Chapter 20. The Cream-Jars Of Her Life

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_ CHAPTER XX. THE CREAM-JARS OF HER LIFE

While Elizabeth progressed toward health the work on the Hunter farm progressed also. Because of taking the cattle to Mitchell County it was possible to get in a greater acreage of small grain and corn. Patsie had a small colt at her side, as did her mate also, and there was an extra man needed in the field most of the time, but after repeated consultations it was decided that by using care the teams they had would be able to plow the corn, and that they could hire help for the harvesting cheaper than they could buy another pair of horses.

However, in spite of the discussions which were supposed to have settled the matter, John came home from Colebyville one Saturday with a new team.

"What do you think of them?" he asked Hugh, who opened the gate to let him into the barnyard. "I just made up my mind that it wasn't economy to push the horses we had so hard. I got them at a bargain."

"You've bought them, you say?"

"Yes," was the brief answer.

"I'd take them back," Hugh said slowly but decidedly. "Horses and dogs talk with their tails, and I don't like the way this one acts."

"I can't take them back. I got them from a mover. I got them for a song, and we're going to need them for the binder. I know what we said," he went on, interrupting Hugh, who was trying to speak, "but there was a bargain in them and we do need them."

"But we haven't the money! How did you buy them? You couldn't pay for them outright."

Hugh Noland had been feeling his way down the foreleg of the horse nearest him. The animal was nervous and had crowded over against its mate in an endeavour to get away. Both its ears were laid back, and there was a half-threatening air about its movements. As Hugh straightened up to continue the discussion of finances, it jumped aside, quivering with fright.

"I gave a check on the bank," John replied uneasily. Hugh had never criticised him before.

Hugh was taken up with soothing the nervous animal for a moment.

"You'll run out of money before the summer's over," he said warningly.

"Oh, I've had to borrow a little already. With Elizabeth's illness and all, I saw we weren't going to get through, so I just took out a loan of five hundred and paid Doc Morgan while I was at it. I meant to have told you. I've got some calves coming from over west to-morrow too." John poured it all out while he was at it, with a relief in having it over.

There was a pause. When Hugh Noland again spoke it was with a distinct note of firmness and almost of authority.

"The plain understanding in our partnership--the one I laid the most stress upon to start with--was that there should be no debts. I'm willing that you should be free to select a team; it isn't that. Did you borrow this money in the firm's name?"

"Yes-s-s. I didn't think you'd care about a little sum like that," John said slowly. He was very uncomfortable. "I turned my personal note in on the account book for the doctor's bill. You can see it on the book."

"I don't doubt at all but that you did, John. You're not called into question, old boy, on any other matter than the one of debts, but You'll never put this firm five cents in debt without coming to an instant understanding. I came to this country to get well. I won't get well, but I won't allow myself to get into anything that will run me down quicker with worry. You knew it before you went in with me--and you agreed."

That was the final word John Hunter felt as he tied the skittish brute he had just purchased in the stall beside the door, and turned to put the hay down from the loft above. The sound of plunging feet and snorts of wild terror when the hay fell into the manger turned his mind to the probable truth of Hugh's opinion of the lately purchased horses.

"I wonder if the blamed brutes are going to be too maggoty for our use after all," he thought. "It'd be just my luck. He was fair about it though," John admitted reluctantly. "Oh, well, after all, he's worth having around, and I'm going to do a deal better than I would if he hadn't come along. Elizabeth was right--I did get in too deep." And with this astonishing admission, John Hunter finished haying the horses and walked slowly to the house, thinking about the new horses, and half prepared to admit that he had made a mistake in buying them outright from a man who was able to get away before they could be proven, but Elizabeth and Hugh were already sitting by the table in the living room and he knew he was wanted. He went to the bedroom to wash his hands--John could not form the habit of washing in the kitchen as other farmers did--and as he washed, meditated, and as he meditated he found himself ready to accept this reproof from Hugh Noland, ready to live up to agreements if Hugh imposed them, ready to listen to Hugh and love him. Something in Hugh Noland was so fundamentally square that the principle of squareness took on a new meaning to John Hunter.

"Here you are! You're the one that's insisted on these readings most, and you're always late," Hugh cried as John came from the bedroom, fresh and well groomed as if he had not done barn chores a few minutes before.

The reading was part of John Hunter's play world. John was not a man of scholarly tastes, but reading, like the use of the hairbrush he had just laid down, was good form: they were both part of the world to which John wished to belong. A book might or might not relate to that world, but it was a book and seemed to do so, and while John Hunter might or might not get much intellectual advancement out of a book, he got advancement out of sitting in Hugh Noland's presence and opening his heart to the love and respect Hugh commanded from him. John did not close himself off from Hugh's influence as he did from Elizabeth's, and the things he refused to take from her he adopted and readily set into action at Hugh's suggestion.

It was destined to be the last night in which John was to be permitted the comfort of this new feature of home life, however. As they were gathered about the breakfast table a man rode into the lane and called John Hunter to the door without getting off his horse.

"Doc Morgan was goin' past my house this mornin' an' asked me if I'd bring this over t' you. 'E said it came after you left town, an' th' agent didn't know how t' git over t' you 'thout he was comin' this way this mornin'. Hope it ain't no bad news."

He waited to see John tear open the envelope and read the telegram.

"My mother's sick," was John's hurried statement as he turned toward the house.

Hugh drove John Hunter to the station. The sun was hot and he had read till nearly midnight the night before, and, busy season though it was, he thought it best not to start home till toward night. Doctor Morgan had returned home and Hugh, as was his custom, went to the office for a chat. It was one of the chief delights of both to have an hour together.

"Do they get along well together--Hunter and his wife?" Doctor Morgan asked after he had taken Hugh's health into account.

"You'd think so if you'd heard the directions I received for her care just now," Hugh answered with a laugh.

"Well, I don't care--I couldn't make him understand about her when she was sick. He let that squalling brat crawl over her, and let her do baking and things she wasn't fit to do till she was worn out," the old doctor said resentfully. Then added as an afterthought, "Say! You're not letting him run you into debt, are you?"

"No debts in mine. There's one note and It'll be cleared up as soon as the small grain can be disposed of. I put the clamps on that as soon as I heard of it. It won't happen again. I think his wife was about as glad of the end of the credit business as any of us," Hugh said, and then added with a laugh: "I think you're mistaken about his treatment of her, though. You should have heard the directions he gave me about her as the train was about to pull out; you'd have thought she was his favourite child and that I was going to neglect her."

Doctor Morgan snorted contemptuously.

"Oh, yes, I know him. Hunter loves to give directions to anything from a puppy dog to a preacher. That's what's the matter with her. He directs her all the time as if she didn't have sense enough to cook hot water or wash the baby. He ain't any worse than a lot of men I know of, but you expect more of a man that's half-educated. I tell you, Noland, the trouble 's in this business of men owning women. I've practised in these parts ever since this country's been opened, and I see a good deal of husbands--and they're a bad lot."

Hugh Noland watched the old doctor with a twinkle in his eye.

"You aren't going to give us men all a knock, are you?" he said amusedly.

"I'm not saying anybody's bad," Doctor Morgan said, following out his own reasonings. "The trouble 's in men owning everything. Theoretically, a woman shares in the property, and of course she does if she gets a divorce, but as long as she lives with him he's the one that has the money and she has to ask for it if she has ever so little. You take Mrs. Hunter: she don't spend a cent he don't oversee and comment on; she's dependent on that man for every bite she eats and for every stitch she wears and he interferes with every blessed thing she does. Give that woman some money of her own, Noland, and where'd she be? John Hunter 'd treat her as an equal in a minute; he'd know she could quit, and he'd come to terms."

Doctor Morgan swung the stethoscope with which he had been listening to Hugh's heart, and proceeded without waiting for Hugh to speak.

"Oh, we doctors see a side of women's lives you other men don't know anything about. We see them suffer, and we know that the medicine we give them is all knocked out by the doings of the men they live with, and we can't raise our hands to stop the thing at the bottom of it all. Why, that woman's just lost a child I know she was glad to lose, and--oh, don't misunderstand me! She never told me she was glad she lost it, but how in God's name could she be otherwise? She couldn't do all he required of her without it. She had butter to make, and shellers to cook for, and then the damned fool 'd shove that heavy baby on her--and he actually talked to me about her being cross!"

Hugh Noland was beginning to feel that living in a man's house did not constitute a knowledge of him, and yet there were the things he himself had seen and heard.

"But, he's looking after her now as if she were a baby herself," he protested. "He urged me to look after her, and see that she didn't have to lift Jack yet for a while, and to humour the hired girl for fear they'd lose her, and he even insisted that I keep up the reading aloud that I've been doing for them."

"I don't doubt that," the old doctor said, a bit nettled. "He's not all bad. He's a right good fellow--that's the very point I'm trying to make. It's because he owns her and thinks he has a right to run her affairs--that's the trouble at the bottom of the whole thing. Now that she's sick he'll see that she don't have to lift the baby. If she owned herself she could stop lifting the baby before she got sick; a man can't tell when a woman feels like working and when she don't. What I want to say is, that a man browbeats a woman because she hasn't any money and can't help herself. Give a woman a home of her own that he couldn't touch, and then give her an income fit to raise her children, and he'd come into that house and behave, or he'd be sent out again, and she wouldn't age ten years in three, nor be dragged down to the hell of nagging to protect herself against him. I tell you, Noland, Kansas would be a stronger state right now, and a damned sight stronger state twenty years from now, if the women owned and run half of its affairs at least." Doctor Morgan ended quite out of breath.

"I guess you're right, doctor, but I've got to get some barb wire loaded to take home, and you've preached the regulation hour and a half," Hugh said. He was living in the Hunter home, and he really loved both John Hunter and his wife, and honour demanded that he should not gossip about them.

"Right you are, my boy. And I see your point too; I've no business to talk professional secrets even to you." He laid his arm affectionately across the younger man's shoulder and squared him around so that he could look into his face. "This is only a side of life I battle with in almost every home I go into. I'm almost glad you can't marry; It'll leave you where I can respect you. Think of a woman having a child she don't want! and think of a man respecting himself afterward! It destroys a woman's body, but the men--well, it's the most damnable, soul-destroying thing in a man's life; he's lost and don't even know it. Run along," he said after a pause, "or I'll hold forth for another hour in an unprofessional way. It makes me swear to see a pretty girl made old before she's twenty-five."

But Elizabeth Hunter was not to be an old woman before she was twenty-five, for Elizabeth had Hepsie in the kitchen, she had learned to protect herself by refusing to be oppressed about the work she did do, and the weeks of rest that followed John's going were filled with the things which rested and restored her. It was not long till she was as attractive as she had ever been in all the years of her girlhood. Elizabeth was barely twenty-three, and there was a good constitution back of her which rest could set right; she was one of nature's favourites to whom colour and spirits return quickly. Every charm of person she had was enhanced by her present surroundings, for the brightness and freedom which came from John's absence were the crowning things needed to complete her recovery.

Hugh Noland read to Elizabeth nightly, and in the daytime her comfort was his first thought. The work of cooking for those shellers had been his work as much as John's, but it had all fallen on her, fallen, according to Doctor Morgan, at a time when a man shielded even the mare in his harness from overwork. As he watched the colour come back to the girl's face day by day he recognized that the miracle was brought about by rest. In the return of Elizabeth's beauty there was a new element which Hugh Noland saw but did not recognize as new: to the roundness of girlhood was added the strength and experience of womanhood, to the mere physical charm of youth the maturity and poise of the woman who has fought, if not conquered, self.

John had set the example of late hours, and the two read throughout the long, early summer evenings quite as much from habit as from inclination. It had been the established custom of the house for so long that Hepsie and the hired man accepted it as a matter of course. The men saw little of it because one of the first things Hugh had done when he had returned from Mitchell County had been to partition off a room in the well-built barn for the accommodation of the men. Jake, who loved Elizabeth with a dog-like fidelity, came and went about the house more freely than the rest, and saw the two seated about the sitting-room lamp, and was as glad as if he had had a place among them.

"It's hers, God bless 'er!" he had said the night after John's departure, "an' I'm mighty glad she's got it. She ain't had much t' make 'er glad since I've been around these diggin's."

Those were evenings never to be forgotten. As Hugh read, Elizabeth listened with the open-mouthed joy of girlhood, but the substance of what they read was viewed from the standpoint of a woman. Hugh found the girl's mind keen and alert. They began to turn to the classics, and Hugh Noland, whose profession it had been to teach, was surprised and delighted with the aptitude and viewpoints of his pupil. Elizabeth pursued literature with her usual thoroughgoing absorption; the dictionary was brought out and laid upon the table, and with it she spent long hours when Hugh was in the field.

The second week in June, Hugh Noland was brought to a sudden stop in the delicious holiday experience by a remark of Elizabeth's. The book had been finished earlier than was usual for them to stop reading, and it had been decided that it was too late to begin another that night. Hugh was not ready to go to bed, and sat watching her as she straightened up the littered table. A book of poems they had once read fell open and the girl picked it up and began to read to herself. In a moment she was literally engulfed in it, and he watched her deep abstraction in full sympathy with the mood it represented. Presently she began to read aloud.

Elizabeth read on and on, and Hugh dropped back into his chair and listened, studying her as she stood before him reading so intently that she forgot that she stood. When the end was reached she dropped the book on the table with a rapturous indrawn breath.

"I never knew what real happiness was before," she said. "I wonder if they read in heaven?"

"They'd have to let us read in our heaven or it wouldn't be heaven," Hugh Noland replied.

With the words still in his mouth he realized what he had said. The serpent had invaded their paradise: henceforth they would wander outside of its confines. With a self-conscious flush, he shifted the eyes into which she was looking, and arose to say good-night.

Although she did not understand it, Elizabeth also turned hastily away; Hugh Noland's embarrassment communicated itself to her. Her confusion puzzled her. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was near midnight; she had read longer than she had thought. In her surprised consideration of what Hepsie would think if she should hear Hugh pass her door at that hour, she got the first burst of light on the subject. Until now she had gone along night after night reading with Hugh Noland, absorbed in the books, and without any sort of attitude toward the man except that of good-fellowship, but now she stood revealed to herself and was covered with shame. That Hugh might be in love with her did not occur to her, but that he knew that she had feelings out of keeping with her vows of marriage she felt certain, and with her usual intensity Elizabeth went over the mark in her shame and contrition.

"What must he have thought I meant? What must he think of me as a woman? Worse yet, what must he think of me as a wife?" she asked herself, and each question left her more bitterly humiliated, more self-distrusting, more unhappy.

They were to learn, however, that three months of continual association over the books had formed a habit not easily laid aside. To the habit of intellectual companionship had been added the joy of close and reciprocated affection, and the sudden breaking off of this daily communication left both of them, especially Hugh, in a condition of almost tragic loneliness, but honest of heart and true of purpose, both avoided further readings.

The nights were hot now; "good corn weather," Jake called it, and the time had come to "lay by" the early planting. John's absence had retarded the plowing, for try as he would the chores kept Hugh late in the morning and had compelled him to quit early at night. It had not been his intention to take the place of an active field worker, but the season had come on so rapidly that the weeds threatened to get the better of the hired men, and though it was all to learn over again, Hugh had gone out with the intention of doing good work and had succeeded, to Jake's astonishment and great admiration. It served Hugh's plans at this point to put in the long hours away from the house, knowing that otherwise he would fall back into the old life of the book at once. At first the heavy cultivator handles absorbed his time and thought, for it was fifteen years since Hugh Noland had cultivated corn, but when the work became more mechanical his mind wandered back to forbidden ground and the days were harder than any he had ever known.

One frightfully hot day, near the end of the plowing of the first field, which lay near the house, Hugh found it necessary to rest the horses frequently. With each period of rest his thoughts returned to Elizabeth with new force and longing; his mind worked continually on the reading matter they had gone over, and constantly he wanted to elaborate or discuss some subject left unfinished. It was the devil with which he had to wrestle. Also, she showed the strain of disappointment when he met her at meals, and he found himself struggling with Doctor Morgan's observations on her health, her husband, and her happiness. As far as John was concerned, he thought the old doctor was mistaken, and be it remembered, Hugh Noland had a genuine liking for John Hunter. That liking added to the seriousness of his situation in John Hunter's home.

He mopped his perspiring brow, while little wet lines showed in the creases of his sleeves and across the back of his thin summer shirt. The fierce heat parched his mouth and his whole burning body called for a drink. Tying his team to a post an hour after noon he vaulted over the fence and walked to the creek, picking his way down to the narrow stream. The heat of summer was drying the brook up rapidly; already there was but a tiny rivulet, but such as was left curled and trickled between grassy banks in a manner to attract the eye of a thirsty man. Hugh knelt on a hummock with his hand on the opposite bank and drank as only the man who plows corn on a hot June day can. As he stood up he paused with his handkerchief halfway to his face and listened, while the water dripped from nose and chin unheeded. The continuous tones of a voice reading aloud reached him. It was such a curious place to encounter such a phenomenon that he listened intently for a moment.

"Elizabeth!" he whispered.

Every pulse in Hugh Noland's body pounded suddenly. On the first impulse he was away in her direction, walking rapidly and without effort at concealment. Without taking time to think, without knowing or caring whether it were wise, he walked as straight toward the spot as the laden bee to the hive.

Hugh's coming fell upon Elizabeth suddenly, but the perfect naturalness of her joy put him at his ease.

"I heard you reading," he said simply. "What are you working on now?"

He threw himself down on the grass beside the willow trunk on which she was seated and held out his hand for the book. After running his eye over the page he handed it back to her with the request that she read on. The heat of the summer day shimmered along the horizon outside, but here in the cool shade of the willows the delicious afternoon air lulled his senses and made of the spot a paradise of comfort and contentment. The girl was the embodiment of everything sweet and womanly to him, and the joy of the moment, bringing added colour to her cheeks, made the utmost contrast imaginable to the dust and drudgery of the afternoon in the corn rows.

Hugh's coming had been so obviously voluntary and joyous that the fear she had entertained, that he would think ill of her as John Hunter's wife, was set at rest. The old confidence, sympathy, and companionship were retendered, and the girl met it with her habitual openness. She accepted the book from his hand and read as asked. Hugh Noland watched her earnestly, and recalled the things he had been told about her and her affairs. On more than one occasion he had been told that she had been neglected, and at the time had put the tale away as foolish farm gossip, but Doctor Morgan was no fool, and his gossip was usually not only true but had on this particular occasion fallen out with vehemence and conviction. As he looked at her he asked himself how any man could neglect a woman of Elizabeth's sincere qualities. She was so true that the only indication that he had ever received of even a slight difference of opinion with her husband had been the accidental one regarding debts. He remembered a remark of Sadie Hansen's to the effect that John Hunter never took his wife anywhere, and he remembered that in the four months he had been in the house he had never heard him offer to do so, and then Hugh Noland remembered that he had no right to think about it at all. However, his mind recurred to it in spite of all he could do, and presently he was immersed in the old consideration. Loyalty must be one of her qualities: four months he had been in her house and she had never been taken anywhere except to Nathan's, where he himself had taken her, and she had never remarked upon it, and she was but twenty-three!

"Twenty-three!" he said under his breath.

"What was it you said?" Elizabeth asked, looking up.

"Nothing," he replied guiltily.

Elizabeth became conscious and embarrassed.

"I've kept you all afternoon!" she exclaimed, getting suddenly to her feet.

"I wanted to be kept," Hugh admitted slowly, rising also. "It's frightfully hot in the middle of the afternoon. I'll work late, and milk after dark."

"I'll bring up the cows and do the milking," she volunteered.

"Let me see you!" he protested, and went to his work again.

Hugh Noland had never even guessed that he would walk deliberately over and spend a whole afternoon with a woman he had no right to love after becoming aware that he was already in love with her. For the first time he stood in the limelight of strong emotions and knew himself for what he was, not only that he was a mere man, but that he was a man who was not showing the proper control over feelings and emotions which thousands of men and women alike controlled every day. He worked his problem over as he worked the mellow soil about the corn roots and made himself late, but with contradictory impulses hurried the milking when he did get at it so as to get down to the book again.

Elizabeth had taken time to think out her side of their position, and told herself that she hoped that Hugh would not offer to read to-night, but as the time approached she trimmed the lamp and arranged the books on the sitting-room table with a slight sense of worry for fear he would not come, and conscious that the evening was going fast. It was late when they began, and correspondingly late when they finished the reading that night.

The next night Hugh sat on the upturned manure cart talking to the men till he saw Elizabeth put out the light in the sitting room, and then, in spite of the fact that he had been strong enough to stay away, was sorry that he had not had one more night's reading with her before John came home. John was coming in the morning, and Hugh was to meet him, and Hugh Noland did not like himself, nor the position he would be in when he thought of greeting John Hunter as a friend.

The better to think things out and decide what he would do, Hugh sat down on the doorstep and did not go in. The night was perfect. There was a full moon and the soft breeze was a delicious reminder of the coolness of the leafy bower among the willows where he had spent the afternoon with Elizabeth. There was to be no more of Elizabeth for him, God bless her! Elizabeth was a wife and honour demanded that not even a glance of affection pass between them. This Hugh Noland believed, and yet when they were together their little embarrassments cried their love aloud, and neither could mentally avoid the issue. Each had known that the other had resolved and suffered and fallen into the temptation of the reading. The book was becoming a delicious torment. He could not stay in that house. Plainly, it was going to be necessary for him to go away. The business demanded his attention, and he decided to go to Mitchell County. At that point Hugh stopped in his calculations to consider how things would run at this end of the line if he did so.

In summing the business up, Hugh summed up his impression of John Hunter along with it, and found himself reluctant to go away and leave everything in his hands. John was industrious and tidy about his work. Dear old John! He had come very near Hugh's heart in the short time they had been together. The daily consideration of possible death had mellowed Hugh Noland's naturally fine nature, and given him the tenderness of attitude and thought that the sublime and inevitable impose upon those who live in its shadow. Actions considered as final are warmer and less likely to be inconsiderate than those where there is a feeling of indefinite time to correct mistakes. Hugh sat now and let his heart run out to John with all the love of a more than usually affectionate nature. In his heart he wanted John back home, and yet it made him uneasy. There was a peculiar sense of being a traitor as he considered the meeting with this man who had trusted his home in his hands. In regard to the business, he, Hugh, would have to let things take their own course. All he had on earth was in this farm now, but he would get away as soon as he could possibly do so; he would sacrifice that much to the man whose home he had entered. Hugh knew to a nicety how necessary it would be for his interests in a business way to be here on the ground and keep John Hunter from going into debt. Hugh had his own judgment, neighbourhood gossip, and Doctor Morgan's plain instructions on that point, but was resolved to go if he lost all that he had in so doing. "Well, at any rate, he can't mortgage anything without consulting me, and I'll get as much of the stock out there as I can after next year--that is, if there is any next year for me," he said, as he got up to go to bed long after midnight.

The morning of John's return Elizabeth asked Hugh to take her as far as Nathan's on his way in to town. Hugh had not sat on the step till midnight the night before to let himself fall into temptation the first thing in the morning, and suggested that since the shafts of the buggy were mended that she drive over to Nathan's alone, giving as his reason that he might be unable to come back promptly. The girl fell into his plan so readily that Hugh in his contradictory frame of mind wondered about it and was half hurt. As he hitched Patsie into the shafts, however, he reasoned it out that Elizabeth Hunter was probably making the same fight that he was making. He tied the mare in the side lane and left her there without going to the house as usual to help with Jack. If she were fighting for her own esteem, as he was doing, Hugh resolved not to be the cause of temptation; it made him feel a little better about meeting John. Could he have known, as Elizabeth did, that it was the first time since her marriage that she had had the privilege of driving alone and that the precedent once established would settle the possibility of demanding a horse whenever she wanted it, it would have put a different complexion on the matter.

In order for Elizabeth to use the buggy, however, Hugh was obliged to drive the strange team. Jake had been using them since John's absence, but had come in from the field the night before with the announcement that he did not intend "to risk his neck with them broncos any more." Before Hugh got to Colebyville he was thoroughly displeased with them, and spoke of his dislike of them to John on the way home.

"A few days on the harvester 'll fix them," John replied.

"Well, they're acting better than they did on the way in. They're hot and tired, and maybe the harvester will do it, but they're a bad lot," Hugh replied wearily. "I feel that I've got to get away to Mitchell County. The cattle have been on my mind for days. You'll have this team on your hands, for none of the men but Jake would try to use them, and he told me last night he'd used them for the last time."

"Aren't you well, Hugh?" John Hunter asked with such concern that Hugh was covered with humiliation and shame.

"Oh, yes-s-s. But you can run the place and I'm not hanging out like I thought I could--and I like it down there; it's more like the life I've been ordered to lead."

"Wait till the rye has been cut. Did you say Silas wanted us to cut his too?" John Hunter asked.

"Yes. He stopped me as I drove over this morning. The boys will lay the early corn by to-day; we can get the binder out to-morrow and see that it is ready by the day after. We might have been through with the corn to-day, but I've been lazy of late. I knocked off and rested and read most of the hot part of yesterday afternoon," Hugh replied slowly. He wished in his heart that he could tell all.

"That's the thing to do. I'm not going to have you going down to Mitchell County while it's so hot. You'll lay around the house and read, that's what You'll do, and I'll run this farm for a while."

The thought of that took Hugh Noland's breath. That was what he was running away from, but he could think of no reason but his health, and dropped the subject to get away from it.

John Hunter asked questions about every feature of the farm work, and as he asked watched Hugh's face, looking anxiously for signs of breaking health. Under no conditions would he let Hugh get sick. Hugh had been the happiest circumstance of this farming experience. There was a discouraged note in Hugh's voice that John did not like.

"Did you see Morgan to-day?" he asked after he had had all the farm work explained to him.

"Oh, now, don't you get to worrying because I happen to mention my health. Yes, I saw Morgan, and he agreed with me that the other place would be better for me. I can run that and you can run this, and with care we ought to make some money pretty soon."

"But that takes you away from us and--and we want you here!" John exclaimed with such fervour that Hugh winced under it.

Hugh smiled so sadly back at the eager, boyish face turned to his that John was more than ever sure he was ill. His hand shot out to him with an almost womanish sympathy.

"We'll see to it that you're kept busy where you belong, and the work won't wear you out either, my boy," he said.

Hugh saw that he was getting deeper in at every word he uttered and went back to a discussion of the farm work.

Elizabeth waited intentionally till she saw the men pass Nathan's house before she started home. Try as she would, she did not yearn for her husband's return. Life was short, her youth was going fast, and her fear of the faded life grew as she looked forward to an old age spent with John Hunter after Hugh's departure. Hugh must go, there was no question about that. He had told her night before last that he thought of it; had spoken of it incidentally enough, but in such wise that the girl knew why he was going. She had felt at the time that Hugh listened for her reply, but there was none she could make, and her silence added the final word to his decision. Elizabeth knew that it was the only honourable course; she consented to it in her mind, and yet, as she looked ahead to a time when she could not have him to take shelter behind with the cream jars of her life, she was sick at what she must face. Even to-day she hoped that he would be present when she drove Patsie into the yard.

Fortune favoured Elizabeth in getting home with the horse and buggy. John had said that he was going to the pasture to look over the stock, and when Hugh saw Elizabeth drive through the gate they had left open, there was nothing for him to do but go forward to take her horse. John had seen her coming and had come back from the pasture gate, and the three met.

"See how brave I have become in your absence," she said.

"Well, I guess you've driven horses as long as I have," John Hunter replied happily, and kissed the astonished wife and the child in her arms with such real pleasure in returning to them that it was good to meet him after all.

"If he'd always be like that," Elizabeth thought wistfully, and Hugh Noland felt more like a criminal in the presence of that kiss than he had ever done in his life.

"Here, I'll tie Patsie up after I give her a drink. You go in with Elizabeth and I'll follow as soon as its done," John said to Hugh, and turning to Elizabeth said, "You haven't taken very good care of him since I've been away, dear. Go on in and get a book and I'll listen for an hour before I go to the pasture."

"I'll do no such thing. I'll go to that pasture with you--that's what I'll do. I'm not sick. Rats! Elizabeth knows I----"

Hugh Noland stopped short, "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hunter," he added confusedly.

"I don't know why you shouldn't call me by my first name; I do you," Elizabeth answered, glad in spite of herself.

Hugh went away with John, and Elizabeth had a long time to think about it. It was the first time Hugh had ever dropped into the least familiarity in addressing her, and no amount of reasoning could keep her from feeling a thrill of pleasure over it. She did not approve of herself, but the thrill was there. She hated herself, but the thrill remained. She wondered bitterly if she would ever be able to approve of herself again; every turn of life's wheel brought out some new and hitherto unsuspected characteristic, and try as she would she could not make herself do as her code of morals demanded that she should. She thought of her various friends; none of them had ever been guilty of the things Elizabeth found herself culpable of. Sadie had rebelled against her first child, but when shown the consequences had cheerfully applied the lesson, while she, Elizabeth, had been unable to put into practice later the very precepts she had so glibly given her neighbour. None of her friends had ever committed the folly of falling in love with men who were not their husbands.

Elizabeth would not stay for the reading that night, and had a bad hour before she fell asleep. Her love for Hugh looked even worse to her since John's arrival than it had done before. This new phase of her life was even less able to command respect than any which had preceded it. Why was she vexed with such unheard of temptations? It did not comfort her to reason it out that this thing had fallen upon her without any wish of hers, that the thrill which had followed his use of her name was not a thing she had deliberately fostered within herself; she demanded of herself that she should not thrill at his voice, not knowing that she demanded the impossible.

The rye was to be cut at Silas Chamberlain's. John suggested to Elizabeth that she had better go over to help Liza Ann, since she was alone, saying that he would take her over when he went. Hugh was to go with the machine. Jake would drive the extra team over, and the other two men would plow corn at home. A few minutes before nine o'clock John announced that he was ready. He had come in to carry Jack to the buggy for her. John had gone away with the impressions of Elizabeth's illness still upon him, and looked out for her with the same care he had accorded her when an invalid.

"How long?" he asked, dropping down on the foot of the bed beside the machine upon which she had been putting in the spare time.

"Just this one little seam; I'll have it done then."

She stooped over the machine to finish the seam quickly, not liking to keep John waiting when he was already somewhat late.

Jack slipped from his father's lap, and fascinated by the swiftly moving wheel on a level with his face, put out a pudgy little forefinger to feel of it as it went around. His mother saw it and stopped short with a little cry of alarm.

"Don't do that, Jack!" she said sharply. "It'll take your finger right off of your hand if you get it in there."

Jack put his hand behind his little back, and stood in round-eyed wonder watching the wheel as she started to sew again.

John was getting restless and wanted to go.

"Aren't you about----"

Elizabeth looked up at him as he started to speak, and Jack's finger shot out to the forbidden wheel on the instant. Elizabeth saw it at a point when she could not control the pedal with her foot. Mother love brought a scream to her lips, and to save the child she gave him a shove with her hand. Jack fell on the floor in a heap, striking his head on the bedpost as he did so.

John had clutched at him ineffectually as he fell and caught him up as soon as he could get hold of him, turning him over in his arms to see where he was hurt. The blood spurted from the little nose, giving an appearance of serious injury to the matter all out of proportion to the exact nature of the damage sustained, but as usual, when excited, John saw only surface indications.

"What does possess you when you're cross?" he exclaimed as he relinquished his hold on the baby, who, however badly he might be hurt, was struggling to get to his mother's arms.

Elizabeth carried the screaming child to the kitchen to bathe the bruised nose and apply a wet cloth to the nasty blue ridge beginning to form where the little cheek had encountered the bedpost.

"I never saw any one act like you do with a child," John said with his usual irritation.

"I didn't intend to knock him over, but I couldn't stop my foot and I thought he'd get his little finger taken right off before my very eyes."

"Well, you shouldn't go at him so rough. You always treat him as if he were a block of wood."

Elizabeth's lips closed down tight, and to keep Jack from hearing further criticisms of her management she went back to the bedroom. When John was ready to go he called to her from the lane, and she carried Jack to the door instead of laying him down.

"Take Hepsie with you. Tell Mrs. Chamberlain that I got ready to come. He'd probably be cross if I went now. Hepsie's in the potato patch," Elizabeth said in a low voice, and went back so promptly that John could not reply.

John took Hepsie with him, and explained to Liza Ann, as Elizabeth requested, that she was unable to come because Jack had hurt himself.

The day was dry and hot, and John Hunter consumed water like a fish upon all occasions. The discovery that the water-jugs had been left at home called for instant action when he arrived in the field. Silas had put his team on the binder and Patsie was free for use on just such errands as this. The machine had just been driven up to where Hugh could ask for water also. John crossed over and laid his hand on the lines.

"Here, you take the horse and go for the water. I forgot the jugs; You'll have to go clear home after them."

"Why don't you do it?" Hugh asked.

John Hunter looked him over rather sharply and replied:

"Because I'm going to drive this binder to-day. I don't like your voice very well since I got home, Hugh."

"You won't hear very much more of it if I can get away day after to-morrow," Hugh replied, smiling at the turn he had given to John's sympathy.

John Hunter grinned back at him, but kept his hand on the lines, and Hugh got down.

"You can't start day after to-morrow, for we won't get this rye done, and you won't start then, my boy, with such a note in your voice as that. I've spoken to Jake about it and he'll go. I don't propose to have you that far away when you are not well--it ain't what we want you for. Go on and get that water," he added when he saw the expression of protest in Hugh's face.

Hugh went without argument, but his determination was as strong as ever. Instead of going around the road he drove across the field to the fence between the two places, and, tying Patsie, walked through the cornfield to the pasture and on toward the house.

The hot sun blazed fiercely down on his thinly clad back, and he noticed as he struggled through the tasselling corn that the leaves were already firing about the roots. Rain was essential, but he reflected that enough rain to do the corn any good would ruin the small grain now ready to cut. "Kansas luck," he muttered as he crossed the deep ridges thrown up by his own cultivator a few days before. Not a breath of air was stirring, and by the time he had reached the house he was hot and tired. Reflecting that John had taken Elizabeth to Chamberlain's, he decided to rest before he started back with the heavy water-jugs. He stopped in the kitchen for a drink and took a small bottle out of his pocket.

"Two, I guess, this time," he said as he poured the tablets into his hand. He dropped his finger on the other wrist a moment, and then swallowed both pellets.

Elizabeth heard him settle himself in a rocking chair with a long-drawn breath of comfort. She was giving Jack little pats to ease him off to sleep and the house was very quiet. She decided to keep still and let him return to the field without seeing her tear-stained face, but Jack roused with a low whimpering cry which she felt sure Hugh must have heard, and as soon as the child was asleep she walked out without further effort at concealment.

At the noise of the opening door Hugh Noland sprang to his feet in surprise; he had been half-asleep.

"Why, I didn't know that you were here!" he exclaimed when he saw that it was Elizabeth. "I thought you went to Chamberlain's."

His eyes riveted themselves upon her swollen eyelids, and when she stood embarrassed before him and did not reply readily, conscious only of his searching gaze, he misunderstood and added gravely:

"Elizabeth, there is something I must speak about. I cannot have you worried over matters between us----"

Elizabeth Hunter's eyes ceased to be shy and troubled and came up to his in such complete astonishment that he broke off in confusion.

There was a pause for one short second, and then Elizabeth spoke in nervous haste, and as if to ward off something.

"I--I--I wasn't crying about--that is, I hurt Jack accidentally and--and John misunderstood."

Even while the words were still in her mouth, she realized by his expression that what she was saying sounded like a complaint, as if she were exposing a difference between herself and her husband, and that was the one thing that under no circumstances had she ever done. She made a frightened stop without ending the sentence.

As if to save his mother from needless embarrassment, Jack slipped to the floor and came stumbling out on sleepy legs, tired and cross, and rubbing his sweaty little face with hot, sweaty little fists, and demanding his mother's attention. Elizabeth turned to him with a relief beyond words.

Hugh Noland, who had always loved the child, was never so glad to see him, and slipped away while he was being soothed and petted out of his tears and discomfort. Both Hugh and Elizabeth knew that but for Jack's timely interruption words would have escaped Hugh that they both preferred should not be uttered. Both knew the situation, but both saw that it would be easier, as well as safer and more honourable, not to discuss it.

"I'll not think any more about going away--I wouldn't do it if I had money," she decided as she watched Hugh return with his jug. "I married John Hunter in good faith, and I'll live with him in good faith and straighten things out." The thought of her love for Hugh came up and she added, "I don't care! I didn't go out to hunt up a love for him and I can't help it if it has come to me; but I hope he gets away to Mitchell County day after to-morrow." _

Read next: Chapter 21. Bound To The Stake

Read previous: Chapter 19. "Her Wages, Food And Clothing She Must Accept"

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