or him during the
time he was laid up, and that I had even plowed his field at night.

"I don't know that you were so far wrong in beating him in the first
place," said Alf, "but if you were, your course afterward should have
more than atoned for it. By gracious, I feel that if some one would plow
for me I'd let him maul me until he got tired. Millie said that she was
afraid that something might happen to get you into trouble. She seemed a
good deal concerned about it, for I reckon she's got the noblest and
purest heart of any human being now in the world, and she said that she
thought that if you were to give up the school her father could make
some arrangements for you to study law in Purdy, the county seat. I told
her that you would be delighted to quit teaching under ordinary
circumstances, but that just at present you'd teach or die. Was I
right?"

"Surely, and I thank you for having defined my position. I wonder if we
can commit an innocent error, an error that will lie asleep and never
rise up to confront us? Now, I shall have a fine reputation in this
neighborhood."

"Oh, don't let that worry you, Bill. It'll come out all right. I'd be
willing to have almost any sort of name if it would influence that girl
to talk in my favor as she did in yours. I don't know what to think;
somehow I can't find out her opinion of me. I slily spoke about that
fellow, Dan Stuart, but she didn't say a word. Confound it, Bill, can't
a woman see that she's got a fellow on the gridiron? They can't even
bear to see a hog suffer, but they can smile and look unconcerned while
a man is writhing over the coals. I don't understand it."

"Nor do I, Alf, but I've been over the coals--I mean that I can well
imagine what it is to be there."

He lay down, and with his head far back on the pillow, looked upward as
if with his gaze he would bore through the roof and reach the stars. He
was silent for a long time, but when I had blown out the light and had
gone to bed, thinking that he was asleep, I heard him muttering.

"Talking to me, Alf?" He turned over with a sigh and answered: "No, not
particularly. I was just wondering whether a man ought to try to outlive
a disappointment in love or kill himself and end the matter. We are told
that God is love, and if God is denied to a man, what's the use of
trying to struggle on? I suppose the advantage of knowledge is that it
enables a man to settle such questions at once, but as I am not learned,