At the end of a week he was quite himself again, though he still had difficulty in wearing his hat. It was not till the second Sunday after the accident that he appeared in the dining room for the first time, with a large traveling cap concealing the suggestive bandages. He looked pale and thin, but his eyes danced with joy.

Maud's eyes dilated with instant solicitude. The rest sprang up in surprise, with shouts of delight, as hearty as brethren.

"Ginger! I'm glad t' see yeh!" said Troutt, so sincerely that he looked almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.

"Oh, I'm on deck again."

Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a significant little pause--a pause which grew painful till Albert turned and saw Brann, and called out:

"h.e.l.lo, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."

As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and embarra.s.sment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering some poor apology.

"Hope y' don't blame me."

"Of course not--fortunes o' war. n.o.body to blame; just my carelessness.--Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into the seat of honor at the head of the table.

Then the rest laughed and took seats, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He had not finished yet.

"I'm mighty glad yeh don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want 'o say the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it's _all right_."

Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He knew this, coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a ready apologist; it was a terrible victory, and he made it as easy for his rival as possible.

"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of it--that is, turn in a couple o' Blaine's 'Twenty Years' on the bill."

Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been prodigious, but he had s.n.a.t.c.hed victory out of defeat; his better nature had conquered.

No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring, people said his love for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could rise out of the barbaric in his love and hate was heroic.

When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden moment pa.s.s now without hearing it ring full, and she did not dare to think how short this day of happiness might be.

IV.

At the end of the fifth week there was a suspicion of spring in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. February was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of spring in the rapidly melting snow which still lay on the hills and under the cedars and tamaracks in the swamps. Patches of green gra.s.s, appearing on the sunny side of the road where the snow had melted, led to predictions of spring from the loafers beginning to sun themselves on the salt-barrels and shoe-boxes outside the stores.

A group sitting about the blacksmith shop were talking it.

"It's an early seedin'--now mark my words," said Troutt, as he threw his knife into the soft ground at his feet. "The sun is crossing the line earlier this spring than it did last."

"Yes; an' I heard a crow to-day makin' that kind of a--a spring noise that kind o'--I d' know what--kind o' goes all through a feller."

"And there's Uncle Sweeney, an' that settles it; spring's comin' sure!"

said Troutt, pointing at an old man much bent, hobbling down the street like a symbolic figure of the old year.

"When _he_ gits out the frogs ain't fur behind."

"We'll be gittin' on to the ground by next Monday," said Sam Dingley to a crowd who were seated on the newly painted harrows and seeders which "Svend & Johnson" had got out ready for the spring trade. "Svend & Johnson's Agricultural Implement Depot" was on the north side of the street, and on a spring day the yard was one of the pleasantest loafing places that could be imagined, especially if one wished company.

Albert wished to be alone. Something in the touch and tone of this spring afternoon made him restless and full of strange thoughts. He took his way out along the road which followed the river bank, and in the outskirts of the village threw himself down on a bank of gra.s.s which the snows had protected, and which had already a tinge of green because of its wealth of sun.

The willows had thrown out their tiny light green flags, though their roots were under the ice, and some of the hard-wood twigs were tinged with red. There was a faint, peculiar but powerful odor of uncovered earth in the air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist magnetic hand.

The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might, his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast; he lay as still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows pa.s.sed, twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful longing and a realization of the flight of time.

He could have wept, he could have sung; he only shuddered and lay silent under the stress of that strange, sweet pa.s.sion that quickened his heart, deepened his eyes, and made his breath come and go with a quivering sound. Across the dazzling blue arch of the sky the crow flapped, sending down his prophetic, jubilant note; the wind, as soft and sweet as April, stirred in his hair; the hills, deep in their dusky blue, seemed miles away; and the voices of the care-free skaters on the melting ice of the river below came to the ear subdued to a unity with the scene.

Suddenly a fear seized upon the boy--a horror! Life, life was pa.s.sing!

Life that can be lived only once, and lost, is lost forever! Life, that fatal gift of the Invisible Powers to man--a path, with youth and joy and hope at its eastern gate, and despair, regret, and death at its low western portal!

The boy caught a glimpse of his real significance--a gnat, a speck in the sun: a boy facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy. He leaped up, clasping his hands.

"Oh, I _must_ work! I mustn't stay here; I must get back to my studies.

Life is slipping by me, and I am doing nothing, being nothing!"

His face, as pale as death, absolutely shone with his pa.s.sionate resolution, and his hands were clinched in a silent, inarticulate desire.

But on his way back he met the jocund party of skaters going home from the river, and with the easy shift and change of youth joined in their ringing laughter. The weird power of the wind's voice was gone, and he was the unthinking boy again; but the problem was only put off, not solved.

He had a suspicion of it one night when Hartley said: "Well, pardner, we're getting 'most ready to pull out. Some way I always get restless when these warm days begin. Want 'o be moving some way."

This was as sentimental as Hartley ever got; or, if he ever felt more sentiment, he concealed it carefully.

"I s'pose it must 'a' been in spring that those old chaps, on their steeds and in their steel shirts, started out for the Holy Land or to rescue some damsel, hey?" he ended, with a grin. "Now, that's the way I feel--just like striking out for, say, Oshkosh. This has been a big strike here, sure's you live; that little piece of lofty tumbling was a big boom, and no mistake. Why, your share o' this campaign will be a hundred and twenty dollars sure."

"More'n I've earned," replied Bert.

"No, it ain't. You've done your duty like a man. Done as much in your way as I have. Now, if you want to try another county with me, say so.

I'll make a thousand dollars this year out o' this thing."

"I guess I'll go back to school."

"All right; don't blame you at all."

"I guess, with what I can earn for father, I can pull through the year, I _must_ get back. I'm awfully obliged to you, Jim."

"That'll do on that," said Hartley shortly; "you don't owe me anything.

We'll finish delivery to-morrow, and be ready to pull out on Friday or Sat."

There was an acute pain in Albert's breast somewhere; he had not a.n.a.lyzed his case at all, and did not now, but the idea of going affected him strongly. It had been so pleasant, that daily return to a lovely girlish presence.

"Yes, sir," Hartley was going on; "I'm going to just quietly leave a book on her center table. I don't know as it'll interest her much, but it'll show we appreciate the grub, and so on. By jinks! You don't seem to realize what a worker that woman is. Up five o'clock in the morning--By the way, you've been going around with the girl a good deal, and she's introduced you to some first-rate sales; now, if you want 'o leave her a little something, make it a morocco copy, and charge it to the firm."

Albert knew that he meant well, but he couldn't, somehow, help saying ironically:

"Thanks; but I guess _one_ copy of Blaine's 'Twenty Years' will be enough in the house, especially----"

"Well, give her anything you please, and charge it up to the firm. I don't insist on Blaine; only suggested that because----"