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 gra.s.sy 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 gra.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed.

"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, G.o.d bless her!

Elizabeth was a wife and honour demanded that not even a glance of affection pa.s.s between them. This Hugh Noland believed, and yet when they were together their little embarra.s.sments 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 att.i.tude 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.s 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.