Once he had dared to wonder whether it could be done, for
his grim life had left him self-centered and bitter, but that mood had
passed, and it was with disgust he looked back upon it. Now he knew
that the sooner he left Silverdale the less difficult it would be to
forget her, but he was still determined to vindicate himself by the
work he did, and make her affairs secure. Then, with or without a
confession, he would slip back into the obscurity he came from.
While he worked the soft wind rioted about him, and the harbingers of
summer passed north in battalions overhead--crane, brant-goose, and
mallard, in crescents, skeins, and wedges, after the fashion of their
kind. Little long-tailed gophers whisked across the whitened sod, and
when the great plow rolled through the shadows of a bluff, jack
rabbits, pied white and gray, scurried amidst the rustling leaves.
Even the birches were fragrant in that vivifying air, and seemed to
rejoice as all animate creatures did, but the man's face grew more
somber as the day of toil wore on. Still, he did his work with the
grim, unwavering diligence that had already carried him, dismayed but
unyielding, through years of drought and harvest hail, and the stars
shone down on the prairies when at last he loosed his second team.
Then, standing in the door of his lonely homestead, he glanced at the
great shadowy granaries and barns, and clenched his hand as he saw what
he could do if the things that had been forced upon him were rightfully
his.
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