aytime, because you have spend most of your nights, God and probably
all Walden know how. The flask and ready money I never could
understand give me an inkling."

"Anything else?" he asked, sneeringly.

"Nothing at present," said Kate placidly. "I probably could find
plenty, if I spent even one night in Walden when you thought I was
asleep."

"Go if you like," he said. "If you think I'm going to stay here,
working like a dog all day, year in and year out, to support a daughter
of the richest man in the county and her kids, you fool yourself. If
you want more than you got, call on your rich folks for it. If you
want to go to town, either night or day, go for all I care. Do what
you damn please; that's what I am going to do in the future and I'm
glad you know it. I'm tired climbing through windows and slinking like
a dog. I'll come and go like other men after this."

"I don't know what other men you are referring to," said Kate. "You
have a monopoly of your kind in this neighbourhood; there is none other
like you. You crawl and slink as 'to the manner born.'"

"Don't you go too far," he menaced with an ugly leer.

"Keep that for your mother," laughed Kate. "You need never try a
threat with me. I am stronger than you are, and you may depend upon it
I shall see that my strength never fails me again. I know now that you
are all Nancy Ellen said you were."

"Well, if you married me knowing it, what are you going to do about
it?" he sneered.

"I didn't know it then. I thought I knew you. I thought she had been
misinformed," said Kate, in self-defence.

"Well," he said insultingly, "if you hadn't been in such a big hurry,
you could soon have found out all you wanted to know. I took advantage
of it, but I never did understand your rush."

"You never will," said Kate.

Then she arose and went to see if the children had wakened. All day
she was thinking so deeply she would stumble over the chairs in her
preoccupation. George noticed it, and it frightened him. After supper
he came and sat on the porch beside her.

"Kate," he said, "as usual you are 'making mountains out of mole
hills.' It doesn't damn a fellow forever to ride or walk, I almost
always walk, into town in the evening, to see the papers and have a
little visit with the boys. Work all day in a field is mighty
lonesome; a man has got the have a little change. I don't deny a glass
of beer once in awhile, or a game of cards with the boys