On the porch stood Mrs. Welsh, supported by Ed Brann.
"She's all right, I tell you. He ain't hurt much, either; just stunned a little, that's all."
"Maud! child!" cried the mother, as Maud appeared out of the crowd, followed by a bevy of girls.
"Mother,I'mall right!" she said as gayly as she could, running into the trembling arms outstretched toward her; "but, oh, poor Albert!"
After they disappeared into the house the crowd dispersed. Brann went off by way of the alley; he was not prepared to meet their questions; but he met his brother and several others in his store.
"Now, what in——you been up to?" was the fraternal greeting.
"Nothing."
"Welting a man on the head with a whip-stock ain't anything, hey?"
"I didn't touch him. We was racing, and he run into the culvert."
"Hank says he saw you strike——"
"He lies! I was strikin' the horse to make him break."
"Oh, yeh was!" sneered the older man. "Well, I hope you understand that this'll ruin us in this town. If you didn't strike him, they'll say you run him into the culvert, 'n' every man,woman, 'n' child'll be down on you, andmef'r bein' related to you. They all know how you feel towards him for cuttin' you out with Maud Welsh."
"Oh, don't bear down on him too hard, Joe. He didn't mean t' do any harm," said Troutt, who had followed Ed down to the store. "I guess the young feller'll come out all right. Just go kind o' easy till we see how he comes out. If he dies, why, it'll haf t' be looked into."
Ed turned pale and swallowed hastily. "If he should die!" He would be a murderer; he knew that hate was in his heart. He shivered again as he remembered the man's white face with the bright red stream flowing down behind his ear and over his cheek. It almost seemed to him that hehadstruck him, so close had the accident followed upon the fall of his whip.
Albert sank into a feverish sleep that night, with a vague perception of four figures in the room—Maud, her mother, Hartley, and the young doctor. When he awoke fully in the morning his head felt prodigiously hot and heavy.
It was early dawn, and the lamp was burning brightly. Outside, a man's feet could be heard on the squealing snow—a sound whichtold how still and cold it was. A team passed with a jingle of bells.
Albert raised his head and looked about. Hartley was lying on the sofa, rolled up in his overcoat and some extra quilts. He had lain down at last, worn with watching. Albert felt a little weak, and fell back on his pillow, thinking about the strange night he had passed—a night more filled with strange happenings than the afternoon.
His sleep had been broken by the most vivid and exciting dreams, and through these visions had moved the figures of Hartley, the doctor, and Maud and her mother. He had a confused idea of the night, but a very clear idea of the afternoon. He could see the sidewalks lined with faces, the sun shining on the snow, the old sorrel's side-flung head and open mouth; the sleigh rose under him again, and he felt the reins burn through his hands.
As the light grew in the room his mind cleared, and he began to feel quite like himself again. He lifted his muscular arm and opened and shut his hand, saying aloud in his old boyish manner:
"I guess I'm all here."
"What's that?" called Hartley, rolling out of bed. "Did you ask for anything?"
"No—yes; gimme some water, Jim; my mouth is dry as a powder mill."
"How yeh feelin', anyway, pardner?" said Hartley, as he brought the water.
"First rate, Jim; I guess I'll be all right."
"Well, I guess you'd better keep quiet."
Albert rose partly, assisted by his friend, and drank from the glass a moment; then fell back on his pillow.
"I don't feel s' well when I sit up."
"Well, don't, then; stay right there where you are. Oh-um!" gaped Hartley, stretching himself; "it's about time f'r breakfast, I guess. Want y'r hands washed and y'r hair combed?"
"I guess I ain't reduced tothatyet."
"Well, I guess y'be, old man. Now keepquiet, or have I got t' make yeh?" he asked in a threatening tone which made Albert smile. He wondered if Hartley hadn't been sitting up most of the night; but if he had, he showed little effect of it, for he began to sing a comic song as he pulled on his boots.
He threw on his coat next, and went out into the kitchen, returning soon with some hot water, with which he began to bathe the wounded boy's face and hands as tenderly as a woman.
"There; now I guess you're in shape f'r grub—feel any like grub?—Come in," he called in answer to a knock on the door.
Mrs. Welsh entered.
"How is he?" she whispered anxiously.
"Oh, I'm all right," cried Albert. "Bring me a plate of pancakes, quick!"
Mrs. Welsh turned to Hartley with a startled expression, but Hartley's grin assured her.
"I'm glad to find you so much better," she said, going to his bedside. "I've hardly slep', I was so much worried about you."
It was very sweet to feel her fingers in his hair, as his mother would have caressed him.
"I guess I hadn't better take off the bandages till the doctor comes, if you're comfortable.—Your breakfast is ready, Mr. Hartley, and I'll bring something for Albert."
Another knock a few minutes later, and Maud entered with a platter, followed closely by her mother, who carried some tea and milk.
Maud came forward timidly, but when he turned his eyes on her and said in a cheery voice, "Good morning, Miss Welsh!" she flamed out in rosy color and recoiled. She had expected to see him pale, dull-eyed, and with a weak voice, but there was little to indicate invalidism in his firm greeting. She gave place to Mrs. Welsh, who prepared his breakfast. She was smitten dumb by this turn of affairs; she hardly dared look at him as he sat propped up in bed. The crimson trimming on his shirt-front seemed like streams of blood; his head, swathed in bandages, made her shudder. But aside from these few suggestions of wounding, there was little of the horror of the previous day left. He did not look so pale and worn as the girl herself.
However, though he was feeling absurdlywell, there was a good deal of bravado in his tone and manner, for he ate but little, and soon sank back on the bed.
"I feel better when my head is low," he explained in a faint voice.
"Can't I do something?" asked the girl, her courage reviving as she saw how ill and faint he really was. His eyes were closed and he looked the invalid now.
"I guess you better write to his folks."
"No; don't do that," he said, opening his eyes; "it will only do them harm an' me no good. I'll be all right in a few days. You needn't waste your time on me; Hartley'll wait on me."
"Mr. Lohr, how can you say such cruel——"
"Don't mind him now," said Mrs. Welsh. "I'm his mother now, and he's goin' to do just as I tell him to—ain't you, Albert?"
He dropped his eyelids in assent, and went off in a doze. It was all very pleasant to be thus treated. Hartley was devotion itself, and the doctor removed his bandages with the care and deliberation of a man with a moderate practice; besides, he considered Albert a personal friend.
Hartley, after the doctor had gone, said with some hesitation:
"Well, now, pard, Ioughtto go out and see a couple o' fellows I promised t' meet this morning."
"All right, Jim; all right. You go rightahead on business; I'm goin' t' sleep, anyway, and I'll be all right in a day or two."
"Well, I will; but I'll run in every hour 'r two and see if you don't want something. You're in good hands, anyway, when I'm gone."
"Won't you read to me?" pleaded Albert in the afternoon, when Maud came in with her mother to brush up the room. "It's getting rather slow business layin' here like this. Course I can't ask Jim to stay and read all the time, and he's a bad reader, anyway; won't you?"
"Shall I, mother?"
"Why, of course, Maud!"
So Maud got a book, and sat down over by the stove, quite distant from the bed, and read to him from "The Lady of the Lake," while the mother, like a piece of tireless machinery, moved about the house at the never-ending succession of petty drudgeries which wear the heart and soul out of so many wives and mothers, making life to them a pilgrimage from stove to pantry, from pantry to cellar, and from cellar to garret—a life that deadens and destroys, coarsens and narrows, till the flesh and bones are warped to the expression of the wronged and cheated soul.
Albert's selfishness was in a way excusable. He enjoyed beyond measure the sound of the girl's soft voice and the sight of her gracefulhead bent over the page. He lay, looking and listening dreamily, till the voice and the sunlit head were lost in his deep, sweet sleep.
The girl sat with closed book, looking at his face as he slept. It was a curious study to her, a young man—thisyoung man, asleep. His brown lashes lay on his cheek; his facial lines were as placid as a child's. As she looked she gained courage to go over softly and peer down on him. How boyish he seemed! How little to be feared! How innocent, after all!
As she studied him she thought of him the day before, with closed eyes, a ghastly stream of blood flowing down and soaking her dress. She shuddered. His hands, clean and strong and white, lay out on the coverlet, loose and open, the fingers fallen into graceful lines. Abruptly, a boy outside gave a shout, and she leaped away with a sudden spring that left her pale and breathless. As she paused in the door and looked back at the undisturbed sleeper, she smiled, and the pink came back into her thin face.
Albert's superb young blood began to assert itself, and on the afternoon of the second day he was able to sit in his rocking chair before the fire and read a little, though he professed that his eyes were not strong, in order that Maud should read for him. This she did as often as she could leave her other work, which was "not half often enough," the invalid grumbled.
"More than you deserve," she found courage to say.
Hartley let nothing interfere with the book business, and the popular sympathy for Albert he coined into dollars remorselessly.
"You take it easy," he kept saying to his partner; "don't you worry—your pay goes on just the same. You're doing well right where you are. By jinks! biggest piece o' luck," he went on, half in earnest. "Why, I can't turn around without taking an order—fact! Turned in a book on the livery bill—that's all right. We'll make a clear hundred dollars out o' that little bump o' yours."
"Little bump! Say, now, that's——"
"Keep it up—put it on! Don't get up in a hurry. I don't need you to canvass, and I guess you enjoy this 'bout as well." He ended with a sly wink and cough.
Yes; the convalescence was delicious; afterward it grew to be one of the sweetest weeks of his life. Maud reading to him, bringing his food, and singing for him—yes; all that marred it was the stream of people who came to inquire how he was getting along. The sympathy was largely genuine, as Hartley could attest, but it bored the invalid. He had rather be left in quiet with Walter Scott and Maud, the drone of the long descriptive passages being a sure soporific.
He did not say, as an older person might, that she was not to be held accountable for what she did under the stress and tumult ofthat day; but he unconsciously did so regard her actions, led to do so by the changed conditions. In the light of common day it was hurrying to be a dream.
At the end of a week he was quite himself again, though he still had difficulty in wearing his hat. It was not till the second Sunday after the accident that he appeared in the dining room for the first time, with a large traveling cap concealing the suggestive bandages. He looked pale and thin, but his eyes danced with joy.
Maud's eyes dilated with instant solicitude. The rest sprang up in surprise, with shouts of delight, as hearty as brethren.
"Ginger! I'm glad t' see yeh!" said Troutt, so sincerely that he looked almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.
"Oh, I'm on deck again."
Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a significant little pause—a pause which grew painful till Albert turned and saw Brann, and called out:
"Hello, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."
As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and embarrassment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering some poor apology.
"Hope y' don't blame me."
"Of course not—fortunes o' war. Nobodyto blame; just my carelessness.—Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into the seat of honor at the head of the table.
Then the rest laughed and took seats, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He had not finished yet.
"I'm mighty glad yeh don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want 'o say the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it'sall right."
Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He knew this, coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a ready apologist; it was a terrible victory, and he made it as easy for his rival as possible.
"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of it—that is, turn in a couple o' Blaine's 'Twenty Years' on the bill."
Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been prodigious, but he had snatched victory out of defeat; his better nature had conquered.
No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring, people said his love for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could rise out of the barbaric in his love and hate was heroic.
When Albert went to ride again, it was onmelting snow, with the slowest horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden moment pass now without hearing it ring full, and she did not dare to think how short this day of happiness might be.
At the end of the fifth week there was a suspicion of spring in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. February was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of spring in the rapidly melting snow which still lay on the hills and under the cedars and tamaracks in the swamps. Patches of green grass, appearing on the sunny side of the road where the snow had melted, led to predictions of spring from the loafers beginning to sun themselves on the salt-barrels and shoe-boxes outside the stores.
A group sitting about the blacksmith shop were talking it.
"It's an early seedin'—now mark my words," said Troutt, as he threw his knife into the soft ground at his feet. "The sun is crossing the line earlier this spring than it did last."
"Yes; an' I heard a crow to-day makin' that kind of a—a spring noise that kind o'—I d' know what—kind o' goes all through a feller."
"And there's Uncle Sweeney, an' that settlesit; spring's comin' sure!" said Troutt, pointing at an old man much bent, hobbling down the street like a symbolic figure of the old year.
"Whenhegits out the frogs ain't fur behind."
"We'll be gittin' on to the ground by next Monday," said Sam Dingley to a crowd who were seated on the newly painted harrows and seeders which "Svend & Johnson" had got out ready for the spring trade. "Svend & Johnson's Agricultural Implement Depot" was on the north side of the street, and on a spring day the yard was one of the pleasantest loafing places that could be imagined, especially if one wished company.
Albert wished to be alone. Something in the touch and tone of this spring afternoon made him restless and full of strange thoughts. He took his way out along the road which followed the river bank, and in the outskirts of the village threw himself down on a bank of grass which the snows had protected, and which had already a tinge of green because of its wealth of sun.
The willows had thrown out their tiny light green flags, though their roots were under the ice, and some of the hard-wood twigs were tinged with red. There was a faint, peculiar but powerful odor of uncovered earth in the air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist magnetic hand.
The boy absorbed the light and heat of thesun as some wild thing might, his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast; he lay as still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows passed, twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful longing and a realization of the flight of time.
He could have wept, he could have sung; he only shuddered and lay silent under the stress of that strange, sweet passion that quickened his heart, deepened his eyes, and made his breath come and go with a quivering sound. Across the dazzling blue arch of the sky the crow flapped, sending down his prophetic, jubilant note; the wind, as soft and sweet as April, stirred in his hair; the hills, deep in their dusky blue, seemed miles away; and the voices of the care-free skaters on the melting ice of the river below came to the ear subdued to a unity with the scene.
Suddenly a fear seized upon the boy—a horror! Life, life was passing! Life that can be lived only once, and lost, is lost forever! Life, that fatal gift of the Invisible Powers to man—a path, with youth and joy and hope at its eastern gate, and despair, regret, and death at its low western portal!
The boy caught a glimpse of his real significance—agnat, a speck in the sun: a boy facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy. He leaped up, clasping his hands.
"Oh, Imustwork! I mustn't stay here; I must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am doing nothing, being nothing!"
His face, as pale as death, absolutely shone with his passionate resolution, and his hands were clinched in a silent, inarticulate desire.
But on his way back he met the jocund party of skaters going home from the river, and with the easy shift and change of youth joined in their ringing laughter. The weird power of the wind's voice was gone, and he was the unthinking boy again; but the problem was only put off, not solved.
He had a suspicion of it one night when Hartley said: "Well, pardner, we're getting 'most ready to pull out. Some way I always get restless when these warm days begin. Want 'o be moving some way."
This was as sentimental as Hartley ever got; or, if he ever felt more sentiment, he concealed it carefully.
"I s'pose it must 'a' been in spring that those old chaps, on their steeds and in their steel shirts, started out for the Holy Land or to rescue some damsel, hey?" he ended, with a grin. "Now, that's the way I feel—just like striking out for, say, Oshkosh. This has been a big strike here, sure's you live; that littlepiece of lofty tumbling was a big boom, and no mistake. Why, your share o' this campaign will be a hundred and twenty dollars sure."
"More'n I've earned," replied Bert.
"No, it ain't. You've done your duty like a man. Done as much in your way as I have. Now, if you want to try another county with me, say so. I'll make a thousand dollars this year out o' this thing."
"I guess I'll go back to school."
"All right; don't blame you at all."
"I guess, with what I can earn for father, I can pull through the year. Imustget back. I'm awfully obliged to you, Jim."
"That'll do on that," said Hartley shortly; "you don't owe me anything. We'll finish delivery to-morrow, and be ready to pull out on Friday or Sat."
There was an acute pain in Albert's breast somewhere; he had not analyzed his case at all, and did not now, but the idea of going affected him strongly. It had been so pleasant, that daily return to a lovely girlish presence.
"Yes, sir," Hartley was going on; "I'm going to just quietly leave a book on her center table. I don't know as it'll interest her much, but it'll show we appreciate the grub, and so on. By jinks! You don't seem to realize what a worker that woman is. Up five o'clock in the morning—By the way, you've been goingaround with the girl a good deal, and she's introduced you to some first-rate sales; now, if you want 'o leave her a little something, make it a morocco copy, and charge it to the firm."
Albert knew that he meant well, but he couldn't, somehow, help saying ironically:
"Thanks; but I guessonecopy of Blaine's 'Twenty Years' will be enough in the house, especially——"
"Well, give her anything you please, and charge it up to the firm. I don't insist on Blaine; only suggested that because——"
"I guess I can stand the expense of my own."
"I didn't say you couldn't, man! ButIwant a hand in this thing. Don't be so turrible keen t' snap a feller up," said Hartley, turning on him. "What the thunder is the matter of you anyway? I like the girl, and she's been good to us all round; she tended you like an angel——"
"There, there! That's enough o' that," put in Albert hastily. "F'r God's sake don't whang away on that string forever, as if I didn't know it!"
Hartley stared at him as he turned away.
"Well, by jinks! Whatisthe matter o' you?"
He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was homesick.
Albert was beginning to have a vagueunder-consciousness of his real feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one point ceaselessly—a dreary prospect, in which the slender girl-figure had no place—and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank, and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing.
When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final skating party down on the river, he was as far from a solution as ever. He had avoided all reference to their separation, and now he stood as a man might at the parting of two paths, saying: "I will not choose; I can not choose. I will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me."
They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be said; the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak.
"It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here—" she paused and looked up with a daring smile—"seems as if you'd been here always."
It was about half past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was downtown finishing up his business.
Albert's throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous; the girl'ssmile died away as he took a seat without looking at her.
"Well, Maud, I suppose—you know—we're going away to-morrow."
"Oh, must you? But you'll come back?"
"I don't expect to—I don't see how."
"Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl, her face as white as silver, her clasped hands straining.
"I must—I must!" he muttered, not looking at her, not daring to see her face.
"Oh, what can I do—wedo, without you! I can't bear it!"
She stopped and sank back into a chair, her breath coming heavily from her twitching lips, the unnoticed tears falling from her staring, pitiful, wild, appealing eyes, her hands nervously twisting her gloves.
There was a long silence. Each was undergoing a self-revelation; each was trying to face a future without the other.
"I must go!" he repeated aimlessly, mechanically.
The girl's heavy breathing deepened into a wild little moaning sound, inexpressibly pitiful, her hungry eyes fixed on his face. She gave way first, and flung herself down upon her knees at his side, her hands seeking his neck.
"Albert, I can'tlivewithout you now! Take me with you! Don't leave me!"
He stooped suddenly and took her in his arms, raised her, and kissed her hair.
"I didn't mean it, Maud; I'll never leave you—never! Don't cry!"
She drew his face down to hers and kissed it, then turned her face to his breast and laughed and cried. There was a silence; then joy and confidence came back again.
"I know now what you meant," the girl cried gayly, raising herself and looking into his face; "you were trying to scare me, and make me show how much I—cared for you—first!" There was a soft smile on her lips and a tender light in her eyes. "But I don't mind it."
"I guess I didn't know myself what I meant," he said, with a grave smile.
When Mrs. Welsh came in, they were sitting on the sofa, talking in low voices of their future. He was grave and subdued, while she was radiant with love and hope. The future had no terrors for her. All plans were good and successful now. But the boy unconsciously felt the gravity of life somehow deepened by his love.
"Why, Maud!" Mrs. Welsh exclaimed, "what is——"
"O mother, I'm so happy—just as happy as a bird!" she cried, rushing into her mother's arms.
"Why, why!—what is it? You're crying, dear!"
"No, I'm not; I'm laughing—see!"
Mrs. Welsh turned her dim eyes on the girl,who shook the tears from her lashes with the action of a bird shaking water from its wings. She seemed to shake off her trouble at the same moment. Mrs. Welsh understood perfectly.
"I'm very glad, too, dearie," she said simply, looking at the young man with motherly love irradiating her worn face. Albert went to her, and she kissed him, while the happy girl put her arms about them both in an ecstatic hug.
"Nowyou've got a son, mother."
"But I've lost a daughter—my first-born."
"Oh, wait till you hear our plans!"
"He's going to settle down here—aren't you, Albert?"
Then they sat down, all three, and had a sweet, intimate talk of an hour, full of plans and hopes and confidences.
At last he kissed the radiant girl good night and, going into his own room, sat down by the stove and, watching the flicker of the flames through the chinks, pondered on the change that had come into his life.
Already he sighed with the stress of care, the press of thought, which came upon him. The longing uneasiness of the boy had given place to another unrest—the unrest of the man who must face the world in earnest now, planning for food and shelter; and all plans included Maud.
To go back to school was out of the question. To expect help from his father, overworkedand burdened with debt, was impossible. He must go to work, and go to work to aidher. A living must be wrung from this town. All the home and all the property Mrs. Welsh had were here, and wherever Maud went the mother must follow; she could not live without her.
He was in the midst of the turmoil when Hartley came in, humming the "Mulligan Guards."
"In the dark, hey?"
"Completely in the dark."
"Well, light up, light up!"
"I'm trying to."
"What the deuce do you mean by that tone? What's been going on here since my absence?"
Albert did not reply, and Hartley shuffled about after a match, lighted the lamp, threw his coat and hat in the corner, and then said:
"Well, I've got everything straightened up. Been freezing out old Daggett; the old skeesix has been promisin' f'r a week, and I just said, 'Old man, I'll camp right down with you here till you fork over,' and he did. By the way, everybody I talked with to-day about leaving said, 'What's Lohr going to do with that girl?' I told 'em I didn't know; do you? It seems you've been thicker'n I supposed."
"I'm going to marry her," said Albert calmly, but his voice sounded strangely alien.
"What's that?" yelled Hartley.
"Sh! don't raise the neighbors. I'm going to marry her." He spoke quietly, but there was a peculiar numbness creeping over him.
"Well, by jinks! When? Say, looky here! Well, I swanny!" exclaimed Hartley helplessly. "When?"
"Right away; some time this summer—June, maybe."
Hartley thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, stretched out his legs, and stared at his friend in vast amaze.
"You're givin' me guff!"
"I'm in dead earnest."
"I thought you was going through college all so fast?"
"Well, I've made up my mind it ain't much use to try," replied Albert listlessly.
"What y' goin' t' do here, or are y' goin' t' take the girl away with yeh?"
"She can't leave her mother. We'll run this boarding house for the present. I'll try for the principalship of the school here. Raff is going to resign, he says; if I can't get that, I'll get into a law office here. Don't worry about me."
"But why go into this so quick? Why not put it off fifteen or twenty years?" asked Hartley, trying to get back to cheerful voice.
"What would be the use? At the end of a year I'd be just about as poor as I am now."
"Can't y'r father step in and help you?"
"No. There are three boys and two girls, all younger than I, to be looked out for, andhe has all he can carry. Besides,sheneeds me right here and right now. Two delicate women struggling along; suppose one of 'em should fall sick? I tell you they need me, and if I can do anything to make life easy, or easier, I'm going t' do it. Besides," he ended in a peculiar tone, "we don't feel as if we could live apart much longer."
"But, great Scott! man, you can't——"
"Now, hold on, Jim! I've thought this thing all over, and I've made up my mind. It ain't any use to go on talking about it. What good would it do me to go to school another year, come out without a dollar, and no more fitted for earning a living for her than I am now? And, besides all that, I couldn't draw a free breath thinking of her here workin' away to keep things moving, liable at any minute to break down."
Hartley gazed at him in despair, and with something like awe. It was a tremendous transformation in the young, ambitious student. He felt in a way responsible for the calamity, and that he ought to use every effort to bring the boy to his senses.
Like most men in America, and especially Western men, he still clung to the idea that a man was entirely responsible for his success or failure in life. He had not admitted that conditions of society might be so adverse that only men of most exceptional endowments, and willing and able to master many of the best anddeepest and most sacred of their inspirations and impulses, could succeed.
Of the score of specially promising young fellows who had been with him at school, seventeen had dropped out and down. Most of them had married and gone back to farming, or to earn a precarious living in the small, dull towns where farmers trade and traders farm. Conditions were too adverse; they simply weakened and slipped slowly back into dullness and an oxlike or else a fretful patience. Thinking of these men, and thinking their failure due to themselves alone, Hartley could not endure the idea of his friend adding one more to the list of failures. He sprang up at last.
"Say, Bert, you might just as well hang y'rself, and done with it! Why, it's suicide! I can't allow it. I started in at college bravely, and failed because I'd let it go too long. I couldn't study—couldn't get down to it; but you—why, old man, I'dbeton you!" He had a tremor in his voice. "I hate like thunder to see you give up your plans. Say, you can't afford to do this; it's too much to pay."
"No, it ain't."
"I say it is. What do you get, in——"
"I think so much o' her that——"
"Oh, nonsense! You'd get over this in a week."
"Jim!" called Albert warningly, sharply.
"All right," said Jim, in the tone of a manwho felt that it was all wrong—"all right; but the time'll come when you'll wish I'd—You ain't doin' the girl enough good to make up for the harm you're doin' yourself." He broke off again, and said in a tone of peculiar meaning: "I'm done. I'm all through, and I c'n see you're through with Jim Hartley. Why, Bert, look here—No? All right!"
"Darn curious," he muttered to himself, "that boy should get caught just at this time, and not with some one o' those girls in Marion. Well, it's none o' my funeral," he ended, with a sigh; for it had stirred him to the bottom of his sunny nature, after all. A dozen times, as he lay there beside his equally sleepless companion, he started to say something more in deprecation of the step, but each time stifled the opening word into a groan.
It would not be true to say that love had come to Albert Lohr as a relaxing influence, but it had changed the direction of his energies so radically as to make his whole life seem weaker and lower. As long as his love-dreams went out toward a vague and ideal woman, supposedly higher and grander than himself, he was spurred on to face the terrible sheer escarpment of social eminence; but when he met, by accident, the actual woman who was to inspire his future efforts, the difficulties he faced took on solid reality.
His aspirations fell to the earth, their wings clipped, and became, perforce, submissive beastsat the plow. The force that moved so much of his thought was transformed into other energy. Whether it were a wise step or not he did not know; he certainly knew it was right.
The table was very gay at dinner next day. Maud was standing at the highest point of her girlhood dreams. Her flushed face and shining eyes made her seem almost a child, and Hartley wondered at her, and relented a little in the face of such happiness. Her face was turned to Albert in an unconscious, beautiful way; she had nothing to conceal now.
Mrs. Welsh was happy, too, but a little tearful in an unobtrusive way. Troutt had his jokes, of course, not very delicate, but of good intention. In fact, they were as flags and trumpets to the young people. Mrs. Welsh had confided in him, telling him to be secret; but the finesse of his joking could not fail to reveal everything he knew.
But Maud cared little. She was filled with a sort of tender boldness; and Albert, in the delight of the hour, gave himself up wholly to a trust in the future and to the fragrance and music of love.
"They're gay as larks now," thought Hartley to himself, as he joined in the laughter; "but that won't help 'em any, ten years from now."
He could hardly speak next day as he shook hands at the station with his friend.
"Good-by, ol' man; I hope it'll come out allright, but I'm afraid—But there! I promised not to say anything about it. Good-by till we meet in Congress," he ended in a lamentable attempt at being funny.
"Can't you come to the wedding, Jim? We've decided on June. You see, they need a man around the house, so we—You'll come, won't you, old fellow? And don't mind my being a little crusty last night."
"Oh, yes; I'll come," Jim said, in a tone which concealed a desire to utter one more protest.
"It's no use; that ends him, sure's I'm a thief. He's jumped into a hole and pulled the hole in after him. A man can't marry a family like that at his age, and pull out of it. Hemay, but I doubt it. Well, as I remarked before, it's none o' my funeral so long ashe'ssatisfied."
But he said it with a painful lump in his throat, and he could not bring himself to feel that Albert's course was right, and felt himself to be somehow culpable in the case.
AN ALIEN IN THE PINES.
A manand a woman were pacing up and down the wintry station platform, waiting for a train. On every side the snow lay a stained and crumpled blanket, with here and there a light or a chimney to show the village sleeping beneath.
The sky was a purple-black hemisphere, out of which the stars glittered almost white. The wind came out of the west, cold but amiable; the cracked bell of a switch engine gurgled querulously at intervals, followed by the bumping of coupling freight cars; roosters were crowing, and sleepy train men were assembling in sullen silence.
The couple walked with arms locked like lovers, but the tones of their voices had the quality which comes after marriage. They were man and wife.
The woman's clear voice arose. "O Ed, isn't this delicious? What one misses by not getting up early!"
"Sleep, for instance," laughed her husband.
"Don't drag me down. You know what I mean. Let's get up early every morning while we're up here in the woods."
"Shouldn't wonder if we had to. There'll be a lot to do, and I want to get back to Chicago by the 1st of February."
"This is an experience! Isn't it still? When is our train due?"
"Due now; I think that is our headlight up the track."
As he spoke, an engine added its voice to the growing noise of the station, and drew solemnly down the frosty steel.
An eruption of shapeless forms of men from the depot filled the one general coach of the train. They nearly all were dressed in some sort of fur coat, and all had the look of men accustomed to outdoor life—powerful, loud-voiced, unrefined. They were, in fact, traveling men, business men, the owners of mills or timber. The stolid or patient oxlike faces of some Norwegian workmen, dressed in gay Mackinac jackets, were sprinkled about.
The young wife was a fine type of woman anywhere, but these surroundings made her seem very dainty and startlingly beautiful. Her husband had the fair skin of a city man, but his powerful shoulders and firm step denoted health and wholesome living. They were good to see as man and wife.
They soon felt the reaction to sleepiness which comes to those not accustomed to earlyrising, and the wife, soothed by the clank of the train, leaned her head on her husband's shoulder and dozed. He looked out upon the landscape, glad that his wife was not observing it. He did not know such desolation existed in Wisconsin.
On every side were the evidences of a ruined forest land. A landscape of flat wastes, of thinned and burned and uprooted trees. A desolate and apparently useless land.
Here and there a sawmill stood gray and sagging, surrounded by little cabins of unpainted wood, to testify to the time when great pines stood all about, and the ring of the swamper's axe was heard in the intervals of silence between the howls of a saw.
To the north the swells grew larger. Birch and tamarack swamps alternated with dry ridges on which an inferior pine still grew. The swamps were dense tangles of broken and uprooted trees. Slender pikelike stumps of fire-devastated firs rose here and there, black and grim skeletons of trees.
It was a land that had been sheared by the axe, torn by the winds, and blasted by fire.
Off to the west low blue ridges rose, marking the boundaries of the valley which had been washed out ages ago by water. After the floods it had sprung up to pine forests, and these in their turn had been sheared away by man. It lay now awaiting the plow and seeder of the intrepid pioneer.
Suddenly the wife roused up. "Why, we haven't had any breakfast!"
He smiled at her childish look of bewilderment. "I've been painfully aware of it for some time back. I've been suffering for food while you slept."
"Why didn't you get into the basket?"
"How could I, with you on my manly bosom?"
She colored up a little. They had not been married long, evidently.
They were soon eating a breakfast with the spirit of picnickers. Occasionally she looked out of the window.
"What a wild country!" she said. He did not emphasize its qualities to her; rather, he distracted her attention from the desolation.
The train roared round its curves, conforming with the general course of the river. On every hand were thickening signs of active lumber industry. They flashed by freight trains loaded with logs or lumber or ties. Mills in operation grew thicker.
The car echoed with the talk of lumber. A brisk man with a red mustache was exhibiting a model of a machine to cut certain parts of machinery out of "two by fours." Another was describing a new shingle mill he had just built.
A couple of elderly men, one a German, were discussing the tariff on lumber. The workmen mainly sat silent.
"It's all so strange!" the young wife said again and again.
"Yes, it isn't exactly the Lake Shore drive."
"I like it. I wish I could smell the pines."
"You'll have all the pines you can stand before we get back to Chicago."
"No, sir; I'm going to enjoy every moment of it; and you're going to let me help, you know—look over papers and all that. I'm the heiress, you must remember," she said wickedly.
"Well, we won't quarrel about that until we see how it all turns out. It may not be worth my time up here. I shall charge you roundly as your lawyer; depend on that."
The outlook grew more attractive as the train sped on. Old Mosinee rose, a fine rounded blue shape, on the left.
"Why, there's a mountain! I didn't know Wisconsin had such a mountain as that."
"Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle's estates only included that hill!"
The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green, was suitable to the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital, wholesome and very impressive.
From this point the land grew wilder—that is, more primeval: There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here and there, but the forest predominated. Theridges of pine foliages broke against the sky miles and miles in splendid sweep.
"This must be lovely in summer," the wife said, again and again, as they flashed by some lake set among the hills.
"It's fine now," he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. "I'd like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight."
"Oh, yes, we do," she replied, glad that something remained yet unexplained between them. "We feel just like men, only we haven't the strength of mind to demand a share of it with you."
"Yes, you feel it at this distance. You'd come back mighty quick the second night out."
She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window. "Just think of it—Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!"
He forbore to notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round."
When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight.
"Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!" she said.
"Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of battlemented stores?"
It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpypine ridges in haphazard fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town, and the railway station was the center. There was not an inch of painted board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.
It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and wild. The sky was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every hand.
"Oh, this is glorious—glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.
"I reckon you do."
"Oh, I'm so glad!"
As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.
"Hello, Ed!"
"Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. Mywife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled off an immense glove to shake hands all round.
"Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then, again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."
As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.
"Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.
"Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it," he said.
Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner wholesome. They beamed upon each other.
"It's going to be delightful," they said.
Ridgeley was a bachelor, and found his home at the hotel also. That night he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I imagine this is to be a searching investigation."
"You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."
As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of mill hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers in her husband's palm.
He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not half so bad as they sound."
Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley's office, waiting for the return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.
Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten her presence.
She could not but feel a deep admiration for his powerful frame and his quick, absorbed action as he moved about from his safe to his desk. He was a man of great force and ready decision.
Suddenly the door opened and a man entered. He had a sullen and bitter look on his thin, dark face. Ridgeley's quick eyes measured him, and his hand softly turned the key in his money drawer, and as he faced about he swung shut the door of the safe.
The stranger saw all this with eyes as keen as Ridgeley's. A cheerless and strange smile came upon his face.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "I'm low, but I ain't as low as that."
"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" asked Ridgeley. Mrs. Field half rose, and her heart beat terribly. She felt something tense and strange in the attitude of the two men.
But the man only said, "You can give me a job if you want to."
Ridgeley remained alert. He ran his eyes over the man's tall frame. He looked strong and intelligent, although his eyes were fevered and dull.
"What kind of a job?"
"Any kind that will take me out into the woods and keep me there," the man replied.
There was a self-accusing tone in his voice that Ridgeley felt.
"What's your object? You look like a man who could do something else. What brings you here?"
The man turned with a sudden resolution to punish himself. His voice expressed a terrible loathing.
"Whisky, that's what. It's a hell of a thing to say, but I can't let liquor alone when I can smell it. I'm no common hand, or I wouldn't be if I—But let that go. I can swing an axe, and I'm ready to work. That's enough. Now the question is, can you find a place for me?"
Ridgeley mused a little. The young fellow stood there, statuesque, rebellious.
Then Ridgeley said, "I guess I can help you out that much." He picked up a card and a pencil. "What shall I call you?"
"Oh, call me Williams; that ain't my name, but it'll do."
"What you been doing?"
"Everything part of the time, drinking therest. Was in a livery stable down at Wausau last week. It came over me, when I woke yesterday, that I was gone to hell if I stayed in town. So I struck out; and I don't care for myself, but I've got a woman to look out for—" He stopped abruptly. His recklessness of mood had its limits, after all.
Ridgeley penciled on a card. "Give this to the foreman of No. 6. The men over at the mill will show you the teams."
The man started toward the door with the card in his hand. He turned suddenly.
"One thing more. I want you to send ten dollars of my pay every two weeks to this address." He took an envelope out of his pocket. "It don't matter what I say or do after this, I want that money sent. The rest will keep me in tobacco and clothing. You understand?"
Ridgeley nodded. "Perfectly. I've seen such cases before."
The man went out and down the walk with a hurried, determined air, as if afraid of his own resolution.
As Ridgeley turned toward his desk he met Mrs. Field, who faced him with tears of fervent sympathy in her eyes.
"Isn't it awful?" she said, in a half whisper. "Poor fellow, what will become of him?"
"Oh, I don't know. He'll get along some way. Such fellows do. I've had 'em before. They try it a while here; then they move. I can't worry about them."
Mrs. Field was not listening to his shifty words. "And then, think of his wife—how she must worry."
Ridgeley smiled. "Perhaps it's his mother or a sister."
"Anyway it's awful. Can't something be done for him?"
"I guess we've done about all that can be done."
"Oh, I wish I could help him! I'll tell Ed about him."
"Don't worry about him, Mrs. Field; he ain't worth it."
"Oh yes, he is. I feel he's been a good boy once, and then he's so self-accusing."
Her own happiness was so complete, she could not bear to think of others' misery. She told her husband about Williams, and ended by asking, "Can't we do anything to help the poor fellow?"
Field was not deeply concerned. "No; he's probably past help. Such men are so set in their habits, nothing but a miracle or hypnotism can save them. He'll end up as a 'lumber Jack,' as the townsmen call the hands in the camps."
"But he isn't that, Edward. He's finer some way. You feel he is. Ask Mr. Ridgeley."
Ridgeley merely said: "Yes, he seemed to me to be more than a common hand. But, all the same, it won't be two weeks before he'll bein here as drunk as a wild cat, wanting to shoot me for holding back his money."
In this way Williams came to be to Mrs. Field a very important figure in the landscape of that region. She often spoke of him, and on the following Saturday night, when Field came home, she anxiously asked, "Is Williams in town?"
"No, he hasn't shown up yet."
She clapped her hands in delight. "Good! good! He's going to win his fight."
Field laughed. "Don't bet on Williams too soon. We'll hear from him before the week is out."
"When are we going to visit the camp?" she asked, changing the subject.
"As soon as it warms up a little. It is too cold for you."
She had a laugh at him. "You were the one who wanted to 'plunge into the snowy vistas.'"
He evaded her joke on him by assuming a careless tone. "I'm not plunging as much as I was; the snow is too deep."
"When you go I want to go with you—I want to see Williams."
"Ha!" he snorted melodramatically. "She scorns me faithful heart. She turns——"
Mrs. Field smiled faintly. "Don't joke about it Ed. I can't get that wife out of my mind."
A few very cold gray days followed, and then the north wind cleared the sky; and, though it was still cold, it was pleasant. The sky had only a small white cloud here and there to make its blueness the more profound.
Ridgeley dashed up to the door with a hardy little pair of bronchos hitched to a light pair of bobs, and Mrs. Field was tucked in like a babe in a cradle.
Almost the first thing she asked was, "How is Williams?"
"Oh, he's getting on nicely. He refused to sleep with his bunk mate, and finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the whole camp then to let him alone or take a licking. They let him alone, Lawson says.—G'lang there, you rats!"
Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind, but as soon as they entered the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.
The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.
The trail (it was not a road) ran like a gracefulfurrow over the hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps. Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed logging roads—wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking and groaning. Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes, or the crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first camp, Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted, "Hello, the camp!"
A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm above his eyes. He wore an apron.
"Hello, Sandy!"
"Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"
"Ready for company?"
"Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.
"Well, we're coming in to get warm."
"Vera wal."
As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, eggshells, cans, and tea grounds left overduring the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs of beef.
It was as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood of eagles.
Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef—beef on all sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking pans.
Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again.
"What a horrible place! Are they all like that?"
"No, my camps are not like that—or, I should say,ourcamps," Ridgeley added, with a smile.
"Not a gay place at all," said Field, in exaggerated reserve.
But Mrs. Field found her own camps not much better. True, the refuse was not raised in pyramidal shape before the front door, and the beef was a little more orderly, but the low log huts, the dim cold light, the dingy walls and floors, the lack of any womanly or home touch, the tin dishes, the wholesale cooking, all struck upon her with terrible force.
"Do human beings live here?" she asked Ridgeley, when he opened the door of the main shanty of No. 6.
"Forty creatures of the men kind sleep and house here," he replied.
"To which the socks and things give evidence,"said Field promptly, pointing toward the huge stove which sat like a rusty-red cheese in the center of the room. Above it hung scores of ragged gray and red socks and Mackinac boots and jackets which had been washed by the men themselves.
Around were the grimy bunks where the forty men slept like tramps in a steamer's hold. The quilts were grimy, and the posts greasy and shining with the touch of hands. There were no chairs—only a kind of rude stool made of boards. There were benches near the stove nailed to the rough floor. In each bunk, hanging to a peg, was the poor little imitation-leather hand-bag which contained the whole wardrobe of each man, exclusive of the tattered socks and shirts hanging over the stove.
The room was chill and cold and gray. It had only two small windows. Its doors were low. Even Mrs. Field was forced to stoop in entering. This made it seem more like a den. There were roller towels in the corner, and washbasins, and a grindstone, which made it seem like a barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than the barn, and less wholesome.
"Doesn't that hay in the bunks get a—a—sometimes?" asked Field.
"Well, yes, I shouldn't wonder, though the men are pretty strict about that. They keep pretty free from that, I think. However, I shouldn't want to run no river chances on thething myself." Ridgeley smiled at Mrs. Field's shudder of horror.
"Is this the place?" The men laughed. She had asked that question so many times before.
"Yes,thisis where Mr. Williams hangs out.—Say, Field, you'll need to make some new move to hold your end up against Williams."
Mrs. Field felt hurt and angry at his rough joke. In the dim corner a cough was heard, and a yellow head raised itself over the bunk board ghastily. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on the lovely woman and he wore a look of childish wonder.
"Hello, Gus—didn't see you. What's the matter—sick?"
"Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."
"All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"
As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray comfortlessness of it all; to be sick in such a place! The strange appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell, and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down theroad to work after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and bronze green.
The boss and the scaler came out and met them, and after introductions they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young Norwegian—a clean, quick, gentlemanly young fellow with a fine brown mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and they sat down.
It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the same cheap iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for tea) which made up the dinner set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.
"Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any of that for ages," cried Mrs. Field.
The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:
"Beef, beef, everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."
It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.
"Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"
"You can laugh, but I sh'an't rest after seeing this. If you thought I was going to say, 'Oh,how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's barbarous."
She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought of her as a child just the same.
After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood, and they sat a long while and watched the men at work. Ridgeley got out and hitched the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field remained in the sleigh, however.
Near her "the swamping team," a span of big deep-red oxen, came and went among the green tops of the fallen pines. They crawled along their trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating, rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shivered, groaned, and fell with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.
There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system must be changed. She was deep in plans forchange, in shanties and in sleeping places, when the men returned.
Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth money, after all."