In a pelting rain a funeral passed along the road, and a man who had no time for such affairs, hastening with his milk-cans to the railway station, caught sight of Mrs. Stuvic's face, pressed against the water-streaked glass of a carriage window. He lashed his team to make up for loss of time in turning aside; he wondered at the mysterious tie that could have drawn her out, not indeed on such a day, but at all, for he knew her to be at enmity's edge with neighbors and frosty to every relative. At the station he met Milford, walking up and down beneath the shed. Milford remembered him, Steve Hardy, the man who had given him a "lift" from the station on the day of his coming into the neighborhood. And to his head-shakings, winks, nods, wise mutterings, the new-comer owed much of his reputation for mystery.

"I see your old boss off down the road there goin' to a funeral," said Hardy.

"Did you? It's one of the privileges granted by the constitution of the State."

"Yes. They don't have to take out license to go to funerals, or I don't guess the old woman would er went. Guess all her boarders have gone, or I don't s'pose she'd found the time. Who's dead?"

"Her sister, I believe."

"That so? Then I wonder more than ever. Believe I did hear somethin' about it t'uther evenin', but I was milkin' at the time and I didn't think that she was the old woman's sister. They must have made it up."

"Made what up?"

"Why, the row they had over the line-fence a good while ago. Somebody told me you wanted to buy some calves."

"Yes, I'd like to get a few good ones."

"Well, mine are as good as ever stood on four feet. I guess you mean to settle here permanently. Well, folks that have stirred around a good bit tell me that there ain't a purtier place on the earth. I've had my house full all summer, and there ain't been a word of complaint. Goin' out my way?"

"Not till after the mail comes."

The post office was in a weather-beaten cottage, in the midst of an apple orchard, just across the railway tracks; and of late Milford had become well-acquainted with the postmaster, calling on him early and sitting with him till the last pouch had been thrown off for the day. But not a word had he received from Gunhild. He strove to console himself with the thought that it was too soon, that she had not gone to the country, but a consolation that comes with strife, consoles but poorly. The train came, the mail-pouch was thrown off, and he followed the postmaster to the house, stood close in anxiety till the letters were all put into the pigeon-holes, and then turned sadly away. He took his course through the wet grass, across the fields. He halted at the ditch, and in the rain and the gathering dark stood there to think, amid the wind-tangled stems and the rain-shattered blooms of the wild sunflowers. He stepped down into the ditch, deep with mire, and the grim humor of his nickname in the West, "Hell-in-the-Mud," fell upon him like a cowboy's rope. He drew himself out, threw down a handful of grass that he had pulled up by the roots, and strode on, through the green slop of the low land. As he turned in at the gate, to pass through the hickory grove, he saw the light of a lantern moving about in Mrs. Stuvic's barnyard. He spoke to a dog that came scampering to meet him; the light shot upward, came toward him; and he recognized the old woman, bareheaded, with the rain pattering on her gray hair.

"Is that you, Bill? Now what are you pokin' round in this rain for? Come over to the house and get your supper."

"No, I must go home."

"Home? Why, you haven't got any home and never will have."

"That's true," he agreed.

"Not till you go where we took my old sister to-day," she said, letting the lantern down till her face was in the dark. "And just to think it should have come as it did, while I was talkin' about her! I'd been thinkin' about her all day, and I knowed somethin' was goin' to happen. But come on in the house, and don't be standin' here in the rain like a fool. Get away, Jack. I do think he's got less sense than any dog I ever set eyes on. Now, if you do put your muddy feet on me I'll cut your throat. You just dare to do it, you triflin' whelp! Are you goin' to the house with me, Bill?"

"You're not afraid, are you?" he asked, now that her fear of the dead cat was gone.

"Now you keep still. I'm not afraid of the devil himself. But this is just the sort of a night for me to die. Yes, I'll tell you that."

"I thought you were to die on a cold night, with the wagons creaking along the road."

"That was the plan, but it has been changed. Now I'm goin' to die when the ground is soaked. You don't know Peterson, do you? Well, no matter. But he lived just down the road there not long ago, and a meaner neighbor never breathed. I caught him drivin' his turkeys into my tomato patch. Yes. And his well went dry, and he come to my house and wanted to haul off water in barrels. Yes. And I wouldn't let him. And what did he say? He said he'd see my grave full of water. And now just think of what I've had to contend with all my life. Think of me lyin' there in the water, with that feller prancin' around!"

"But the chances are that you'll outlive him, Mrs. Stuvic."

"Yes, you bet, that's what I'm goin' to do," she said, her voice strong with encouragement. "I'll outlive the whole pack of 'em, and then mebbe they'll let me alone. Well, I'm not goin' to stand here any longer like a fool."

When Milford reached home he found the Professor warm in a disquisition delivered to the hired man. He hopped up from his chair and seized Milford by the hand. "Ha," said he, "I was just telling our friend here that exact memory is not the vital part of true culture. It is the absorption of the idea rather than the catching of the words."

"Sit down," said Milford. "But what does he know about it? Woman is his culture, and he's not only caught her idea, but has learned her by heart."

"Now you're trottin'," spoke the hired man. "If there's anything in a woman's nature that I don't know, why, it must have come to her in the last hour or so."

The Professor crossed his legs and slowly nodded his head. "You ask," said he, speaking to Milford, "what does he know about it? A man never knows unless he learns. Even to the ignorant, wisdom may be music. The man whose mind has been dried and hardened in the field of harsh toil, may sip the delicious luxury, the god-flavored juice of knowledge. Wisdom cannot be concealed. You may lock it in an iron box, but it will seep through."

Upon entering the room Milford had seen the hired man put aside an earthen ewer, and now he knew that cider had been brought from the cellar.

"Nearly all utterances upon knowledge, human nature or life, are trite," the learned man proceeded. "And so are herbs and flowers trite, the stars in the heavens common, but once in a while there appears from the ground a shoot so new that botany marvels, a star in the sky so strange that astronomers gape in the wonder of a discovery. And I, humble as the lowly earth, may sprout a new thought."

"I was going to suggest more cider," said Milford, "but I guess you've had enough."

"Ha! enough and not too much. To pause at the line, a virtue; to cross but an inch, a vice. Do you know of a publication that would buy a paper upon the decadence of the modern drama? I have one in my head, a hot and withering blast of fierce contempt."

"The last play I saw was a hummer," said the hired man. "There was a whole lot of dancin' and cavortin' before they got down to it, fellers givin' each other gags, and women singin' songs. But when they got down to her she was there—a sort of a Mormon play; and they had a bed that reached clear across the platform."

"Melpomene rioting as a bawd," declared the Professor. "I could elucidate if permitted one more russet cup, drawn from the oak." He looked at Milford. "One more, and let it be russet."

"No more to-night, Professor," said Milford. "I am going to get a bite to eat pretty soon. Won't you join me?"

"To eat, to clog the stomach, to stupefy the nimble brain, that fine machinery of wheels invisible and pulleys more delicate than the silkworm's dream of a gauzy thread! No, I will not eat, but I will drink—one more russet cup."

"Just one," said Milford.

"I spoke one, one in true sincerity; and if I squeeze the gentle hand of hospitality till the bones crack, and ask for more—give it to me," he roared, throwing his head back.

"Bob, bring him a cup of cider," said Milford.

"This has been an off day with me," the Professor remarked, following the hired man with his eyes. "The mill shut down to undergo repairs, and I am a boy out of school." He listened, as if straining his ears to catch the babble of the cider. "I sat about the house, with a dry book, to feel the contrast of the rain; I sniffed the dust of an Elizabethan's pedantry—and then my wife and my daughter began on me. I beggared myself and got them a sofa, and now they want a set of chairs. I made with them a treaty of peace, and, barbarians, they violated it. What a reproach it is to woman to see a man think! She must stir him up, scatter his faculties."

"Not all women," said Milford.

"Ha! About how many women have you married, sir?"

Mitchell came in with the cider, and the Professor reached for it. He placed the cup on the table and gazed at the bursting beads as if counting them. He drank, smacked his mouth, and no whip-lash could have popped keener; he gazed down into the cup, regretting the fall of the yellow tide. He leaned back, with his eyes turned upward, and breathed long; he whistled softly as if to coax back a thought that had escaped him; he leaned forward, drained the cup, and sadly put it down, shoving it far across the table. "Just within arm's reach of a temptation to ask for more," he said, thrusting forth his hand. "But I will not. My word has been given. Yes, about how many women have you married?"

"Well, just about one fewer than yourself if you've married only one," Milford answered.

The Professor's eyes snapped. "Was that word fewer contemplated or was it an accident? Do you study to find such niceties of distinction?"

"I don't give a snap for niceties of distinction, Professor; I don't know them, in fact. They might have been hammered into my head once, but they were jolted out by bucking horses. Sometimes we forced them out. We didn't want to be hampered. I knew a rancher, an Oxford man, who wilfully clawed the polish off his tongue. He wanted to live down among men, he said, and the rougher the better. One day I saw him get down off his horse to kick a book that some one had dropped in the trail."

"I don't blame him for kicking a book that he might find out there," said the Professor.

"You don't? A scholar lost an Æschylus on the prairie, and some one might have kicked it."

"Ha! I draw you on apace. We'll discuss the ancient goat-song next."

"No, I'd rather talk about sheep and calves. I know more about them. I never look at a learned man that I don't fancy him weary of his burden. Think of a professor's moldy pack, dead languages, dried thought——"

"Hold on, my dear friend. I was a professor, and I had no such pack. Like the modern peddler, I carried the wants of to-day. But, after all, I agree with you in the main. I know that the average doctor of learning is not able to see virtue in the new. To him old platitude is of more value than new vigor. And with one more cup I could——"

"No more."

"Not in the interest of clear elucidation?"

"Not in any interest that you can fish up. I don't want you to go home drunk."

"Drunk! Why, my dear boy, I hadn't thought of such a thing; it hasn't entered my head. You mistake me, and I am here to refute it. A man needs something beyond his needs; there are times when we look for something aside from our own natural forces; there are wants which nature was ages in supplying. Look at tobacco. The Greeks missed it as they sat deep in the discussion of their philosophy. They did not know what it was they were missing, but they knew it was something and I know it was tobacco. But be that as it may. You have said that I shall have no more, and I bow." He twisted his beard and seemed to force into himself the spirit of resignation. They heard a tramping on the veranda. A voice called Mitchell. He went to the door and opened it, told some one to come in, and then stepped out. There came a mumbling, and then a profane exclamation. Mitchell stepped back into the room and slammed the door. He sat down and leaned over with his arms upon his knees. The Professor looked at him, still twisting his beard. Milford asked him what had happened. He looked up with a sour snarl. "It's all off," he said.

"What's all off?" Milford asked.

"It's all off with me, that's what. My girl's married."

"You don't mean it!" the Professor cried.

"Then what the devil do I want to say it for? She married about two hours ago, so Miles Brent tells me, and he was there—married a feller named Hogan. I see him around there once or twice, but don't think anythin' of it. Well, I'll swear. I thought I knowed her, and I did know her at one time, but she changed. Blamed if you can tell how soon they'll change on you. Hogan—an old widower."

"I know him," said Milford. "He milks fifteen cows. His milk caught her."

"I hate to think that," Mitchell drawled, "but I'll have to. Yes, sir, hauled off in a milk-wagon. And she owns a piece of land worth fifty dollars an acre."

"She must have wanted milk to wash off her freckles," said Milford.

"Don't, Bill—don't make light of a man's trouble. She's a big loss to me, I tell you."

"But, Bob, you didn't really love her, now, did you?"

"Bill, there's different sorts of love. I loved her in my way, as much as any man ever loved a woman, I reckon, in his way. I put my faith in her, and that was goin' a good ways. Humph! I can't hardly believe it, but I know it's so."

"When the heart is rent," said the Professor, twisting his beard to aid his thought; "when the heart is rent——"

"It's the failure of the rent—on the land, that gets Bob," Milford broke in. "His heart has nothing to do with it."

"Bill, I thought you had more sympathy than——"

"Sympathy for a man who has failed to beat a woman out of her property? Of course, I wish you'd succeeded, but I'm not going to console you because you haven't. I'm a scoundrel all right enough, but a scoundrel has his limits."

"That's all right, Bill, but somebody may give you the slip."

"That's true enough, but my heart and not my pocket will do the grieving. I haven't any time to give to a man's pocket grief."

"Wait till you have a real grief," said the Professor. "Wait till ignorance comes heavy of hoof down your hallway to tell you that your years of study are but a waste-land, covered with briars; to cut you with the blue steel of a chilling smile, and to turn you out of an institution that you hold dear. That's grief." He leaned forward upon the table, with his head on his arms.

"You had no right to go to see her," said Milford. "You had no divorce."

"But I could've got one, couldn't I? Are they so blamed scarce that a man can't get 'em? Well, let it go."

"Yes, I must go," said the Professor, getting up. "Is it raining yet? I slipped off between showers without an umbrella."

"Sorry I haven't one," Milford replied. "Yes, it's raining. Take that coat up there. It may protect you some."

"Thank you. I shall avail myself of your offer."

He put on the coat, bade them good-night, and set out for home. The road was muddy and he walked close to the fence. Once he strode into a patch of briars. "The waste land of my years of study," he said. He shied when he saw the light in his window, and he cleared his throat and braced himself. His wife and Miss Catherine, hearing him upon the veranda, sat down upon the floor, as if they had no chairs. He stepped in, looked at them, and sadly shook his head.

"I would be polite enough to choose a finer insinuation," said he. "There may be virtue in a hint—there may be all sorts of spice in it, but there's nothing but insult in squatting around on the floor like this. I don't know how to choose words for the occasion. I will simply bid you good-night."

He heard them talking after he went to bed. He sighed out his distemper and fell asleep. In the morning he found that he had hung Milford's coat upside down. A paper had fallen from the pocket. He took it up, opened it, and with a start he recognized his medical treatise.