fellow--as a marriage, you understand. I
wouldn't undo it for the world. My people are everything to me. They are
too much to me, hence my everlasting worry over life insurance. But it
is not possible for the average woman to understand, and nearly every
woman is the average woman. But my worries are over now. I am to start
out anew. Don't think ill of me for not having opened my eyes sooner. An
eye is like a chestnut bur; it doesn't open till it is ripe, and up to
this time mine has been green in ignorance. Don't call me eccentric. I
would rather be called a thief than eccentric. What is eccentricity but
a loose joint, a flaw in the machinery? I am not so much out of the
common. The trouble is that I show effects more plainly perhaps than
other men. But I am serious. I am not light. To the plodder, I have been
chimerical, but I will shame him by becoming a plodder, by out-plodding
him. For the first time in many months, I return to my home as much as
half satisfied with myself."

A few days later Milford saw him in the road, popping a whip behind four
bullocks. Not long afterward, at a farmyard sale, he was seen haggling
for a small flock of sheep. He bought a cow of Mrs. Stuvic. He urged her
to come to terms. He was a man of business, and had no time for words.

"Well, now you have woke up," she said. "Who would thought it? They
might as well go out to the graveyard now and tell the rest of 'em it's
time to get up. Gracious alive, take the cow. I don't want to stand in
the way of a man that's just woke up. Have you quit the mill?"

"No, but since I woke up I do my work in about two-thirds of the time."

"Good for you! Oh, that feller Milford has stirred up the whole
country."

"And when he gets through with that farm, madam, I'll take it. I don't
think he'll stay a great while longer."

"Why, has he said anythin' about goin' away?"

"No, but with my shrewd eye I can see that he's getting restless. But I
have no time to talk to you."

The season for breaking land and planting came, slowly through the
stubborn and lingering cold, and Milford bent himself to the putting in
of a large crop. His letters from Gunhild were rambling, but
affectionate. She was now in Indiana. Her work in Michigan had been but
partly successful. "I'm studying so that after awhile I may teach a
regular school," she said. "But there is so much to learn and the
examination is very hard. I met a man the other day who said that he
knew you