er way myself, but I'll hitch up
Jim, an' you can leave him in the old barn till you come home."

"No," said Dorcas, rising. "I'll walk. I'd rather by half than have the
care of him. Maybe I'll catch a ride, too."

They said good-night, and Newell was walking down the path where
clove-pinks were at their sweetest, when he turned to speak again.
Dorcas, forgetful of him, had stretched her arms upward in a yawn that
seemed to envelop the whole of her. As she stood there in the moonlight,
her tall figure loomed like that of a priestess offering worship. She
might have been chanting an invocation to the night. The man, regarding
her, was startled, he did not know why. In that instant she seemed to
him something mysterious and grand, something belonging to the night
itself, and he went away with his question unasked. Dorcas, her yawn
finished, went in to think of him, as she always did, in the few
luxurious moments before she slept. But her nights were always
dreamless. She had the laborer's tired muscles and acquiescent nerves.

It was two years now since she and Newell had become, in a sense,
partners. An affliction had fallen upon each of them at about the same
time, and, through what seemed chance, they had stretched out a hand
each to steady the other, and gone on together. It was then that
Dorcas's mother had had her first paralytic stroke, and Dorcas had given
up the district school to be at home. But she was poor, and when it
became apparent that her mother might live in helpless misery, it was
also evident that Dorcas must have something to do. At that time Newell,
under the first cloud of disappointed love, had launched into
market-gardening, and he gave Dorcas little tasks, here and there,
picking fruit and vegetables, even weeding and hoeing, because that
would leave her within call of home, where a little girl sat daily on
guard. Newell lived alone, with old Kate to do his work, and soon it
became an established custom for Dorcas to cook savory dishes for him,
on the days when Kate's aching joints kept her smoking and grumbling by
the fire. In a thousand ways she unconsciously slipped into his life,
with his accounts, his house purchases, and the work of his fields; and
the small sums he paid her kept bread in her mother's mouth.

And now her mother had died, but Dorcas still kept on. She had no school
yet, she told herself excusingly; but a self she would not hear knew how
intently she was fighting Newell's