it, if you be," said John, turning round, and
taking a hasty step or two toward the house. As he turned he saw the
anxious faces of two women at one of the kitchen windows, and the
blood flew to his pinched face.

"Here, come back here and talk man-fashion!" shouted the
timber-dealer. "You couldn't make no more fuss if I come to seize your
farm. I'll make it eighty, an' I'll tell you jest one thing more: if
you're holdin' out, thinkin' I'll give you more, you can hold out till
doomsday."

"When'll you be over?" said the farmer abruptly; his hands were
clenched now in his pockets. The two men stood a little way apart,
facing eastward, and away from the house. The long, wintry fields
before them sloped down to a wide stretch of marshes covered with ice,
and dotted here and there with an abandoned haycock. Beyond was the
gray sea less than a mile away; the far horizon was like an edge of
steel. There was a small fishing-boat standing in toward the shore,
and far off were two or three coasters.

"Looks cold, don't it?" said the contractor. "I'll be over middle o'
the week some time, Mr. Packer." He unfastened his horse, while John
Packer went to the un-sheltered wood-pile and began to chop hard at
some sour, heavy-looking pieces of red-oak wood. He stole a look at
the window, but the two troubled faces had disappeared.

II.

Later that afternoon John Packer came in from the barn; he had
lingered out of doors in the cold as long as there was any excuse for
so doing, and had fed the cattle early, and cleared up and laid into a
neat pile some fencing materials and pieces of old boards that had
been lying in the shed in great confusion since before the coming of
snow. It was a dusty, splintery heap, half worthless, and he had
thrown some of the broken fence-boards out to the wood-pile, and then
had stopped to break them up for kindlings and to bring them into the
back kitchen of the house, hoping, yet fearing at every turn, to hear
the sound of his wife's voice. Sometimes the women had to bring in
fire-wood themselves, but to-night he filled the great wood-box just
outside the kitchen door, piling it high with green beech and maple,
with plenty of dry birch and pine, taking pains to select the best and
straightest sticks, even if he burrowed deep into the wood-pile. He
brought the bushel basketful of kindlings last, and set it down with a
cheerful grunt, having worked himself into good humor again; and as he
opened th