to me, the word
should be brought to her that I was the father of Zoe's aborted child
and that by some one, perhaps Mrs. Brown, Zoe had been saved the open
shame of giving birth to the child and while an inmate of my house? I
could see the probative force of these facts against me. This is what
kept me from speaking to Dorothy on the subject of becoming my wife and
having it settled before she went to Nashville. And then something
happened that made my situation infinitely worse before it was any
better.

The spring had come on early and I had much to do. I was buying
machinery. The mowers that I had ordered were soon to be delivered and I
had need to be in town almost daily. There were always loafers about the
streets; and among them, not infrequently, the McCall boys or Lamborn.
Reverdy had told me that Lamborn had been talking in the barber shop,
saying that I was living in a state of adultery with my nigger sister.
At the same time I knew, and Reverdy knew, that Lamborn was trying to
get Zoe to meet him. He had sent her a note to that effect, which Zoe
had turned over to me. Once he had accosted Zoe as she was coming from
Reverdy's to join me at the courthouse preparatory to starting home.
Reverdy thought that the fellow was eaten up with insane jealousy and
had brought himself to the belief that I had taken Zoe from him, if he
could be said ever to have had a right to her.

It is an April day and I have come into town and am rushing from place
to place attending to many things. Reverdy has met me at the bank to
tell me of another opportunity to buy a team of horses and some oxen;
for we use the latter mostly to draw the plows that turn up the heavy
sod of the prairie. Reverdy has just told me of Lamborn's threat to come
to my farm and take Zoe: that when a girl was once his she was always
his. He had said these things at the barber shop. Something came over
me. I resolved that this intolerable state of affairs, of anxiety for
Zoe, of misunderstanding for myself, of dread of the future, of a sort
of brake on my life as of something holding me back and impeding my
happiness and peace of mind ... all this had to end somehow and soon. I
could not live and go on with things as they were.

We stepped from the bank. And there, not ten feet away, stood Lamborn.
His mouth became a scrawl, he uttered a growl, he swayed with passion,
he moved his hands at his side in a sort of twisting motion. And I
thought: there are Zoe