"You set still," repeated his mother. She tied on her own green sun-bonnet, stiffened with pasteboard, and went with it rattling against her ears across the fields to the one where her son was ploughing. The grass was not wet, but she held her dress up high, showing her thick shoes and her blue yarn stockings, and took long strides. Barney was guiding the plough past her when she came up.

"You stop a minute," she said, authoritatively. "I want to speak to you."

"Whoa!" said Barney, and pulled up the horse. "Well, what is it?" he said, gruffly, with his eyes upon the plough.

"You go this minute and set the men to work on your house again. You leave the horse here--I'll watch him--and go and tell Sam Plummer to come and get the other men."

"G'lang!" said Barney, and the horse pulled the plough forward with a jerk.

Mrs. Thayer seized Barney's arm. "You stop!" said she. "Whoa, whoa!

Now you look here, Barnabas Thayer. I don't know what you did to make Cephas Barnard order you out of the house, but I know it was something. I ain't goin' to believe it was all about the election.

There was something back of that. I ain't goin' to shield you because you're my son. I know jest how set you can be in your own ways, and how you can hang on to your temper. I've known you ever since you was a baby; you can't teach me anything new about yourself. I don't know what you did to make Cephas mad, but I know what you've got to do now. You go and set the men to work on that house again, and then you go over to Cephas Barnard's, and you tell him you're sorry for what you've done. I don't care anything about Cephas Barnard, and if I'd had my way in the first place I wouldn't have had anything to do with him or his folks either; but now you've got to do what's right if you've gone as far as this, and Charlotte's all ready to be married.

You go right along, Barnabas Thayer!"

Barnabas stood immovable, his face set past his mother, as irresponsively unyielding as a rock.

"Be you goin'?"

Barnabas did not reply. His mother moved, and brought her eyes on a range with his, and the two faces confronted each other in silence, while it was as if two wills clashed swords in advance of them.

Then Mrs. Thayer moved away. "I ain't never goin' to say anything more to you about it," she said; "but there's one thing--you needn't come home to dinner. You sha'n't ever sit down to a meal in your father's and mother's house whilst this goes on."

"G'lang!" said Barnabas. The horse started, and he bent to the plough. His mother stepped homeward over the plough-ridges with stern unyielding steps, as if they were her enemies slain in battle.

Just as she reached her own yard her husband drove in on a rattling farm cart. She beckoned to him, and he pulled the horse up short.

"I've told him he needn't come home to dinner," she said, standing close to the wheel.

Caleb looked down at her with a scared expression. "Well, I s'pose you know what's best, Deborah," he said.

"If he can't do what's right he's got to suffer for it," returned Deborah.

She went into the house, and Caleb drove clanking into the barn.

Before dinner the old man stole off across lots, keeping well out of sight of the kitchen windows lest his wife should see him, and pleaded with Barnabas, but all in vain. The young man was more outspoken with his father, but he was just as firm.

"Your mother's terrible set about it, Barney. You'd better go over to Charlotte's and make up."

"I can't; it's all over," Barney said, in reply; and Caleb at length plodded soberly and clumsily home.

After dinner he went out behind the barn, and Rebecca, going to feed the hens, found him sitting under the wild-cherry tree, fairly sobbing in his old red handkerchief.

She went near him, and stood looking at him with restrained sympathy.

"Don't feel bad, father," she said, finally. "Barney'll get over it, and come to supper."

"No, he won't," groaned the old man--"no, he won't. He's jest like your mother."

Chapter VI

The weeks went on, and still Barnabas had not yielded. The story of his quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his broken engagement with Charlotte had become an old one in Pembroke, but it had not yet lost its interest. A genuine excitement was so rare in the little peaceful village that it had to be made to last, and rolled charily under the tongue like a sweet morsel. However, there seemed to be no lack now, for the one had set others in motion: everybody knew how Barnabas Thayer no longer lived at home, and did not sit in his father's pew in church, but in the gallery, and how Richard Alger had stopped going to see Sylvia Crane.

There was not much walking in the village, except to and from church on a Sabbath day; but now on pleasant Sabbath evenings an occasional couple, or an inquisitive old man with eyes sharp under white brows, and chin set ahead like a pointer's, strolled past Sylvia's house and the Thayer house, Barney's new one and Cephas Barnard's.

They looked sharply and furtively to see if Sylvia had a light in her best room, and if Richard Alger's head was visible through the window, if Barney Thayer had gone home and yielded to his mother's commands, if any more work had been done on the new house, and if he perchance had gone a-courting Charlotte again.

But they never saw Richard Alger's face in poor Sylvia's best room, although her candle was always lit, they never saw Barney at his old home, the new house advanced not a step beyond its incompleteness, and Barney never was seen at Charlotte Barnard's on a Sabbath night.

Once, indeed, there was a rumor to that effect. A man's smooth dark head was visible at one of the front-room windows opposite Charlotte's fair one, and everybody took it for Barney's.

The next morning Barney's mother came to the door of the new house.

"I want to know if it's true that you went over there last night,"

she said; her voice was harsh, but her mouth was yielding.

"No, I didn't," said Barney, shortly, and Deborah went away with a harsh exclamation. Before long she knew and everybody else knew that the man who had been seen at Charlotte's window was not Barney, but Thomas Payne.

Presently Ephraim came slowly across to the garden-patch where Barney was planting. He was breathing heavily, and grinning. When he reached Barney he stood still watching him, and the grin deepened. "Say, Barney," he panted at length.

"Well, what is it?"

"You've lost your girl; did you know it, Barney?"

Barney muttered something unintelligible; it sounded like the growl of a dog, but Ephraim was not intimidated. He chuckled with delight and spoke again. "Say, Barney, Thomas Payne's got your girl; did you know it, Barney?"

Barney turned threateningly, but he was helpless before his brother's sickly face, and Ephraim knew it. That purple hue and that panting breath had gained an armistice for him on many a battle-field, and he had a certain triumph in it. It was power of a lugubrious sort, certainly, but still it was power, and so to be enjoyed.

"Thomas Payne's got your girl," he repeated; "he was over there a-courtin' of her last night; a-settin' up along of her."

Barney took a step forward, and Ephraim fell back a little, still grinning imperturbably. "You mind your own business," Barney said, between his teeth; and right upon his words followed Ephraim's hoarse chuckle and his "Thomas Payne's got your girl."

Barney turned about and went on with his planting. Ephraim, standing a little aloof, somewhat warily since his brother's threatening advance, kept repeating his one remark, as mocking as the snarl of a mosquito. "Thomas Payne's got your girl, Barney. Say, did you know it? Thomas Payne's got your girl."

Finally Ephraim stepped close to Barney and shouted it into his ear: "Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has got--your--_girl!"_ But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering, the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he made no sign, and said not another word.

Ephraim, worsted at length by silence, beat a gradual retreat.

Half-way across the field his panting voice called back, "Barney, Thomas Payne has got your girl," and ended in a choking giggle.

Barney planted, and made no response; but when Ephraim was well out of sight, he flung down his hoe with a groaning sigh, and went stumbling across the soft loam of the garden-patch into a little woody thicket beside it. He penetrated deeply between the trees and underbrush, and at last flung himself down on his face among the soft young flowers and weeds. "Oh, Charlotte!" he groaned out. "Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!" Barney began sobbing and crying like a child as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively, and tore up handfuls of young grass and leaves, and flung them away in the unconscious gesturing of grief. "Oh, I can't, I can't!" he groaned.

"I--can't--Charlotte! I can't--let any other man have you! No other man shall have you!" he cried out, fiercely, and flung up his head; "you are mine, mine! I'll kill any other man that touches you!"

Barney got up, and his face was flaming; he started off with a great stride, and then he stopped short and flung an arm around the slender trunk of a white-birch tree, and pulled it against him and leaned against it as if it were Charlotte, and laid his cheek on the cool white bark and sobbed again like a girl. "Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!"

he moaned, and his voice was drowned out by the manifold rustling of the young birch leaves, as a human grief is overborne and carried out of sight by the soft, resistless progress of nature.

Barney, although his faith in Charlotte had been as strong as any man's should be in his promised wife, had now no doubt but this other man had met with favor in her eyes. But he had no blame for her, nor even any surprise at her want of constancy. He blamed the Lord, for Charlotte as well as for himself. "If this hadn't happened she never would have looked at any one else," he thought, and his thought had the force of a blow against fate.

This Thomas Payne was the best match in the village; he was the squire's son, good-looking, and college-educated. Barney had always known that he fancied Charlotte, and had felt a certain triumph that he had won her in the face of it. "You might have somebody that's a good deal better off if you didn't have me," he said to her once, and they both knew whom he meant. "I don't want anybody else," Charlotte had replied, with her shy stateliness. Now Barney thought that she had changed her mind; and why should she not? A girl ought to marry if she could; he could not marry her himself, and should not expect her to remain single all her life for his sake. Of course Charlotte wanted to be married, like other women. This probable desire of Charlotte's for love and marriage in itself, apart from him, thrilled his male fancy with a certain holy awe and respect, from his love for her and utter ignorance of the attitude of womankind. Then, too, he reflected that Thomas Payne would probably make her a good husband.

"He can buy her everything she wants," he thought, with a curious mixture of gratulation for her and agony on his own account. He thought of the little bonnets he had meant to buy for her himself, and these details pierced his heart like needles. He sobbed, and the birch-tree quivered in a wind of human grief. He saw Charlotte going to church in her bridal bonnet with Thomas Payne more plainly than he could ever see her in life, for a torturing imagination reflects life like a magnifying-glass, and makes it clearer and larger than reality. He saw Charlotte with Thomas Payne, blushing all over her proud, delicate face when he looked at her; he saw her with Thomas Payne's children. "O God!" he gasped, and he threw himself down on the ground again, and lay there, face downward, motionless as if fate had indeed seized him and shaken the life out of him and left him there for dead; but it was his own will which was his fate.

"Barney," his father called, somewhere out in the field. "Barney, where be you?"