Dan had been proud of the happy, laughing little fellow, with his strong little body and bright, dark eyes, just like his own. He had never cared to handle him much, and he had often sworn moderately when he cried in the night--not at the baby himself, just at the general conspiracy of domestic affairs to disturb a man's sleep. But he had felt a real thrill of pride when anyone who came into the house exclaimed at his st.u.r.dy, perfect little form, at his striking resemblance to his father. Now all this was slipping away under his eyes, and he could do nothing but stand there helpless. There was a hard bitterness in the set of his jaw, and it grew harder as he watched his wife's pitiful, useless efforts and tearless submission.

She had been with the baby day and night, through it all, and now, even as she felt the round, clinging arms slowly loosen from around her neck, she was glad his suffering was over. For the first time she seemed to notice that Dan was there. She looked up and waited.

"You killed him," he said. "He hadn't no chance to live. You just killed him. After you had deliberately gone out and waded in the snow for half a day when you knowed better--after you had give it to him, if you couldn't save him yourself, why didn't you get someone who could? Don't look at me like that. If you've a spark of motherliness in you, cry or something."

And, looking down at the little form, before the neighbors sent him out, Dan himself cried, freely and easily as one does at a pathetic play, until the women felt sure that the loss of his child had reformed him. Mary followed him out to the porch, pleading in dry, broken attempts. She reached out and almost touched him, but he folded his arms with a cruelty of aloofness and contempt that was almost dramatic. Then a hard glitter came into his eyes, and in a steely voice, too low to carry into the house, he said:

"Keep away, will you. 'Tain't only the boy, there, but I _can't trust you_. You've deceived me. I seen Harding yesterday."

And Billy, watching and listening with a child's intuition, saw his mother stagger against the door as she went into the house. The old smouldering hate possessed him wickedly; he had never wanted so much to be a man.

CHAPTER IV.

"_He was a boy whose emotions were hidden under mountains of reserve; who could have stood up to be shot more easily than he could have said: 'I love you.' .... I have wondered what might have been if some one--some understanding person had recognized his gift, or if he himself as a boy had once dared to cut free. We do not know; we do not know the tragedy of our nearest friend._"--_David Grayson._

An atmosphere like this does not nurture the most outwardly genial qualities in a boy. When Billy was sixteen he had encased his real personality in a reserve which few people could penetrate. The neighbors admitted that he was civil and steady, but they generally agreed that he was sullen. The premature work and responsibility of the farm may have stiffened his body and hardened his outlook, but it had not affected his growth. In spite of everything, sixteen years found him something of a giant with splendid physical possibilities waiting development, but for the present leaving him awkward, painfully conscious of his size, ashamed of his ignorance, galling under the tyranny and hopelessness of his environment, but keeping his reflections largely to himself. His saving force was his inherited ambition. It never let him rest, but since all the experience of his life had been gleaned, like the steadily decreasing crops, from the unproductive acres of the Swamp Farm, his ambition lacked direction. On rare occasions he confided secret plans to his mother, but the plans were never practical and there was no prospect of ever working them out. A few books, good and otherwise, that had found their way into the house, were the best information he had of the world outside; but the "good" books his mother had brought from home years ago, and they dealt with problems of a different age altogether, problems solved and forgotten long since; the "other"

books had mostly been left by an itinerant hired man, and they were far too new. With it all there was a growing discontent, discontent of the divine order really, but showing itself sometimes in very human guise.

An unrest, a discontent like this, is like to gnaw the heart out of a boy, leaving him a hollow reed to be played upon by any wind that blows. Out in the great open s.p.a.ces of the green country, of course, we wouldn't expect to find any insidious influence to mar a boy's future, yet it came in one of the commonest ways.

In need of money to meet a debt to his incubator firm, it occurred to Dan that the swamp was full of cedar posts. It meant a lot of work to get the posts out and he had no fondness for the task of laying roads through a boggy stretch of woods and putting in the long hours teaming the posts to the railroad, but Billy could do one man's work, and for the rest he could pick up a force in town. The men were an unsteady crowd. They didn't care to work many days at a time, and invariably left when they were most needed. Then one day a man called looking for a job. He was a Hercules for strength, quick and sure at his work as a professional lumberman. At night he turned a line of handsprings across the barn floor, and did a series of acrobatic stunts over the brace rod, calculated to fill the spectators with awe and amazement. Billy watched him with more amus.e.m.e.nt than admiration in his steady brown eyes; athletics had never been given a prominent place in his interests.

The man boarded in the house, of course. He was courteous and considerate in ways the other men had never thought of. He never pa.s.sed the woodpile without bringing in an armful. He refused to leave his washing to be done. He stayed out of the house as much as possible--and Billy stayed with him. From the first time she saw him, Mary begged Dan to send him away.

Even when he had gone, she wasn't rea.s.sured. Billy seemed different.

He seemed uneasy and secretive. Often under the questioning of her kind eyes he would redden painfully and look away, and knowing that a boy of sixteen is getting beyond his mother's understanding, she never forced her inquiries further.

Then the thing she had dreaded came. One bitter February morning, while she slept, Billy came quietly downstairs. In the kitchen the lamp was turned low, and he peered across at the clock. It wasn't quite three. He listened for a second to the two regular breathings in the little bedroom, and it seemed that one of them stopped. The thought that perhaps she suspected him made him feel like a thief, but, he reflected, when she got the note under his pillow she would know that he had meant it for the best, that he would come back, sometime. The thought of what she would have to endure in the while between almost made him give it up, but he reasoned that this was just what he had done times before. It was just "drivelling weakness," as Lou had said. He looked around miserably, wishing he could do something to make her understand; that in some way he could soften the hurt of the discovery in the morning. Standing, shivering in the freezing kitchen, he realized that she had to endure this atmosphere for an hour or two every morning, and at the risk of being heard he lighted the fire. Then he picked up the tightly rolled grain bag that contained his worldly possessions, and went out. For a long time after, he remembered the frosty squeak of the door, the snapping of the frost, like pistols, in the trees, and the daylight peering cold and cheerless into the steely sky, as things following, watching and accusing him.

It was a short, quick run to the railroad to catch the way-freight laboring up to town, a wait of two hours or more around the sheds there, then a ride on the local express to the Junction, where Lou was to meet him. The ride on the freight and the waiting at the sheds attracted no attention, and as he slid into the end seat of the pa.s.senger coach he was glad to find that there was no one there whom he knew. The only person in the car who seemed awake was a young man who looked steadily out of the window and seemed so indifferent to everything around him that Billy felt no fear of his curiosity. When he looked up some minutes later he caught the quiet, genial, interested gaze square on his face, and the young man rose and came down the aisle towards him.

It wasn't just that the young man wanted a diversion. He may have looked bored enough while he stared out of the window at the light breaking over the frozen fields, but that was because he was a little discouraged with his job. He had been trying to figure out approximately how many bushels of grain his formalin solution had saved for the county that year, and whether all this extension work of the Department of Agriculture was worth while. He was on his way now to begin a short course with the young men farther up the county, in the intervals of which he might be required to test the milk from a few dairy herds, secure a few hired men for the neighborhood, or talk about revenues from chickens, or strawberries to a gathering of women. It occurred to him that the boy who had just come in might be going up to join the cla.s.s, and because he liked boys as individuals, and because there was something unusually promising in the keen, serious face and striking physique of this young man, he came to talk to him.

Billy had never heard of an agricultural short course. He had seen the agricultural office in town, but he had a very vague idea of what the "district representative" was doing there. He listened to the explanation of the short course with interest; then, as man to man, told candidly what he thought of farming and, naturally enough, why he was leaving it.

The Representative didn't ask any questions, but he gathered that Billy was leaving home for the first time, to begin his independent career in a lumber-camp somewhere. He also saw that under the retiring, self-conscious exterior, was a live fuse of ambition, and an unmistakable pride.

"It won't get you anywhere," he said, when Billy asked what he thought of the lumber camp as a beginning, "and if you stay long enough, you won't care whether it does or not. We're having a course next month not so far from your place; come to that and see if you can't find something worth while around home. Come to the office on Sat.u.r.day and I'll tell you of a dozen fellows who have made good with a worse start than you have."

The train was stopping at the Junction. "Sorry," Billy replied, rising. "I have to meet a friend here."

He took up his grain-bag, reddening. He had a momentary idea of leaving it under the seat, but it contained everything he had left.

"You can get a train back home in ten minutes," the Representative suggested, with a friendly grip. "I'll look for you Sat.u.r.day."

"I'm sorry I didn't meet you sooner," Billy replied calmly. "As it is, I've promised to go north. Anyway I think perhaps you don't understand just how things are at our place."

The Representative looked away and frowned with sympathy. "I know it's rotten enough," he said, "but if you want to play fair, why don't you go back and put it right up to your father? You know this is pretty rough on the mother."

And Billy, standing alone on the platform, wished the Representative had kept that last argument to himself. That was what had been his undoing every time before, and Lou had shown him quite clearly that he could never do anything for his mother by staying on the wretched farm where they could scarcely make enough to keep alive. Now this young man said he could show him how to make money out of the place.

He said that boys with a worse beginning had gone ahead right at home and made good, even realized their ambitions for themselves and made the right kind of homes for their families. Family considerations weren't troubling Billy. He was just sixteen years old, and the social side of his nature had been sadly neglected. What he wanted was freedom to do something. Then, while Lou had persuaded him that he was not only a fool, but a weak one to stay at home, this agricultural fellow had somehow made him feel like a coward for running away.

The train for home was whistling nearer while Billy argued wildly.

When it came around the bend he had about made his decision. He picked up his grain bag and sauntered coolly across to meet it, then he saw Lou coming, and waited.

It was not easy to dispose of Lou--he had met cases like this before; but Billy's struggles from childhood, with a man's work, crop failures, an unjust government and himself, had not been for nothing.

Also, a certain dogged will-power, bred of these struggles, and their achievements, and more than ever dominant in the teen age, gave him an aversion to being "talked into" anything. The Representative hadn't shown any effort at trying to persuade him. He had told him just what he thought without reserve and quite forcibly enough, it seemed; then he had left him to make his own decision, and it gave Billy no little pride in himself to know that he was planning his own course. He felt, suddenly, above the wheedling, anxious tone of his former leader, who, he decided, didn't have enough brains to keep his personal concern out of his argument. Exasperated at last, Lou swore openly at all "young milk-fed Rubes who would keep a man hanging around for weeks, not knowing their own minds, and then fail to come across at the last."

And Billy laughed--laughed right into the threatening face with its hardened cunning, laughed for pure joy at the new spirit that had just awakened in him, laughed also because he had measured carefully the distance to the last car of the moving train. He caught it just in time to leave Lou clutching foolishly at the place where he had been.

Miles away the Representative had again relapsed into speculation as to whether his work was worth while.

It was only a few hours from the time Billy left the Swamp Farm until he walked up the lane again, but it seemed as though he had been in a new, bigger country for a long time. He saw the limits of his environment in a new perspective and they looked less binding. The feel of the familiar, worn little door-latch under his hand carried a distinct sense of being back in the right place. Mary, with a way women have of watching the road while they work, had seen him coming. It wasn't in her nature to cry out, or to take him in her arms. She just stood immovable, her breath coming fast, but in the glad welcome illuminating the drawn lines of her patient face the boy saw all the wonder of a mother's unquestioning love, and he knew it would have been the same, however, or whenever he had come back--if she were still there. She didn't ask him where he had been; she didn't mention the note he had left; she only said:

"You haven't had your breakfast."

And Billy, because he was sixteen years old and practised in curbing his emotions, could not go to her. He just looked back as eloquently as he could, and asked:

"Where's Jean?"

Jean was crumbled up on the bed in her little cold room upstairs, crying her heart out. Billy could manage with her more easily. He gathered her up and patted her back and smoothed her hair so awkwardly that it tangled about his fingers. He said he shouldn't have done it, and then told her quite firmly to stop now right away; that he was back and he was going to stay. He was fast becoming a man.

Even Dan realized this when Billy met him in the stable for an interview. The plans he had been designing began to lose shape in the fearlessness of the new individual whom he had always considered his child to mould as he liked. Billy's experience had not given him much of the quality called business sense, so he didn't ask much--a percentage of whatever profits he could show from the place above an estimate for previous years, and a chance to run a few sidelines of his own. Since this would not interfere with his own interests and would mean still having free labor on the farm, Dan was willing to grant it.

And Billy was happy. He couldn't have told why. Practically, he was just where he had been before; only he had something to hope for. In the house the ham sizzling in the pan, the smell of turnips cooking for dinner and a spicy apple pie bubbling on the back of the stove, filled him with a very tangible comfort. The world had never seemed so near to heaven.

The agricultural course was full of promise. For some time Billy had been painfully reminded of his scant education. The few brief seasons in the local school, following the cramped and theoretical course of prescribed text-books, and his ill chosen reading afterwards, had not given him much that a young man would need. A cla.s.s of twenty young farmers leaving their work to meet every day in a room above the local store was different; it had some purpose. The informal lectures and discussions were practical from the beginning. The taking of notes, the preparation of a speech, was new and hard for every one of them, but they were all at the same disadvantage, which carried some encouragement.

On the second day of the course they went to a farm for a cla.s.s in stock-judging. Boys who would have wormed through a barbed-wire entanglement to get within touching distance of the prize animals at the provincial fair, but who might as well have hoped to enter a sacred temple as a show ring, could examine to their hearts' content the most aristocratic specimens of Aberdeen-Angus lineage in the country. Added to their instruction in rules and principles they had the unstinted and practical advice of the man himself who had built up the herd, whose name was known to stockmen in every province of the Dominion.

When they had finished he took them to the house. There was a great, long living-room with red curtains and a log blazing in a brick fireplace, and his wife, in a big blue ap.r.o.n, her cheeks red from the warmth of the kitchen stove, gave them hot biscuits and coffee. The man's voice boomed heartily through the house, and the baby from a quilt on the floor reached up to him. It was amazing the dexterity with which he could tuck the babe away, perfectly contented, in the hollow of his arm, and use both hands in expounding the points of various Panmures and Black Megs, with the history of their ancestors from the oldest farms in Scotland. He made no effort to keep his business affairs out of his home, this man; the two were so intimately connected that their interests were common. Either would have failed long ago without the support of the other. His wife knew exactly what he was talking about. Her pride in the herd was about as great as his own; she had made little sacrifices and taken with him the risks involved in buying new, expensive stock. It was a fine kind of co-operation.

The warmth and peace and genuineness of it all filled Billy with a happy wonder. He forgot to be embarra.s.sed, but he sat in a corner as much out of sight as possible, watching the restful air of content about the woman, and listening to the man's enthusiastic forecast of the future of the breed in Canada. The stockman noticed his interest, and when they were ready to go he kept the rest waiting while he took him back to go more fully into the peculiar traits of a certain family. Then he asked:

"What do you keep at home?"

"Most anything," Billy answered, with a grim little smile.

"You ought to get on with stock," the expert remarked, sincerely.

"Come to me when you start for yourself and I'll give you a bargain on some better than these, if nothing happens."

Billy looked at the square, curly little beasts as a cripple stares at an athlete's cup. Then he found all his wandering ambitions coming to a point. Some day he would have a herd of such cattle. He could see their perfect black shapes moving over a sunny field when the autumn frosts had turned the trees and pastures to a glorious gold and crimson background. They would be _his_, and when he had some of them graded up to a show standard, he himself would groom their curly hides till they shone; he could almost feel the shaking muscles of their broad, level backs as they stood under the hands of the judges. And there would be a house with red curtains and an open fire, where his mother would be safe and comfortable as long as she lived. He fervently hoped his father's business would continue to take him away from home a lot.

At night he sat up late over a borrowed Aberdeen-Angus history. He sketched over all the paper in the house to show how certain individuals he had seen that day compared with types ill.u.s.trated. He estimated with reckless optimism what it would cost to start a herd, and how long it would take them to pay for a house with a fireplace and red curtains. At intervals he would get up and walk around the table to work off his enthusiasm. There was nothing reserved about his plans now. His mother felt that her cup was full. She was sure her prayers for his direction had been answered and she blessed "that agricultural young man" as an agent sent by Heaven.