guess she's a pretty good sort of a woman. Are you goin' to bring her
here?"

"Not if I know myself."

"Yes, but a feller that keeps on foolin' with a woman gits so after a
while he don't know himself. What's your object in not wantin' to bring
her here?"

"I've got something else to do first. She may not want me after I've
told her--the truth."

"Then don't do it, Bill. Talk to a woman all you're a mind to, but don't
tell her any more truth than you can help. It gives her the upper hand
of you."

"I don't know, Bob, that I'd be warranted in accepting your theories
about woman."

"Mebbe not, but I'm the chap that's had the experience."

Milford replied in effect that experience does not always make us wise.
It sometimes tends to weaken rather than to make us strong. It might
make freshness stale; it is a thief that steals enthusiasm; it enjoins
caution at the wrong time. He took out his letter and read it again,
studying the form of each word. The hired man said that he had received
many a letter, had read them over and over, but that did not alter the
fact that the writer thereof had proved false to him. "I don't want to
pile up trash in no man's path," he said, "but I want to give it out
strong that it's a mighty hard matter for a woman to be true even to
herself. Look how I've been treated."

Milford did not reply. He studied his letter, and the words, "wanted to
kneel beside you," gathered a melody, and were sweet music to him.

CHAPTER XXII.

REMEMBERED HIS OBLIGATION.

Now and then there was a blustery day, but good weather remained till
late in November. But the ground tightened with the cold, and a
snow-whirlwind came from the Northwest. Nowhere had the autumn been
fuller of color, but a hiss and a snarl had buried it all beneath the
crackly white of winter. Windmills creaked in the fierce blast, sucking
smoky water from the ground, to gush, to drip, and then to hang from the
spout a frozen beard. Black-capped milkmen, with flaps drawn down over
ears, sat upon their wagons, appearing in their garb as if the hangman
had rigged them up for a final journey. To look upon the frozen fields
and to stand in the groaning woods it did not seem possible that there
had ever been a day of lazy heat and nodding bloom. At tightening
midnight the flinty lake cracked with a running shriek. The dawn was a
gray shudder, the sunrise a shiver of pale red, and then a black cloud
blot-out and more snow. A day