down on his
forehead. The land shook in the roaring sweep of a wrath of Doomsday,
and his aging bones shivered. It was ending, ending; and where the
larks of spring had once whirred about him, there he was now surrounded
by the tittering dances of the withered leaves.

There he often saw once more the old houses with the little windows
behind which he had had his girls, more of them and prettier ones than
any lad in the land. But they had all married out of the houses or
moved away, or had stayed on the spot and become care-worn housekeepers
and mothers, who did not care to recognize him. The windows stared
blindly at him, and no longer knew him for whom they had once opened
like little gates of paradise, in passionate nights of spring. They had
grown dull and gloomy; God knew who was now squatting behind them. But
when from under one of the windows, despite the late October days,
there came the breath of asters and everlasting, and some fresh young
girl-face gazed in surprise toward the bony bachelor, who looked over
inquiringly as with accursed, forlorn eyes, then his old heart would
double up like a fist within him and cause him great pain.

It was all over; like fireworks.

And then, then even his very last sweetheart, which he had regarded as
inalienable, was snatched from him: the highroad.

The first enemy he had merely followed with horrified eyes: the
stinking, dust-whirling rattle-box, which flung the old road behind it
as a spendthrift flings the precious money. But they kept coming
oftener, the loud-colored power vehicles; faster and faster they
became, and harder and harder it was for the carter's old hands to
control the madly rearing horses.

In former days he had always walked beside his horses. Now that he had
grown old and gray, he was very often glad to perch on the seat and
doze there. But just when a short dream had helped him to forget the
bitter change in his life, another of those monsters would roar behind
him its spiteful, deep "too-oot, too-oot." Then it behooved him to jump
down in a hurry, pull the nags to one side, and speak to the excited
creatures words of calm, of love and kindness, while his old heart rose
into his throat with fright and hate. But the unknown, insolent machine
was already far ahead, and away off on that terrible hill where the
carter's horses quivered and stamped, where he had to breathe them nine
times and smoked a whole pipe of tobacco before he reached the top,