again say that I do not understand."

"Why, don't you know that we meet many persons, and become quite well
acquainted with them, and yet never feel that they belong to our
atmosphere? They are not necessary to the story of our lives, so to
speak, and yet that atmosphere of which they are not really a part,
would not be wholly complete without them. They stand ready for our
side talks; sometimes they even flip a sentiment at us. We catch it,
trim it with ribbons and hand it back. They keep it; we forget. The
Blakemores are such persons. We may never see them again--may almost
wholly forget them, and yet something that we have said may influence
their lives. And perhaps to Mr. Milford, we are but side-lights. He may
soon be in his saddle again, forgetting that he ever knew us. But are we
to forget him? Has his light been strong enough to dazzle us?"

"I shall not forget him, madam."

"Then he may have made himself essential to the story of your life."

"He has made himself a part of my recollection."

"No more than that? Sometimes we recall because it is no trouble, and
sometimes we remember with pain. You know, Gunhild, that I think a great
deal of you."

"I can never forget that. It is an obligation--"

"Now, my child, I don't want you to look at it that way. You must not.
What I have done has given me pleasure. And if I deserve any reward, it
is--well, frankness."

"You deserve more than that--gratitude."

"Then let frankness be an expression of gratitude. Are you in love with
that man?"

"Madam, a long time ago I used to slip to the door of the dining-room of
the little hotel in the West and peep in at him. They said he was bad,
that he would kill; but he came like a cavalier, with his spurs
jingling, and fascinated me. I felt that my own spirit if turned loose
would be as wild as his, for had not my forefathers fought on the sea
till the waves were bloody about them, and had they not dashed madly
into wild lands? I peeped in at him; I did not speak to him; but I
watched for his coming. And late at night I have lain awake to hear his
wild song in the bar-room, just below me. One day I met him in the
passage-way, and looked into his eyes, with my heart in my own, I
feared; and I did not see him again till I came out here. I did not know
his name. They called him Hell-in-the-Mud."

Mrs. Goodwin did not remain quiet to hear the story. With many
exclamations, she walked up and down, sometimes with her back toward the
girl sitting on the log, her hands in her lap, lying dreamily; sometimes
she wheeled about and stood wide of eye and with mouth open.

"Well, who ever heard of the like? But are you sure he is the same man?"

"Yes. I did not remind him that I had seen him there. He said that he
had seen me--he said--"

"But what did he say? You must keep nothing back now. It would spoil
everything. What did he say?"

"He said that he got on his horse and galloped away--from me. He said
that he did not want to be--be tangled up."

"Well, well, who ever heard of such a thing? And you have met out here.
Has he asked you to marry him?"

"No, and I do not think he will. I must not marry him."

"But you love him."

"Bitterly, madam."

"Oh, isn't that sweet--I mean, how peculiar a situation it is! No, you
can't think of marrying him. It wouldn't at all do. I don't believe he
could live tied down to one place. It is a first love and must live only
as a romance. It will help you in your art. It will be an inspiration to
all your after life, a poem to recite to your daughter in the years to
come. I had one, my dear. He was wild, wholly impossible, you might say.
And I was foolish enough to have married him, but my mother--she married
me to the dear Doctor. And how fortunate it was for both of us, I mean
for me and for Arthur! He threw himself away."

"But he might not have thrown himself away,

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