"He's one of the peculiar many that go to make up an asylum, I'll tell you that. Everybody says he's crazy. Come in and set down a while."

"No, I must go home."

"You're in a mighty hurry now, ain't you? Crazy as a loon, and you ain't fur behind him. Go on with you."

At night the Professor came whistling out of the dark. The sky was moonless, but brighter, he said, than the sunrise contemplated by him in the hour of his dejection. Once more had he proved himself a failure, but consoled himself with the a.s.sertion, made over and over again, that it required a peculiar sharpness to deal in cattle. There ought to be other ways by which a man might earn money; there were other ways, and he would find one of them. He believed that he could write a book and sell it himself, by subscription. He knew a man who had done this, and now there were stone gate-posts in front of his house. Talk was the necessary equipment, and he could talk. The agent ought to be the echo of the wisdom in the book, and to echo had been his fault in the practical world. But echo was worthy of its hire.

"Why, let me tell you what I can do," he said, his face beaming. "I can take a book on Babylon, on Jerusalem, Nineveh, Jericho, the Red Sea, home, mother, and make a volume that the farmers will snap at. Easy!

Why, slipping on the ice is hard compared with it. What do you think of it?"

"Looks all right," said Milford.

"Well, anything that looks all right is all right in the book business.

I thought of it coming over to-night, and instantly the road was carpeted. Yes, sir, it is all right. I have the necessary books, and all I have to do is to begin work at once. No, there is perhaps a preliminary--a certain amount of correspondence with publishers. Chicago is the subscription book center of the country. Oh, it is the plainest sort of sailing."

Milford gave him the life insurance money, and he smiled as he tucked it into his pocket. "This is my last worry," said he. "I have had hopes, mere hopes, you understand, but now I am confident. It is the speculative uncertainty that brings out a hope. But I am too old now to find pleasure in the intoxication of hope. I want a.s.surance, and I have it. Well, I would like to sit longer and talk to you, but I must get to work."

Milford walked a part of the way home with him, congratulating him upon his happy idea. It was an inspiration. They wondered why it had not come sooner. But inspirations have their own time, and we should be thankful for their coming rather than to carp at their lateness.

As Milford was returning to the house, he heard the hired man singing at his work in the barn. He had been away from home, and had come back rather late for one who had stock to look after. When he came into the house Milford asked the cause of his delay.

"Well, I got tangled up in an affair and had to see it through. I've been up to Antioch, and I see your prize-fighter there. He threw a drink into me because I worked for you, he said. He says you can get along anywhere with your dukes. Find everythin' in town all right?"

"Had a great time, walking about in the park. Shortest day I ever spent."

"Haven't fixed any date or anythin' of the sort, I guess."

"We haven't said anything, but it's understood. We caught each other looking at houses and flats, and had to laugh."

"I guess that's about as good a way as any. But love as a general thing is full of a good deal of talk. Well, my affairs of that sort are over now."

"So the freckled woman has cured you."

"Oh, no, I forgot her in no time. Fact is I never did love but one woman and I married her."

"What's become of her?"

"She's up at Antioch."

"Did you see her?"

"Oh, yes, and we made it up. We're goin' to live together. I understood from what you said t'other day that you wan't goin' to keep this place another year, so I told the old woman that I wanted it. Yes, we are goin' to take a fresh start. You said once that I ought to have cut her throat, but I can't look at it in that light. After all, she's as good as I am."

"A devilish sight better," said Milford.

"I guess you're right. So you wouldn't cut her throat?"

"Well, not if I were you."

"I don't exactly understand the difference, but it's all right. I got to thinkin' this way about it, Bill. Most any woman will take a man back, and I said to myself that it oughtn't to be so one-sided as that. I heard she was at Antioch, at her aunt's house, so I goes up there. She was a-sweepin' when I stepped up. And she dropped the broom. I says, 'Don't be in a hurry,' and she stopped and looked at me. 'And is this you, Bob?' she says. I told her it was, so far as I knowed. She come up close to me and said I'd been workin' too hard. She took hold of my hand and turned it loose quick, lookin' like she wanted to cry. I says, 'Don't turn me loose. I've been thinkin' about you.' 'About such a thing as I am?' she says. Then I told her she was a heap better than me, and she cried. She said she never would have run away, but she drank some wine with one of her aunt's boarders. I told her all that made no difference now if she could promise not to run away again. And then she grabbed me, Bill; she grabbed me round the neck, and that was the way we made up."

"Go and bring her here," said Milford, turning his eyes from the light of the lamp. "It makes no difference what I said last week or the week before, or at any time. You bring her here, and take the best room. I'll take your old bunk in there. Hitch up and go after her now. Wait a minute. Take this and buy some dishes, and curtains for the windows.

That isn't enough. Take this twenty," he added, giving him a bank note.

"Good as you are! Why, she's worth both of us. Any heart that wants to be forgiven is one of G.o.d's hearts. Drive fast, and the stores won't be shut up. They keep open later Sat.u.r.day nights. What are you staring at?

I can see the poor thing now, clinging to you."

"Wait a moment, Bill. I guess she'll be afraid to come. I told her what you said."

"You did? Then go and tell her that I'm the biggest liar on earth. Wait!

I'll go with you."

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE OLD STORY.

A black-eyed little woman was installed in the house. Accepting her husband's story and her own statement, her life had not been wholly respectable, but she brought refinement into the animal cage. A new carpet lay soft and bright upon the floor. The windows, now curtained, no longer looked like browless eyes staring into cold vacancy. The dinner table lost the air and the appearance of a feed trough. Not in words nor in sighs, but in a hundred ways, she proved the sincerity of her repentance.

The autumn lasted a long time, and wise men said that it would end in a snarl, and it did, for winter came in a night, like a pack of howling wolves. But their cold teeth did not bite through the walls of Milford's sitting-room. Black eyes had looked after the work of a carpenter and a paper-hanger.

The Professor, thin-clad as he was, welcomed the change in the weather.

The cold that made a dog scamper forced a new energy upon the mind. He had found that his book required the aid of rain and snow and every trick that the air could turn. One day he could write better because a tree in front of his window had been stripped of its leaves. One night the rattle of sleet graced a period that he had bungled under the energy-lacking influence of a full moon. This was but a prideful conceit, for the fact was that, like nearly every impractical man, he wrote with great ease at all times. Milford had faith in the outcome of his work, and often visited him at night. And the indors.e.m.e.nt of so shrewd a man had encouraged Mrs. Dolihide and Miss Katherine. Sometimes the young woman would read a chapter. Once she said: "Ma, this is really good." It was not much for a daughter to say, but the Professor had been so repeated a failure that even a cool compliment was warm to him. His wife accepted the daughter's judgment. It is possible that she saw a vision of new gowns and a better house.

One evening, after welcoming Milford into his workshop, the scholar declared himself on the verge of a great success. He was arrayed in an old dressing-gown, with a rope tied monkishly about his loins. His fingers were stained with ink, "the waste juice of thought," he said. "I should now be the happiest of men, and I am, but, my dear boy, it is not nearly so easy as I expected. I find that I cannot cut, slash, and piece; I must absorb and write, and what I thought could be done in a few weeks, will take months to perform. At first I thought it would be well to enter into correspondence with the publishers, but I put it off till now I have decided to surprise them with the work itself. Ah, work, work, true balm to the restless soul! I was never really happy until I took up this brightening task; I was never so serious; I was never before able to understand the necessity of my previous training, my struggles and disappointments. But now all is clear. How is everything with you?"

"All right. Everything over my way is as neat as----"

"A new gold dollar," suggested the Professor.

"Yes, and my house is as comfortable as a fur-lined nest."

"And at a time, too, when you are thinking about giving it up."

"That's so. But I've got to go out West to see a man, and then I may return to this neighborhood."

"Are you going to take any one with you on your trip?"

"No, I'm going alone."

"On important business, I presume?"

"Very; so important that all my work here has been toward that end. How long before you'll have this thing done?"

"I am working toward an end," the Professor said, smiling, "but I cannot work toward a date. But, to approximate, I should think about the middle of March."

"Don't know but I bother you, coming over so often."