The old man's jaw fell; he began to back away.

"Your neighbors tell some good stories about you. Now skip along after those cows or I'll tickle your old legs for you!"

The old man, appalled and dazed at this sudden change of manner, backed away, and at last turned and racked off up the road, looking back with a wild face at which the young man laughed remorselessly.

"The doggoned old skeesucks!" Will soliloquized as he walked up the road. "So that's the kind of a character he's been givin' me!"

"Hullo! A whippoorwrn. Takes a man back into childhood-No, don't 'whip poor Will'; he's got all he can bear now."

He came at last to the little farm Dingman had owned, and he stopped in sorrowful surprise. The barn had been moved away, the garden plowed up, and the house, turned into a granary, stood with boards nailed across its dusty cobwebbed windows. The tears started into the man's eyes; he stood staring at it silently.

In the face of this house the seven years that he had last lived stretched away into a wild waste of time. It stood as a symbol of his wasted, ruined life. It was personal, intimately personal, this decay of her home.

All that last scene came back to him: the booming roar of the threshing machine, the cheery whistle of the driver, the loud, merry shouts of the men. He remembered how warmly the lamplight streamed out of that door as he turned away tired, hungry, sullen with rage and jealousy. Oh, if he had only had the courage of a man!

Then he thought of the boy's words. She was sick. Ed abused her.

She had met her punishment. A hundred times he had been over the whole scene. A thousand times he had seen her at the pump smiling at Ed Kinney, the sun lighting her bare head; and he never thought of it without hardening.

At this very gate he had driven up that last forenoon, to find that she had gone with Ed. He had lived that sickening, depressing moment over many times, but not times enough to keep down the bitter pa.s.sion he had felt then, and felt now as he went over it in detail.

He was so happy and confident that morning, so perfectly certain that all would be made right by a kiss and a cheery jest. And now!

Here he stood sick with despair and doubt of all the world. He turned away from the desolate homestead and walked on.

"But I'll see her-just once more. And then-" And again the mighty significance, responsibility of life fell upon him. He felt as young people seldom do the irrevocableness of living, the determinate, unalterable character of living. He determined to begin to live in some new way-just how he could not say.

IV

OLD man Kinney and his wife were getting their Sunday school lessons with much bickering, when Will drove up the next day to the dilapidated gate and hitched his team to a leaning post under the oaks. Will saw the old man's head at the open window, but no one else, though he looked eagerly for Agnes as he walked up the familiar path. There stood the great oak under whose shade he had grown to be a man.

How close the great tree seemed to stand to his heart, some way!

As the wind stirred in the leaves, it was like a rustle of greeting.

In that low old house they had all lived, and his mother had toiled for thirty years. A sort of prison after all. There they were all born, and there his father and his little sister had died. And then it had pa.s.sed into old Kinney's hands.

Walking along up the path he felt a serious weakness in his limbs, and he made a pretense of stopping to look at a flowerbed containing nothing but weeds. After seven years of separation he was about to face once more the woman whose life came so near being a part of his- Agnes, now a wife and a mother.

How would she look? Would her face have that oldtime peachy bloom, her mouth that peculiar beautiful curve? She was large and fair, he recalled, hair yellow and shining, eyes blue-He roused himself. This was nonsense! He was trembling. He composed himself by looking around again.

"The old scoundrel has let the weeds choke out the flowers and surround the beehives. Old man Kinney neverbelieved in anything but a petty utility."

Will set his teeth, and marched up to the door and struck it like a man delivering a challenge. Kinney opened the door, and started back in fear when he saw who it was.

"How de do? How de do?" said Will, walking in' his eyes fixed on a woman seated beyond, a child in her lap.

Agnes rose, without a word; a fawnlike, startled widening of the eyes, her breath coming quick, and her face flushing. They couldn't speak; they only looked at each other an instant, then Will shivered, pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, and sat down.

There was no one there but the old people, who were looking at him in bewilderment. They did not notice any confusion in Agnes's face. She recovered first.

"I'm glad to see you back, Will," she said, rising and putting the sleeping child down in a neighboring room. As she gave him her hand, he said:

"I'm glad to get back, Agnes. I hadn't ought to have gone." Then he turned to the old people: "I'm Will Hannan. You needn't be scared, daddy; I was jokin' last night."

"Dew tell! I wanto know!" exclaimed granny. "Wal I never! An, you're my little w.i.l.l.y boy who ust 'o he in my cla.s.s. Well! well!

W'y, Pa, ain't he growed tall! Growed handsome tew. I ust 'o think he was a drelful humly boy; but my sakes, that mustache-"

"Wal, he give me a tumble scare last night. My land! scared me out of a year's growth," cackled the old man.

This gave them all a chance to laugh and the air was cleared. It gave Agnes time to recover herself and to be able to meet Will's eyes. Will himself was powerfully moved; his throat swelled and tears came to his eyes everytime he looked at her.

$he was worn and wasted incredibly. The blue of her eyes seemed dimmed and faded by weeping, and the oldtime scariet of her lips had been washed away. The sinews of her neck showed painfully when she turned her head, and her trembling hands were worn, discolored, and lumpy at the joints.

Poor girl! She felt that she was under scrutiny, and her eyes felt hot and restless. She wished to run away and cry, but she dared not.

She stayed, while Will began to tell her of his life and to ask questions about old friends.

The old people took it up and relieved her of any share in it; and Will, seeing that she was suffering, told some funny stories which made the old people cackle in spite of themselves.

But it was forced merriment on Will's part. Once in a while Agnes smiled with just a little flash of the old-time sunny temper. But there was no dimple in the cheek now, and the smile had more suggestion of an invalid~r even a skeleton. He was almost ready to take her in his arms and weep, her face appealed so pitifully to him.

"It's most time f'r Ed to be gittin' back, ain't it' Pa?"

"Sh'd say 'twas! He jist went over to Hobkirk's to trade horses. It's dretful tryin' to me to have him go off tradin' horses on Sunday.

Seems if he might wait till a rainy day, 'r do it evenin's. I never did believe in horse tradin' anyhow."

"Have y' come back to stay, Willie?" asked the old lady.

"Well-it's hard-tellin'," answered Will, looking at Agnes.

"Well, Agnes, ain't you goin' to get no dinner? I'm 'bout ready fr dinner. We must git to church eariy today. Elder Wheat is goin' to preach an' they'll be a crowd. He's goin' to hold communion."

"You'll stay to dinner, Will?" asked Agnes.

"Yes-if you wish it."

"I do wish it."

"Thank you; I want to have a good visit with you. I don't know when I'll see you again."

As she moved about, getting dinner on the table, Will sat with gloomy face, listening to the "clack" of the old man. The room was a poor little sitting room, with furniture worn and shapeless; hardly a touch of pleasant color, save here and there a little bit of Agnes's handiwork. The lounge, covered with calico, was rickety; the rocking chair matched it, and the carpet of rags was patched and darned with twine in twenty places. Everywhere was the influence of the Kinneys. The furniture looked like them, in fact.

Agnes was outwardly calm, but her real distraction did not escape Mrs. Kinney's hawklike eyes.

"Well, I declare if you hain't put the b.u.t.ter on in one o' my blue chainy saucers! Now you know I don't allow that saucer to be took down by n.o.body. I don't see what's got into yeh. Anybody'd s'pose you never see any comp'ny b'fore-wouldn't they, Pa?"

"Sh'd say th' would," said Pa, stopping short in a long story about Ed. "Seems if we couldn't keep anything in this' house sep'rit from the rest. Ed he uses my currycomb-"

He launched out a long list of grievances, which Will shut his ears to as completely as possible, and was thinking how to stop him, when there was a sudden crash. Agnes had dropped a plate.

"Good land o' Goshen!" screamed Granny. "If you ain't the worst I ever see. I'll bet that's my grapevine plate. If it is-well, of all the mercies, it ain't! But it naight 'a' ben. I never see your beat-never!

That's the third plate since I came to live here."