I snatched him off the fence
where he was sitting, and walloped him in the road. No, I can't keep
from showing how much I think of her; there is so much of me," he added,
with a smile, "that I can't be a hypercrite all over at once."

At this she smiled, but her countenance grew serious and she said:

"I am sorry you have been compelled to resent an insinuation." She
gathered up the lines. "But perhaps you imagine more than is intended.
It is easy, and also natural that you should."

Jim made no reply. She bowed to him, shook the lines, and the old horse
moved on. Just before reaching a bend in the road, she looked back at
him. How powerful was his bearing, how strong his stride; and with all
his bigness he was not ungraceful.

Everywhere, in the fields, along the fences, lay October's wasteful
ripeness, but the season was about to turn, for the bleak corner of
November was in sight. A sharp wind blew out of a cloud that hung low
over the river, and far away against the darkening sky was a gray
triangle traced, the flight of wild geese from the north. With the
stiffening and the lagging of the breeze came lower and then louder the
puffing of a cotton gin.

Under a persimmon tree Jim Taylor halted, and with his arms resting on a
fence he stood dreamily looking across a field. Afar off the cotton
pickers were bobbing between the rows. The scene was more dull than
bright; to a stranger it would have been dreary, the dead level, the
lone buzzard away over yonder, sailing above the tops of the ragged
trees; but for this man the view was overspread with a memory of
childhood. He was meditating upon leaving his home; he felt that his
departure was demanded. And yet he knew that not elsewhere could he find
contentment. Amid such scenes he had been born and reared. He was like
the deer--would rather feed upon the rough oak foliage of a native
forest than to feast upon the rich grasses of a strange land. But he had
made up his mind to go. He had heard of the charm of the hills, the
valleys and the streams in the northern part of the state, and once he
had gone thither to acquaint himself with that paradise, but in
disappointment he had come back, bringing the opinion that the people
were cold and unconcerned in the comfort and the welfare of a stranger.
So, with this experience fresh in his mind, he was resolved not to
re-settle in his own commonwealth, but to go to a city, though feeling
his unfitness for urban life. But h