It was on the boy's account that they had their first and last serious quarrel a few hours later. This was by no means the first time that they had openly disagreed, and had come to rather sharp words. Their views of many things were too far apart for that to have been the case, but there had never before been any great or lasting trouble by reason of their difference of opinion. Ruth, gentle and yielding, was ever most timidly fearful of being at fault; William, hard and unyielding, was always perfectly certain of being in the right. It was therefore to be expected that his opinions should generally rule, and that he should construe her readiness to yield and her self-distrust, as proofs that he was not mistaken. Rock-ribbed infallibility could hardly be expected to comprehend the doubts that assail a sensitive soul.

William, naturally enough, had never noted that in giving way, Ruth had not turned far or long from anything involving a principle. The truth was that she had merely evaded his intolerance of any and all difference of opinion—as a deep stream quietly flows round an immovable rock—only to turn gently back into its own course as soon as might be. And even in doing this, she had put aside only her own opinions and feelings and rights, never those of any one else. But this present dispute over David was wholly unlike any that had gone before. This concerned the boy's feelings and rights, so that she suddenly found herself forced to take a firm stand—affection, justice, and even mercy, now forbidding her to yield. Yet it was, nevertheless, just as clear to her in this as in everything else, that William sincerely thought he was right. That was the trouble. That is always the trouble with people like William Pressley, who are often harder to deal with and sometimes harder to live with, than those who knowingly do wrong.

The three had scarcely entered the great room of Cedar House that evening, when the judge asked the boy to go on an errand to a neighbor's. This was to take some seed wheat which the judge had promised to send for the fall sowing. The growing of wheat was still an interesting and important experiment which was exciting the whole country. There had been good corn in abundance from the first; on those deep, rich, river-bottom lands the grains had but to reach the fertile earth to produce an hundred bushels to the acre. But the settlers were tired of eating corn-bread; their wives and children were pining for the delicate white loaves made from the sweet fine wheat which they had eaten in their old Virginia homes. So that the culture of the best wheat had lately become a vital question, and this new seed was making a stir of eager interest throughout the region. Philip Alston had given it to the judge, and he, in turn, was dividing it among the neighbors. Each grain was accordingly treasured and valued like a grain of gold, and the judge cautioned the boy to be careful in tying the bag; wheat in the grain is a slippery thing to handle, and he wished none of this to be lost.

"You must have a good, strong string—one that can't slip," said Ruth, in her thoughtful, housewifely way. "Let me think—what kind would be best?"

"Here!" the judge drew out his wallet, and took off the string that bound it. "You may use this, David, but take care not to lose it. This is the strongest, finest strip of doeskin—"

Ruth's sweet laughter chimed in, "It looks like minkskin—it's so black!" touching it gingerly with the tips of her fingers.

The judge laughed, too. Everything that she said and did pleased him. But he cautioned the boy again not to lose the string, and to be careful to bring it back. William Pressley looked on in grave, indifferent silence. A slight frown gathered on his brow when he saw Ruth trying the knot, to make sure of its firmness, after the bag was tied. His gaze darkened somewhat and followed her when she went to the door to see the boy set out; and he watched her stand looking after him, with her hands raised to shield her eyes from the rays of the setting sun. It displeased William to see her show such regard for any one of so little importance—the personality of the boy did not enter into the matter. While gazing at her in this cold disapproval, he noted with increased annoyance that she then turned and looked long and wistfully toward the forest path. It did not occur to him that she might be expecting or wishing to see some one riding along the path. He was merely irritated at what seemed to him an indication of unseemly restlessness and empty-mindedness. To his mind the unusual and the unseemly were always one and the same. And it was eminently unseemly in his eyes that the woman who was to be his wife should wish to look away from the spot in which he was sitting. And then, his displeasure turned to anger when Ruth, after standing still and gazing up the forest path, till he felt that he must go out to her and utter the reproof that was on his lips, did not come back to her seat by his side, but began instead to play with the swan.

He sat motionless and silent, calmly biding his time to express the disapproval which such childish behavior made incumbent upon him. Cold, hard anger like his can always wait; and waiting only makes it colder and harder; there is never heat enough in it to melt its merciless ice.

A sudden darkening of the sky sent her into the house at last, and even then she did not return to her proper place by his side. She did not even look at him, but spoke to the judge who was just leaving the great room to go to the cabin which he used as his bedroom and office. Ruth begged him not to start out, saying that the storm seemed so near that it might break before he could reach the cabin. But he went on with a smiling shake of his head, after a glance at the dark clouds which were gathering blackly on the other side of the river behind the spectral cottonwoods, now bare of leaves and ghostly white.

"Did David have to go through the big deadening, William?" she asked suddenly, speaking over her shoulder, without leaving her anxious post in the doorway, though the wind was whipping her skirts about her slender figure and loosing her long, black hair. "I wish he would come. He should be back by this time. I am afraid—the great trees fall so in a storm. Father Orin and the doctor, too, often ride through there. And it is such a dangerous place when the wind blows. Oh!" with a cry of relief, "there's David now! Here he comes. David, David dear—I am so glad!"

She sprang down the steps and ran to meet the boy. The rush of the rising storm kept from hearing William Pressley's call for her to come back. He stood still for a moment, hesitating, and then, seeing that she flew on, he followed and overtook her just as she reached David, who was getting down from the pony and taking the empty bag from the saddle. The wind was now very violent, and the darkened air was thick with the dead leaves of the forest swirling into the river which was already lashed into waves and dashing against the shore. Waterfowl flew landward with frightened cries; a low, dark cloud was being drawn up the stream over the ashen face of the water—a strange, thick, terrible black curtain, shaken by the tempest and bordered by the lightning—pressed onward by the resistless powers of the air.

There was a lull just as William Pressley reached Ruth's side. It was one of those tense spaces which are among the greatest terrors of a storm by reason of their suddenness, their stillness, and their suspense. He grasped her hand, and she clung to his as she would have clung to anything that she chanced to touch in her fright. He said rather sternly that she must come to the house at once, and she turned obediently, following the motion of his hand rather than the meaning of his words. He spoke to David also, without looking at the boy, but she was clinging to him and hiding her face on his arm whenever the lightning flashed, and did not notice what he had said until he repeated his words:—

"You have of course brought back the doeskin string."

Ruth suddenly lifted her face from his arm, loosed her grasp upon it and stood away from him. Yet in that first dazed instant she could not believe that she had heard aright. It was impossible for her, being what she was, to understand that he had never in all his life done anything more true to his nature, more thoroughly characteristic, than to ask this question at such a time. She forgot the lightning while she waited till he asked it for the third time. And then, straining her incredulous ears again, she heard the boy murmur something, and she saw him hurriedly and confusedly searching his pockets for the string.

"I can't find it," he stammered. "I must have dropped it when I poured out the wheat. I am so sorry—I will go to-morrow—"

"You will go now;" said William, calmly. "The string will be lost by to-morrow. And then," judicially, "you will remember a needed lesson better if you go at once."

"William!" burst out Ruth almost with a scream. "You can't mean what you say. Listen to the roar of the coming storm. It's almost here. Surely you don't know what you are saying. Send David through the deadening in the very teeth of a tempest like this, for a bit of string!"

"Come to the house, my dear. It is beginning to rain. I am afraid you will take cold. You, sir, will go back at once," turning to the boy. "You know, of course, that the string itself is of no importance in this matter. It is absurd to speak of such a thing. But it is my duty to teach you, as far as I can, to perform yours. I tell you again to go at once. That is all I have to say, I believe, concerning this matter. Come, Ruth, it is beginning to rain."

She shrunk away from his hand as if its touch horrified her. Her tears were falling faster than the heavy, isolated drops that fell on her bare head. But her courage was rising at need, as it always rose, and she was not too much blinded by tears to see that the boy was getting on the pony again. She ran to him and caught his sleeve, and turned upon William Pressley with the reckless fierceness of a gentle creature made daring in defence of what it loves.

"You are cruel," she said, speaking calmly, steadied by the very extremity of her excitement and distress. "You have no more heart than a stone. You feel nothing that does not touch yourself. You have always been unkind to David. But you shall not do this. I will prevent you—defy you. You shall not send him to his death for some narrow, tyrannical notion. He is like my brother. I love him as if he were. And I wouldn't allow you to treat a stranger so. It's inhuman! It shall not be!" panting, and clinging to the boy.

William Pressley stared at her as if he thought she had suddenly lost her senses. Could this be Ruth speaking like that—and to himself? Instinctively he threw into his voice the whole weight of his heavy, cold rage, which had never yet failed to crush all life and spirit out of her most fiery resistance.

"This is truly shocking. I scarcely know what to say. I am merely trying to do my unpleasant duty in a perfectly simple matter. If I didn't try to do it, I should always think less well of myself—"

"Think less well of yourself!" she cried. "Nothing in the world could ever make you do that! Nothing! Whatever you think and say and do is always right; whatever anybody else thinks or says or does is always wrong. I have given up in almost everything because I loved peace more than my own way, and because I am not often sure that I know best. But I will not give up in this!" shrinking and quivering at a peal of thunder, but clinging closer to the boy's arm.

William Pressley came nearer and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Come to the house, my dear," he said quietly. "It is beginning to rain harder. You will certainly take cold. Come at once. When you have time to think, you will see how childish and foolish all this is. We will say no more about it. You, sir, know what is right for you to do. You know as well as I do what the judge's positive orders were. You have disregarded them—"

"But uncle Robert never meant anything like this," she said. "He is kind and tender-hearted. I will call him. He would not—"

The boy had turned proudly and silently, meaning to get back in the saddle, but she would not loose her hold on his arm. And then came the first furious blast of the tempest, and the greatest trees—the mightiest giants of the ancient forest—bent and crouched before it, bracing themselves for the fierce conflict with the elements in which they must gain or lose centuries of life. The rain now began to fall heavily, and William abruptly told the boy to come in the house till the storm was over. In yielding thus far, he was not influenced by Ruth's threat to appeal to his uncle. He had scarcely heard what she said, and he was never in awe of the judge's opinion, and never looked for opposition from any source, because he could not anticipate an opinion different from his own. He merely dropped the argument for the moment because he saw the urgent necessity of bringing an undignified scene to a speedy close, and could not see any other or better way of doing it.

When they had gone indoors and had gathered around the fire, so that their damp clothes might dry, he was by far the most composed of the three. The boy was deeply agitated and suffering as only the supersensitive can suffer from harshness, whether merited or not. Ruth was still quivering with excitement and distress, and very soon her tender conscience also was aching. She could not recall very distinctly all that she had said, but she knew how bitter her words must have been, and was already wondering how she ever could have uttered them. How they came in her mind and heart she could not comprehend. She had always thought William a good man, and worthy of all respect, and she now felt that there had been much truth in what he had said. David was a dreamer, poor boy, and it would be well if he could be taught to remember, to be practical and useful like other people. She still could not think it right for him to have been forced to go back through the storm to correct an error; but she now thought that William had not really intended to send him. It seemed suddenly plain that William's sole intention must have been to impress him with the necessity of doing what he was told to do. She had scolded the boy herself about that very thing many a time. The fault was hers, she had been too hasty, too excitable, too impetuous. Ah, yes, that was always her fault! She looked at William with everything that she thought and felt clearly to be seen on her transparent face. But a ray of comfort shone through the cloud which darkened her spirits. Surely this and everything else would be well when she had told him how sorry she was, and how plainly she saw her mistake. They had been such good friends as far back as she could remember; the bond between them had been such a close and strong one that it certainly could not be broken or even strained by a few hasty, passionate words, repented at once. Her lovely eyes were already seeking his face and silently appealing to this old and faithful affection.

But William's gaze did not meet hers. He was looking into the fire and seeing what had occurred with wholly different eyes. To him everything was altered, and nothing could ever make the relation between them what it had been. No tenderness of affection, no length of association, no faithfulness of service, could stand for an instant against a single one of the many blows that his morbid self-love had received. For self-love like his is an incurable disease of sensibility, a spreading canker which poisons the whole character, as an unsound spot in the flesh poisons the whole body. To those who have not come in close contact with this form of morbidity, it may seem impossible that William Pressley's love for Ruth, which had been real so far as it went, should have hardened into dislike almost as soon as the words that wounded it had left her lips. Yet that was precisely what had taken place, quite naturally and even inevitably. He had loved her as much as he was capable of loving, mainly because of the deep gratification which he found in her great esteem for himself. No one else had ever come so near granting his self-love all that it demanded. Her sweet presence, always looking up to him, had been like the perpetual swinging of a censer perpetually giving the fragrant incense that his vanity craved. And now all this was changed. The gentle acolyte was gone, the censer no longer swung, and instead there was a keen critic armed with words as hard as stones. No, there was nothing strange in the fact that, when William Pressley finally turned his gaze on Ruth, he looked at her as if she had been a stranger whom he had never seen before; an utter stranger, and one moreover whose presence was so utterly antagonistic to him that there was not the remotest possibility of any liking between them. But he said nothing, and gave no indication of what he felt. No feeling was ever strong enough to cause him to say or do an unconsidered thing. In this, as in all things, he waited to be sure that he was doing what would place himself in the best possible light. While he had never a moment's doubt of being wholly in the right, he thought it best to wait and consider his own appearance in the matter. And then, just at that time, political affairs were claiming his first attention, for that was a period of intense public stress.