"I'm coming," Barney called back, in a surly voice, and he pulled himself up and pushed his way out of the thicket to the ploughed field where his father stood.

"Oh, there you be!" said Caleb. Barney grunted something inarticulate, and took up his hoe again. Caleb stood watching him, his eyes irresolute under anxiously frowning brows. "Barney," he said, at length.

"Well, what do you want?"

"I've jest heard--" the old man began; then he stopped with a jump.

"I don't want to hear what you've heard. Keep it to yourself if you've heard anything!" Barney shouted.

"I didn't know as you knew," Caleb stammered, apologetically. "I didn't know as you'd heard, Barney."

Caleb went to the edge of the field, and sat down on a great stone under a wild-cherry tree. He was not feeling very well; his head was dizzy, and his wife had given him a bowl of thoroughwort and ordered him not to work.

Caleb pushed his hat back and passed his hand across his forehead. It was hot, and his face was flushed. He watched his son following up his work with dogged energy as if it were an enemy, and his mind seemed to turn stupid in the face of speculation, like a boy's over a problem in arithmetic.

There was no human being so strange and mysterious, such an unknown quantity, to Caleb Thayer as his own son. He had not one trait of character in common with him--at least, not one so translated into his own vernacular that he could comprehend it. It was to Caleb as if he looked in a glass expecting to see his own face, and saw therein the face of a stranger.

The wind was quite cool, and blew full on Caleb as he sat there.

Barney kept glancing at him. At length he spoke. "You'll get cold if you sit there in that wind, father," he sang out, and there was a rude kindliness in his tone.

Caleb jumped up with alacrity. "I dunno but I shall. I guess you're right. I wa'n't goin' to set here but a minute," he answered, eagerly. Then he went over to Barney again, and stood near watching him. Barney's hoe clinked on a stone, and he stooped and picked it out of the loam, and threw it away. "There's a good many stone in this field," said the old man.

"There's some."

"It was a heap of work clearin' of it in the first place. You wa'n't more'n two year old when I cleared it. My brother Simeon helped me.

It was five year before he got the fever an' died." Caleb looked at his son with anxious pleading which was out of proportion to his words, and seemed to apply to something behind them in his own mind.

Barney worked on silently.

"I don't believe but what--if you was--to go over there--you could get her back again now, away from that Payne fellar," Caleb blurted out, suddenly; then he shrank back as if from an anticipated blow.

Barney threw a hoeful of earth high in air and faced his father.

"Once for all, father," said he, "I don't want to hear another word about this."

"I shouldn't have said nothin', Barney, but I kinder thought--"

"I don't care what you thought. Keep your thoughts to yourself."

"I know she allers thought a good deal of you, an'--"

"I don't want another word out of your mouth about it, father."

"Well, I ain't goin' to say nothin' about it if you don't want me to, Barney; but you know how mother feels, an'-- Well, I ain't goin' to say no more."

Caleb passed his hand across his forehead, and set off across the field. Just before he was out of hearing, Barney hailed him.

"Do you feel better'n you did, father?" said he.

"What say, Barney?"

"Do you feel better'n you did this morning?"

"Yes, I feel some better, Barney--some considerable better." Caleb started to go back to Barney; then he paused and stood irresolute, smiling towards him. "I feel considerable better," he called again; "my head ain't nigh so dizzy as 'twas."

"You'd better go home, father, and lay down, and see if you can't get a nap," called Barney.

"Yes, I guess I will; I guess 'twould be a good plan," returned the old man, in a pleased voice. And he went on, clambered clumsily over a stone-wall, disappeared behind some trees, reappeared in the open, then disappeared finally over the slope of the hilly field.

It was just five o'clock in the afternoon. Presently a woman came hurrying across the field, with some needle-work gathered up in her arms. She had been spending the afternoon at a neighbor's with her sewing, and was now hastening home to get supper for her husband. She was a pretty woman, and she had not been married long. She nodded to Barney as she hurried past him, holding up her gay-flowered calico skirt tidily. Her smooth fair hair shone like satin in the sun; she wore a little blue kerchief tied over her head, and it slipped back as she ran against the wind. She did not speak to Barney nor smile; he thought her handsome face looked severely at him. She had always known him, although she had not been one of his mates; she was somewhat older.

Barney felt a pang of misery as this fair, severe, and happy face passed him by. He wondered if she had been up to Charlotte's, and if Charlotte or her mother had been talking to her, and if she knew about Thomas Payne. He watched her out of sight in a swirl of gay skirts, her blue and golden head bobbing with her dancing steps; then he glanced over his shoulder at his poor new house, with its fireless chimneys. If all had gone well, he and Charlotte would have been married by this time, and she would have been bestirring herself to get supper for him--perhaps running home from a neighbor's with her sewing as this other woman was doing. All the sweet domestic comfort which he had missed seemed suddenly to toss above his eyes like the one desired fruit of his whole life; its wonderful unknown flavor tantalized his soul. All at once he thought how Charlotte would prepare supper for another man, and the thought seemed to tear his heart like a panther. "He sha'n't have her!" he cried out, quite loudly and fiercely. His own voice seemed to quiet him, and he fell to work again with his mouth set hard.

In half an hour he quitted work, and went up to his house with his hoe over his shoulder like a bayonet. The house was just as the workmen had left it on the night before his quarrel with Cephas Barnard. He had himself fitted some glass into the windows of the kitchen and bedroom, and boarded up the others--that was all. He had purchased a few simple bits of furniture, and set up his miserable bachelor house-keeping. Barney was no cook, and he could purchase no cooked food in Pembroke. He had subsisted mostly upon milk and eggs and a poor and lumpy quality of corn-meal mush, which he had made shift to stir up after many futile efforts.

The first thing which he saw on entering the room to-night was a generous square of light Indian cake on the table. It was not in a plate, the edges were bent and crumbling, and the whole square looked somewhat flattened. Barney knew at once that his father had saved it from his own supper, had slipped it slyly into his pocket, and stolen across the field with it. His mother had not given him a mouthful since she had forbidden him to come home to dinner, and his sister had not dared.

Barney sat down and ate the Indian cake, a solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like phantoms. A woman came running noiselessly into the yard, and pressed against the door panting, and knocked. Barney saw the swirl of light skirts around the corner; then the knock came.

[Illustration: "Barney sat staring at vacancy"]

He got up, trembling, and opened the door, and stood there looking at the woman, who held her hooded head down.

"It's me, Barney," said Charlotte's voice.

"Come in," said Barney, and he moved aside.

But Charlotte stood still. "I can say what I want to here," she whispered, panting. "Barney."

"Well, what is it, Charlotte?"

"Barney."

Barney waited.

"I've come over here to-night, Barney, to see you," said Charlotte, with solemn pauses between her words. "I don't know as I ought to; I don't know but I ought to have more pride. I thought at first I never--could--but afterwards I thought it was my duty. Barney, are you going to let--anything like this--come between us--forever?"

"There's no use talking, Charlotte."

Charlotte's hooded figure stood before him stiff and straight. There was resolution in her carriage, and her pleading tone was grave and solemn.

"Barney," she said again; and Barney waited, his pale face standing aloof in the dark.

"Barney, do you think it is right to let anything like this come between you and me, when we were almost husband and wife?"

"It's no use talking, Charlotte."

"Do you think this is right, Barney?"