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CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS ( 1 8 9 8 - 1 9 6 3 )
was o n e o f t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l g i a n t s o f
the twentieth c e n t u r y and arguably
t h e m o s t i n f l u e n t i a l C h r i s t i a n writer
o f his day. He was a Fellow and tutor
in English literature at Oxford University
until 1 9 5 4 when h e was unanimously
e l e c t e d to t h e C h a i r o f Medieval a n d
R e n a i s s a n c e E n g l i s h at C a m b r i d g e
University, a position he held until
his r e t i r e m e n t . H e wrote m o r e than
thirty b o o k s , allowing him to reach a
vast a u d i e n c e , a n d his works c o n t i n u e
to a t t r a c t t h o u s a n d s o f new r e a d e r s
every year. His m o s t d i s t i n g u i s h e d
and popular accomplishments include
The Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the
Silent Planet, The Four Loves, The
Screwtape Letters, a n d Mere Christianity.
F o r m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t C. S.
Lewis, visit www.cslewis.com.
THE
WEIGHT
OF
GLORY
 B O O K S BY C . S . L E W I S

A Grief Observed
George MacDonald: An Anthology
Mere Christianity
Miracles
The Abolition of Man
The Great Divorce
The Problem of Pain
The Screwtape Letters (with "Screwtape Proposes a Toast *)
3

The Weight of Glory

A L S O AVAILABLE FROM H A R P E R C O L L I N S

The Chronicles of Narnia:

The Magician's Nephew
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle
 The
WEIGHT
OF
GLORY
AND OTHER ADDRESSES

HarperOne
An Imprint ofHaxpexCo\HxaP$tblishers
 HarperOne

THE WEIGHT O F GLORY: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949,

C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S.
Lewis Pte. Ltd.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. N o part of

this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever with-
out written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins
Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, N e w York, N Y 10022.

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trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.

FIRST H A R P E R C O L L I N S P A P E R B A C K E D I T I O N P U B L I S H E D I N 2001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963
The weight of glory: and other addresses / C. S. Lewis,
p. cm.
Contents: The weight of glory—Learning in war-time—Why I am
not a pacifist—Transposition—Is theology poetry?—The inner
ring—Membership—On forgiveness—A slip of the tongue.
I S B N 978-0-06-065320-0
1. Theology. I. Title: Weight of glory. II. Title.
BR50.L396 2000
252'o3—dc2i 00-063215

11 R R D ( H ) 50 49 48 47 46
 CQNTENTS

Introduction by Walter Hooper i

Preface to the original edition by the author 2

3

The Weight of Glory 2

5

Learning in War-Time 47

Why I Am Not a Pacifist 64

Transposition 9i

Is Theology Poetry? 116

The Inner Ring 141

Membership 158

On Forgiveness 177

A Slip of the Tongue 184

WEIGHT
OF
GLORY
 INTRODUCTION

In his beautiful peroration at the end of his sermon

"The Weight of Glory," C. S. Lewis, after commenting
on the immortality of the human soul, says, "This does
not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We
must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and
it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between
people who have, from the outset, taken each other
seriously."
I believe that this and similar encouragements by
Lewis contribute significantly to the subject of what
constitutes Christian behaviour. Having done the best
we can to perform whatever God demands, should we
not at least enjoy the good He sends us? Willing our-
selves to be "perpetually solemn" when there is no

i
 I N T R O D U C T I O N

reason for it seems to me not only a rejection of the hap-

piness we could have on earth, but also to jeopardise our
capacity to enjoy it in the future when every possible
reason for unhappiness has been finally swept away.
We know from his earliest writings that Lewis was
born with a sense of fun, and that it was considerably
maimed by an entanglement of atheism and ambition.
Perhaps a fiercely serious ambition for whatever it
might be can never live in harmony with the merriment
he describes. Certainly, Lewis could write no great
works until he was converted to Christianity in 1931,
after which he ceased to take much interest in himself.
If it is objected by those of a lugubrious disposition
that the Christian religion is serious and of great solem-
nity, then my answer is, "Yes, of course. And not taken
seriously enough/* But Lewis comes to our rescue at
this point by showing us in his book The Four Loves
how easily things can become other than they should
be through the wrong kind of seriousness.
In editing these essays I have been led to reflect on
that ever mysterious, but instinctive notion we seem to
be born with that tells us just how merry, how serious,
how whatever you will, we know we can be with some-
one else. My relation to Lewis may be similar to that of
others, but it can't be exactly like. As this book is being

2
 INTRODUCTION

edited primarily for Americans, I should explain that

after I had corresponded with Lewis for some years, he
invited me to come over in the spring of 1963 from my
native United States for what I hoped would be as
much as a single conversation over a cup of tea. I don't
believe in luck, but I do believe in angels, and the cov-
eted tea party turned out to be (if it needs a name) "The
Observations of a Late Arrival" or "A Single Summer
with C S . L . " In any event, as the sources of our first-
hand evidence about him decrease with the years, I
hope that mine will be of some interest to those who
feel as I do about that merriment "of the merriest kind"
of which there seems no abundance these days.
It took some time for an American, such as myself,
to adapt to English "conveniences." I see, for instance,
from my diary of 7 June 1963 that during a longish visit
with Lewis we drank what seemed gallons of tea. After
a while I asked to be shown the "bathroom," forgetting
that in most homes the bathroom and the toilet are sep-
arate rooms. With a kind of mock formality, Lewis
showed me to the bathroom, pointed to the tub, flung
down a pile of towels, and closed the door behind me. I
returned to his sitting-room to say that it was not a
bath I wanted b u t . . . "Well, sir, 'choose you this day/"
said Lewis, bursting with laughter as he quoted the

3
 INTRODUCTION

prophet Joshua, "that will break you of those silly

American euphemisms. And now, where is it you
wanted to go?"
I see from other entries I made that Lewis—or
"Jack" as he preferred to be called by his friends—and
I were meeting at least three or four times a week,
sometimes at his house, at other times in a pub with a
group of friends called "The Inklings." I knew that he
was ill, indeed, that he had been so since 1961 when the
troubles with his health began. He, however, seemed to
think little of it and, as he looked so robust, it was easy
to forget it when in company with this ruddy, six-foot,
genial man. Hence the surprise of finding him not well
enough to attend Mass with me on July 14. He urged
me to remain there with him, and this was a memorable
day for me in more ways than one. It was then that he
asked me to accept immediately a post as his literary
assistant and personal secretary, and later, after resign-
ing my teaching position at the University of
Kentucky, to return to Oxford to resume my duties.
Lewis went for a routine examination the next
morning to the Acland Nursing Home, and, much to
everyone's surprise, he sank into a coma, lasting about
twenty-four hours, from which the doctors did not
believe he would recover. Our mutual friends, the

4
 INTRODUCTION

Reverend Dr. Austin Farrer and his wife, were to be on

holiday in Wales from the sixteenth through the thirty-
first of July, but at Lewis's request they remained in
Oxford until the seventeenth, so that Austin Farrer
could hear his confession and give him the Blessed
Sacrament. Lewis wanted me to receive the Sacrament
with him, but as I was not ill, this was not allowed. "In
that case," Lewis said, "you must be present to do the
kneeling for me." With so much to do for him at this
time I was unable to keep a regular diary. However, I
see from a letter I wrote to the Farrers on July 30 from
Lewis's home, and now part of the Farrer Papers in the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, that I had already moved
into Lewis's home by that time.
Rather than tell Lewis how close he had come to
dying, the doctors appeared to leave this to me. When I
judged the time to be right, I told him about the coma
and the few days when his mind was disordered.
Thereafter Lewis continued to believe that the Extreme
Unction administered during the coma and his recep-
tion of the Blessed Sacrament had saved his life.
Even before he went* into the nursing home I mar-
velled that Lewis had lived so long without setting him-
self ablaze. Except when he dressed for a special
occasion, he wore an old tweed jacket, the right-hand

5
 INTRODUCTION

pocket of which had been patched and re-patched

many times. This was because Lewis, when wearied of
his pipe, would drop it into his pocket, with the result
that it would burn its way through. And this happened
so often that there was none of the original material
left.
The nurses in the Acland, having found him nodding
with a cigarette in his hand, would have none of this.
And so it was that, except when I was with him, they
would not allow him to have any matches. What puzzled
Lewis was that after I had left him with a box of
matches, a nurse would, as soon as I left, rush in and
take them away. "How do they know? ' he asked me
9

one morning. "Give me a box I can hide under my bed-

clothes." I had then to confess that while I was the sup-
plier, I was also the informer. "Informer!" roared
Lewis. "I have what no friend ever had before. I have a
private traitor, my very own personal Benedict Arnold.
Repent before it is too late!"
I loved all the rough and tumble of this, and I fancy
I pulled his leg about as often as he pulled mine. But
there was the gentler side that was just as typical.
There was one incident that took place in the Acland
which the readers of his Narnian stories might find as
endearing as I did. It occurred on one of those days

6
 INTRODUCTION

when Lewis's mind was disordered and when, as I

noticed, he could not recognise any of those who
dropped in to see him—not even Professor Tolkien.
The last visitor of the day was his foster-sister,
Maureen Moore Blake, who a few months previously,
and by a very unexpected turn of events, had become
Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs, with a castle and a vast
estate in Scotland. She was the first woman in three
centuries to succeed to a baronetcy. They had not met
since this happened and, hoping to spare her any dis-
appointment, I told her that he had not been able to
recognise any of his old friends. He opened his eyes
when she took his hand. "Jack," she whispered, "it is
Maureen." "No," replied Lewis smiling, "it is Lady
Dunbar of Hempriggs." "Oh, Jack, how could you
remember that?" she asked. "On the contrary," he
said. "How could / forget a fairy tale?"
One day when he was obviously much better, but
not completely out of danger, he asked why I looked so
glum.
The reason for the glumness was that, living in our
neighbourhood was afierceold atheist of about ninety-
seven who went out for a brisk walk every day. When-
ever we met he asked if Lewis was "still alive," and on
receiving my reply that he was indeed quite ill, he

7
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
bull stood by, with that unbelievable hint of sorrow and regret in its bearing;
stood still as stone, and watched so quietly.
Evered did not think of Semler; he had scarce thought of the man at all,
from the beginning. When he was done with his wife he went to where the
bull stood, and snapped his ash stave fast to the creature’s nose. The bull
made no move, neither backed away nor snorted nor jerked aside its vast
head. And Evered, his face like a stone, led the beast to one side and up the
slope and through the woodlot toward the farm.
As he approached the barn he turned to one side and came to the boarded
pen outside the bull’s stall. He led the beast inside this pen, loosed the stave
from the nose ring, and stepped back outside the gate. Watching for a
moment he saw the red bull walk slowly across the pen and go into its stall;
and once inside it turned round and stood with its head in the doorway of
the stall, watching him.
He made fast the gate, then passed through the barn and approached the
kitchen door. Ruth, his wife’s sister, came to the door to meet him. His face
was steady as a rock; there was no emotion in the man. Yet there was
something about him which appalled the girl.
She asked huskily, “Did you get the bull in? I heard him, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” said Evered. “He’s in.”
“I heard him bellowing,” she explained. “And then I saw a man run up
across the side field to the road.”
“That was Semler,” Evered explained coldly. “Dane Semler. He was
afraid of the bull.”
“I was worried,” the girl persisted timidly, not daring to say what was in
her mind. “I was worried—worried about Mary.”
“The bull killed her,” said Evered; and passed her and went into the
kitchen.
Ruth backed against the wall to let him go by; and she pressed her two
hands to her lips in a desperate frightened way; and her eyes were wide and
staring with horror. She stared at the man, and her hands held back the
clamor of her grief. She stared at him as at a monstrous thing, while Evered
washed his hands at the sink and dried them on the roller towel, and
combed his hair before the clean mirror hanging on the wall. There was a
dreadful deliberation about his movements.
 After a moment the girl began to move; she went by little sidewise steps
as far as the door, and then she leaped out into the barnyard, and the
screams poured from her in a frenzy of grief that was half madness. Evered
turned at the first sound and watched her run, still screaming, across the
barnyard to the fence; and he saw her fumble fruitlessly with the topmost
bars, and at last scramble awkwardly over the fence itself in her stricken
haste. She was still crying out terribly as she disappeared from his sight in
the direction of the woodlot and the spring.
Evered watching her said to himself bitterly: “She knew where Mary
was; knew where to look for her.”
He flung out one hand in a weak gesture of despair that came strangely
from so harshly strong a man; and he began to move aimlessly about the
kitchen, not knowing what he did. He took a drink at the pump; he changed
his shoes for barnyard boots; he cut tobacco from a plug and filled his pipe
and forgot to light it; he stood in the door, the cold pipe in his teeth, and
stared out across his farm; and his teeth set on the pipestem till it cracked
and roused him from his own thoughts.
Then he heard someone running, and his son, John Evered, came from
the direction of the orchard, and flung a quick glance at his father, and
another into the kitchen at his father’s back.
Evered looked at him, and the young man, panting from his run, said, “I
heard Ruth cry out. What’s happened, father?”
Evered’s tight lips did not stir for a moment; then he took the pipe in his
hand, and he said stiffly, “The red bull killed Mary.”
They were accustomed to speak of Evered’s second wife as Mary when
they spoke together. John, though he loved her, had never called her mother.
He loved her well; but the blood tie was strong in him, and he loved his
father more. At his father’s word now he stepped nearer the older man,
watching, sensing something of the agony behind Evered’s simple
statement; and their eyes met and held for a little.
Then Evered said, “She was with Dane Semler at the spring.”
The gentler lines of his son’s face slowly hardened into a likeness of his
own. The young man asked, “Where’s Semler?”
“Ran away,” said Evered.
“I had wanted a word with him.”
 Evered laughed shortly; and it was almost the first time that John had
ever seen him laugh, so that the sight was shocking and terrible. Then the
older man turned back into the house.
John followed him and asked quickly, “It was at the spring?”
“Yes. The bull broke down his fence to get at a dog.”
“We must bring her home,” the son suggested quietly. “Where is Ruth?”
“Down there,” Evered told him.
John turned to the door again. “We’ll bring her home,” he said; and
Evered saw the young man go swiftly across the farmyard and vault the
fence and start at an easy run in the direction Ruth had gone.
Evered stayed in the house alone for a moment; and when he could bear
to be alone no longer he went out into the farmyard. As he did so Zeke
Pitkin drove in, on his way back from that errand in North Fraternity.
The bleak face of Evered appalled the timid man and frightened him;
and he stammered apologetically: “W-wondered if you got the b-bull in.”
“Yes,” said Evered. “After he had killed Mary.”
Zeke stared at Evered with a face that was a mask of terror for a
moment, and Evered stood still, watching him. Then Pitkin gathered his
reins clumsily, and clumsily turned his horse, so sharply that his wagon was
well-nigh overthrown by the cramped wheel. When it was headed for the
road he lashed out with the whip, and the horse leaped forward. Evered
could hear it galloping out to the main road, and then to the left, toward
Fraternity.
“Town’ll know in half an hour,” he said half to himself.
The man was still in a stupor, his emotions numb. But he did not want to
be alone. After a moment he went out into the stable and harnessed the
horse to his light wagon and started down a wood road toward the spring.
The wagon would serve to bring his wife’s body home.
The vehicles on a Fraternity farm are there for utility, almost without
exception. Evered had a mowing machine, a rake, a harrow, a sledge, a
single-seated buggy and this light wagon. He was accustomed to take the
wagon when he went butchering; and it had served to haul the carcasses of
any number of sheep or calves or pigs or steers from farm to market. He
had no thought that he was piling horror on horror in taking this wagon to
bring home his wife’s body.
 He laid a double armful of hay in the bed of the wagon before he started;
and he himself walked by the horse’s head, easing it over the rough places.
The wood road which he followed would take him within two or three rods
of the spring.
John Evered, going before his father, had found Ruth MacLure
passionately sobbing above the body of her sister. And at first he could not
bring himself to draw near to her; he was held by some feeling that to
approach her would be sacrilege. There had been such a love between the
sisters as is not often seen; there was a spiritual intimacy between them, a
sympathy of mind and heart akin to that sometimes marked between twins.
John knew this; he knew all that Ruth’s grief must be. And so he stood still,
a little ways off from her, and waited till the tempest of her grief should
pass.
When she was quieter he spoke to her; and at the sound of his voice the
girl whirled to face him, still kneeling; and there were no more tears in her.
He was frightened at the stare of challenge in her eyes. He said quickly,
“It’s me.”
She shook her head as though something blurred her sight. “I thought it
was your father,” she told him, and there was a bitter condemnation in her
tone.
John said, “You mustn’t blame him.”
“He’s not even sorry,” she explained softly, thoughtfully.
“He is,” John insisted. “You never understood him. He loved her so.”
She flung her head to one side impatiently and got to her feet, brushing
at her eyes with her sleeve, fumbling with her hair, composing her
countenance. “It’s growing dark,” she said. “We must take her home.”
He nodded. “I’ll carry her,” he said; and he crossed and bent above the
dead woman, and looked at her for a moment silently. The girl, watching
him, saw in the still strength of his features a likeness to his father that was
suddenly terrible and appalling.
She shuddered; and when he would have lifted her sister’s body she
cried out in passionate hysterical protest, “Don’t touch her! Don’t touch
her! You shan’t touch her, John Evered!”
John looked at her slowly; and with that rare understanding which was
the birthright of the man he said, “You’re blaming father.”
 “Yes, yes,” she cried, “I am.”
“It was never his fault,” he said.
“He kept that red, killing brute about,” she protested. “Oh, he killed her,
he killed Mary, he killed my sister, John.”
“That is not fair,” he told her.
Before she could answer they both hushed to the sound of the
approaching wagon; and Evered came toward them, leading the horse, and
he turned it and backed the wagon in below the spring.
They did not speak to him, nor he to them. But when he was ready he
went toward the dead woman to lift her into the wagon bed; and Ruth
pushed between them and cried: “You shan’t touch her! You shan’t touch
her, ever!”
Evered looked at her steadily; and after a moment he said, “Stand to one
side.”
The girl wished to oppose him; but it was a tribute to his strength that
even in this moment the sheer will of the man overpowered her. She moved
aside; and Evered lifted his wife’s body with infinite gentleness and
disposed it upon the fragrant hay in the wagon bed. He put the folded coat
again beneath his wife’s head as a pillow, as though she were only sleeping.
Still with no word to them he took the horse’s rein and started to lead it
toward the road and up the hill. And Ruth and John, after a moment,
followed a little behind.
When they came up into the open, out of the scattering trees, a homing
crow flying overhead toward its roost saw them. It may have been that the
wagon roused some memory in the bird, offered it some promise. At any
rate, the black thing circled on silent wing, and lighted in the road along
which they had come, and hopped and flopped behind them as they went
slowly up the hill toward the farm.
Ruth saw the bird and shuddered; and John went back and drove it into
flight; but it took earth again, farther behind them.
It followed them insistently up the hill; and it was still there, a dozen
rods away, as they brought Mary Evered home.
 VII

W HEN they came into the farmyard night was falling. In the west the
sky still showed bright and warm; and against this brilliant sky the
hills were purple and deeper purple in the distance. In the valleys
mists were rising and black pools of night were forming beneath these
mists; and while Evered bore his wife’s body into the house and laid it on
the bed in the spare room, these pools rose and rose until they topped the
hills and overflowed the world with darkness. The air was still hot and
heavy, as it had been all day; and the sultry sky which had intensified the
heat of the sun served now to hide the stars. When it grew dark it was as
dark as pitch. The blackness seemed tangible, as though a man might catch
it in his hand.
Ruth stayed beside her sister; but John built a fire in the stove while
Evered sat by in stony calm, and he made coffee and fried salt pork and
boiled potatoes. There were cold biscuits which Mary Evered had made that
morning, and doughnuts from the crock in the cellar. When the supper was
ready he called Ruth; and she came. The most tragic thing about death is
that it accomplishes so little. The dropping of man or woman into the pool
of the infinite is no more than the dropping of a pebble into a brook. The
surface of the pool is as calm, a little after, as it was before. Thus, now, save
that Mary was not at the table, their supping together was as it had always
been.
And after they had eaten they must go with the familiarity of long habit
about their evening chores. Ruth washed the dishes; John and his father fed
the beasts and milked the cows; and when they came in John turned the
separator while Ruth attended to the milk and put away, afterward, the skim
milk and the cream.
By that time two or three neighbors had come in, having heard of that
which had come to pass. There was genuine sorrow in them, for Mary
Evered had been a woman to be loved; but there was also the ugly curiosity
native to the human mind; and there was speculation in each eye as they
watched Evered and John and Ruth. They would discuss, for days to come,
the bearing of each one of the three on that black night.
 For Evered, the man was starkly silent, saying no word. He sat by the
table, eyes before him, puffing his pipe. Ruth stayed by her sister as though
some instinct of protection kept her there. John talked with those who came,
told them a little. He did not mention Semler’s part in the tragedy. He said
simply that the bull had broken loose; that Mary Evered was by the spring,
where she liked to go; that the bull came upon her there.
They asked morbidly whether she was trampled and torn; and they
seemed disappointed when he told them that she was not, that even the
terrible red bull had seemed appalled at the thing which he had done. And
through the evening others came and went, so that he had to say the same
things over and over; and always Evered sat silently by the table, giving no
heed when any man spoke to him; and Ruth, in the other room, kept guard
above the body. The women went in there, some of them; but no men went
in.
John had telephoned to Isaac Gorfinkle, whose business it was to prepare
poor human clay for its return to earth again; and Gorfinkle came about
midnight and put all save Ruth out of the room where the dead woman lay.
Gorfinkle was a little, fussy man; a man who knew his doleful trade. Before
day he and Ruth had done what needed doing; and Mary Evered lay in the
varnished coffin he had brought. Her white hair and the sweet nobility of
her countenance, serenely lying there, made those who looked forget the
ugly splendor of Gorfinkle’s wares.
It was decided that she should be buried on the second day. On the day
after her death many people came to the farm; and some came from
curiosity, and some from sympathy, and some with an uncertain purpose in
their minds.
These were the selectmen of the town—Lee Motley, chairman; and
Enoch Thomas, of North Fraternity; and Old Man Varney. Motley, a sober
man and a man of wisdom, was of Evered’s own generation; Enoch Thomas
and Varney were years older. Old Varney had a son past thirty, whom to this
day he thrashed with an ax stave when the spirit moved him, his big son
good-naturedly accepting the outrage.
Thomas and Varney came to demand that Evered kill his red bull; and
Motley put the case for them.
“We’ve talked it over,” he said. “Seem’s like the bull’s dangerous; like
he ought to be killed. That’s what we’ve—what we’ve voted.”
 Evered turned his heavy eyes from man to man; and Old Varney
brandished his cane and called the bull a murdering beast, and bade Evered
take his rifle and do the thing before their eyes. Evered’s countenance
changed no whit; he looked from Varney to Thomas, who was silent, and
from Thomas to Lee Motley.
“I’ll not kill the bull,” he said.
Before Motley could speak, Varney burst into abuse and insistent
demand; and Evered let him talk. When the old man simmered to silence
they waited for Evered to answer, but Evered held his tongue till Lee
Motley asked, “Come, Evered, what do you say?”
“What I have said,” Evered told them.
“The town’ll see,” Old Varney shrilled, and shook his fist in Evered’s
face. “The town’ll see whether a murdering brute like that is to range
abroad. If you’ve not shame enough—your own wife, man—your own
——” he wagged his head. “The town’ll see.”
Said Evered: “I’ll not take rifle to the bull; but if any man comes here to
kill the beast, I’ll have use for that rifle of mine.”
Which fanned Varney to a fresh outbreak, till Evered flung abruptly
toward him, and abruptly said, “Be still.”
So were they still; and Evered looked them in the eye, man by man, till
he came to Motley; and then he said, “Motley, I thought there was more
wisdom in you.”
“Aye,” cried Varney. “He’s as big a fool as you.”
And Motley said, “I voted against this, Evered. The bull’s yours, if
you’re a mind to kill him. I’m not for making you. It’s your own affair, you
mind. And—the ways of a bull are the ways of a bull. The brute’s not
overmuch to be blamed.”
Evered nodded and turned his back on them; and after a time they went
away. But when Evered went into the house he met Ruth, and the girl
stopped him and asked him huskily, “You’re not going to kill that red
beast?”
Evered hesitated; then he said, with something like apology in his tones,
“No, Ruth.”
She began to tremble, and he saw that words were hot on her lips; and he
lifted one hand in a placating gesture. She turned into the other room, and
the door shut harshly at her back. Evered’s eyes rested on the door for a
space, a curious questioning in them, a wistful light that was strange to see.
All that day Ruth was still, saying little. No word passed between her
and Evered, and few words between her and John. But that night, when they
were alone, John spoke to her in awkward comfort and endearment.
“Please, Ruthie,” he begged. “You’re breaking yourself. You’ll be sick.
You must not be so hard.”
He put an arm about her, as though he would have kissed her; but the
girl’s hands came up against his chest, and the girl’s eyes met his in a fury
of horror and loathing, and she flung him away.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried in a voice that was like a scream. “Don’t ever!
You—his son!”
John, inexpressibly hurt, yet understanding, left her alone; he told
himself she was not to be blamed, with the agony of grief still scourging
her.
One of the neighbor women came in that night to sit with Ruth; and Ruth
slept a little through the night. John was early abed; he had had no sleep the
night before, and he was tired. He sank fathoms deep in slumber; a slumber
broken by fitful, unhappy dreams. His own grief for the woman who had
been mother to him had been stifled, given no chance for expression,
because he had fought to comfort Ruth and to ease his father. The reaction
swept over him while he slept; he rested little.
Evered, about nine o’clock, went to the room he and his wife had shared
for so many years. He had not, before this, been in the room since she was
killed. Some reluctance had held him; he had shunned the spot. But now he
was glad to be alone, and when he had shut the door he stood for a moment,
looking all about, studying each familiar object, his nerves reacting to faint
flicks of pain at the memories that were evoked.
He began to think of what the selectmen had said, of their urgency that
he should kill the bull. And he sat down on the edge of the bed and
remained there, not moving, for a long time. Once his eye fell on his belt
hanging against the wall, with the heavy knife that he used in his butchering
in its sheath. He reached out and took down the belt and drew the knife
forth and held it in his hands, the same knife that had killed drunken Dave
Riggs long ago. A powerful weapon, it would strike a blow like an ax; the
handle of bone, the blade heavy and keen and strong. He balanced it
between his fingers, and thought of how he had struck it into the neck of
Zeke Pitkin’s bull, and how the bull had dropped in midlife and never
stirred more. The knife fascinated him; he could not for a long time take his
eyes away from it. At the last he reached out and thrust it into its sheath
with something like a shudder, strange to see in so strong a man.
Then he undressed and got into bed, the bed he had shared with Mary
Evered. He had blown out the lamp; the room was dark. There was a little
current of air from the open window. And after a little Evered began to be as
lonely as a boy for the first time away from home.
There is in every man, no matter how stern his exterior, a softer side.
Sometimes he hides it from all the world; more often his wife gets now and
then a glimpse of it. There was a side of Evered which only Mary Evered
had known. And she had loved it. When they had come to bed together it
always seemed to her that Evered was somehow gentler, kinder. He put
away his harshness, as though it were a part he had felt called upon to play
before men. The child in him, strong in most men, came to the surface. He
was never a man overgiven to caresses, but when they were alone at night
together, and he was weary, he would sometimes draw her arm beneath his
head as a pillow or take her hand and lift it to rest upon his forehead, while
she twined her fingers gently through his hair.
They used to talk together, sometimes far into the night; and though he
might have used her bitterly through the day, with caustic tongue and hard,
condemning eye, he was never unkind in these moments before they slept.
A man the world outside had never seen. It was these nights together which
had made life bearable for Mary Evered; and they had been dear to Evered
too. How dreadful and appalling, then, was this, his first night alone.
Her shoulder was not there to cradle his sick and weary head; her gentle
hand was not there to cool his brow. When he flung an arm across her
pillow, where she used to lie, it embraced a gulf of emptiness that seemed
immeasurably deep and terrible. After a little, faint perspiration came out
upon the man’s forehead. He turned on his right side, in the posture that
invited sleep; but at first sleep would not come. His limbs jerked and
twitched; his eyelids would not close. He stared sightlessly into the dark.
Outside in the night there were faint stirrings and scratchings and movings
to and fro; and each one brought him more wide awake than the last. He got
up and closed the window to shut them out, and it seemed to him the closed
room was filled with her presence. When he lay down again he half fancied
he felt her hand upon his hair, and he reached his own hand up to clasp and
hold hers, as he had sometimes used to do; but his groping fingers found
nothing, and came sickly away again.
How long he lay awake he could not know. When at last he dropped
asleep the very act of surrender to sleep seemed to fetch him wide awake
again. Waking thus he thought that he held his wife in his arms; he had
often wakened in the past to find her there. But as his senses cleared he
found that the thing which he held so tenderly against his side was only the
pillow on which her head was used to lie.
The man’s nerves jangled and clashed; and he threw the pillow
desperately away from him as though he were afraid of it. He sat up in bed;
and his pulses pounded and beat till they hurt him like the blows of a
hammer. There was no sleep in Evered.
He was still sitting thus, bolt upright, sick and torn and weary, when the
gray dawn crept in at last through the window panes.
 VIII

T HE day of Mary Evered’s burial was such a day as comes most often
immediately after a storm, when the green of the trees is washed to such
a tropical brightness that the very leaves radiate color and the air is
filled with glancing rays of light. There were white clouds in the blue sky;
clouds not dense and thick, but lightly frayed and torn by the winds of the
upper reaches, and scudding this way and that according to the current
which had grip of them. Now and then these gliding clouds obscured the
sun; and the sudden gloom made men look skyward, half expecting a burst
of rain. But for the most part the sun shone steadily enough; and there was
an indescribable brilliance in the light with which it bathed the earth. Along
the borders of the trees, round the gray hulks of the bowlders, and fringing
the white blurs of the houses there seemed to shimmer a halo of colors so
faint and fine they could be sensed but not seen by the eye. The trees and
the fields were an unearthly gaudy green; the shadows deep amid the
branches were trembling, changing pools of color. A day fit to bewitch the
eye, with a soft cool wind stirring everywhere.
Evered himself was early about, attending to the morning chores. Ruth
MacLure had fallen asleep toward morning, and the woman with her let the
girl rest. John woke when he heard his father stirring; and it was he who
made breakfast ready, when he had done his work about the barn. He and
his father ate together, and Ruth did not join them.
Evered, John saw, was more silent than his usual silent custom; and the
young man was not surprised, expecting this. John himself, concerned for
Ruth, and wishing he might ease the agony of her grief, had few words to
say. When they were done eating he cleared away the dishes and washed
them and put them away; and then he swept the floor, not because it needed
sweeping, but because he could not bear to sit idle, doing nothing at all. He
could hear the women stirring in the other room; and once he heard Ruth’s
voice.
John’s grief was more for the living than for the dead; he had loved
Mary Evered truly enough, but there was a full measure of philosophy in
the young man. She was dead; and according to the simple trust which was
a part of him she was happy. But Ruth was unhappy, and his father was
unhappy. He wished he might comfort them.
Evered at this time was soberly miserable; his mind was still numb, his
emotions were just beginning to assert themselves. He could not think
clearly, could scarce think at all. What passed for thought with him was
merely a jumble of exclamations, passionate outcries, curses and laments.
Mary was dead; and he knew that dimly, without full comprehension of the
knowledge. More clearly he remembered Mary and Dane Semler, sitting so
intimately side by side; and the memory was compounded of anguish and of
satisfaction—anguish because she was false, satisfaction because her frailty
in some small measure justified the monstrous thing he had permitted, and
in permitting had done. Evered did not seek to deceive himself; he knew
that he had killed Mary Evered as truly as he had killed Dave Riggs many a
year ago. He did not put the knowledge into words; nevertheless, it was
there, in the recesses of his mind, concrete and ever insistent. And when
sorrow and remorse began to prick at him with little pins of fire he told
himself, over and over, that she had been frail, and so got eased of the worst
edge of pain.
A little after breakfast people began to come to the house. Isaac
Gorfinkle was first of them all, and he busied himself with his last ugly
preparations. Later the minister came—a boy, or little more; fresh from
theological school. His name was Mattice, and he was as prim and
meticulous as the traditional maiden lady who is so seldom found in life. He
tried to speak unctuous comfort to Evered, but the man’s scowl withered
him; he turned to John, and John had to listen to him with what patience
could be mustered. And more men came, and stood in groups about the
farmyard, smoking, spitting, shaving tiny curls of wood from splinters of
pine; and their women went indoors and herded in the front room together,
and whispered and sobbed in a hissing chorus indescribably horrible. There
is no creation of mankind so hideous as a funeral; there is nothing that
should be more beautiful. The hushed voices, the damp scent of flowers, the
stifling closeness of tight-windowed rooms, the shuffling of feet, the raw
snuffles of those who wept—these sounds filled the house and came out
through the open doors to the men, whispering in little groups outside.
Ruth MacLure was not weeping; nor Evered; nor John. And the
mourning, sobbing women kissed Ruth and called her brave; and they
whispered to each other that Evered was hard, and that John was like his
father. And the lugubrious debauch of tears went on interminably, as though
Gorfinkle—whose duty it would be to give the word when the time should
come—thought these preliminaries were requisites to a successful funeral.
But at last it was impossible to wait longer without going home for
dinner, and Gorfinkle, who was accustomed to act as organist on such
occasions, took his seat, pumped the treadles and began to play. Then
everyone crowded into the front room or stood in the hall; and a woman
sang, and young Mattice spoke for a little while, dragging forth verse after
verse of sounding phrase which rang nobly even in his shrill and uncertain
tones. More singing, more tears. A blur of pictures photographed
themselves on Ruth’s eyes; words that she would never forget struck her
ears in broken phrases. She sat still, steady and quiet. But her nerves were
jangling; and it seemed to the girl she must have screamed aloud if the thing
had not ended when it did.
Then the mile-long drive to the hilltop above Fraternity, with its iron
fence round about, and the white stones within; and there the brief and
solemn words, gentle with grief and glorious with triumphant hope, were
spoken above the open grave. And the first clod fell. And by and by the last;
and those who had come began to drift away to their homes, to their
dinners, to the round of their daily lives.
Evered and John and Ruth drove home together in their light buggy, and
Ruth sat on John’s knee. But there was no yielding in her, there was no
softness about the girl. And no word was spoken by any one of them upon
the way.
At home, alighting, she went forthwith into the house; and John put the
horse up, while his father fed the pigs and the red bull in his stall. When
they were done Ruth called them to dinner, appearing for an instant at the
kitchen door. John reached the kitchen before his father; and the pain in him
made him speak to the girl before Evered came.
“Ruthie,” he said softly. “Please don’t be too unhappy.”
She looked at him with steady eyes, a little sorrowful. “I’m not unhappy,
John,” she said. “Because Mary is not unhappy, now. Don’t think about
me.”
“I can’t help thinking about you,” he told her; and she knew what was
behind his words, and shook her head.
“You’ll have to help it,” she said.
 “Why, Ruthie,” he protested, “you know how I feel about you.”
Her eyes shone somberly. “It’s no good, John,” she answered. “You’re
too much Evered. I can see clearer now.”
They had not, till then, marked Evered himself in the doorway. Ruth saw
him and fell silent; and Evered asked her in a low steady voice, “You’re
blaming me?”
“I’m cursing you,” said the girl.
Evered held still for a little, as though it were hard for him to muster
words. Then he asked huskily, “What was my fault?”
She flung up her hand. “Everything!” she cried. “I’ve lived here with
you. I’ve seen you—breaking Mary by inches, and nagging and teasing and
pestering her. Till she was sick with it. And she kept loving you, so you
could hurt her more. And you did. You loved to hurt her. Hard and cruel and
mean and small—you’d have beat her as you do your beasts, if you’d dared.
Coward too. Oh!”
She flung away, began to move dishes aimlessly about upon the table.
Evered was gripped by a desire to placate her, to appease her; he thought of
Dane Semler, wished to cry out that accusation against his wife. But he held
his tongue. He had seen Semler with Mary; he had told John; Ruth knew
that Semler had been upon the farm. But neither of them spoke of the man,
then or thereafter. They told no one; and though Fraternity might wonder
and conjecture, might guess at the meaning of Semler’s swift flight on the
day of the tragedy, the town would never know.
Evered did not name Semler now; and it was not any sense of shame that
held his tongue. He believed wholly in that which his eyes had seen, and all
that it implied. Himself scarce knew why he did not speak; and he would
never have acknowledged that it was desire to shield his wife, even from
her own sister, which kept him silent. After a moment he sat down and they
began to eat.
Toward the end of the meal he said to Ruth uneasily: “Feeling so, you’ll
not be like to stay here with John and me.”
Ruth looked at him with a quick flash of eyes; she was silent,
thoughtfully. She had not considered this; had not considered what she was
to do. But instantly she knew.
 “Yes, I’m going to stay,” she told Evered. “This thing isn’t done. There’s
more to come. It must be so. For all you did there’s something that will
come to you. I want to be here, to see.” Her hands clenched on the table
edge. “I want to see you when it comes—see you squirm and crawl.”
There was such certainty in her tone that Evered, spite of himself, was
shaken. He answered nothing; and the girl said again, “Yes; I am going to
stay.”
The red bull in his stall bellowed aloud; a long, rumbling, terrible blare
of challenge. It set the dishes dancing on the table before them; and when
they listened they could hear the monstrous beast snorting in his stall.
 IX

A FTER the death of Mary Evered the days slipped away, and June
passed to July, and July to August. Gardens prospered; the hay ripened
in the fields; summer was busy with the land. But winter is never far
away in these northern hills; and once in July and twice in August the men
of the farms awoke in early morning to find frost faintly lying, so that there
were blackened leaves in the gardens, and the beans had once to be
replanted. Customary hazards of their arduous life.
The trout left quick water and moved into the deep pools; and a careful
fisherman, not scorning the humble worm, might strip a pool if he were
murderously inclined. The summer was dry; and as the brooks fell low and
lower little fingerlings were left gasping and flopping upon the gravel of the
shallows here and there. Nick Westley, the game warden for the district, and
a Fraternity man, went about with dip net and pail, bailing penned trout
from tiny shallows and carrying them to the larger pools where they might
have a chance for life. Some of the more ardent fishermen imitated him;
and some took advantage of the trout’s extremity to bring home catches
they could never have made in normal times.
John Evered loved fishing; and he knew the little brook along the hither
border of Whitcher Swamp, below the farm, as well as he knew his own
hand. But this year had been busy; he found no opportunity to try the stream
until the first week of July. One morning then, with steel rod and tiny
hooks, and a can of bait at his belt, he struck down through the woodlot,
past the spring where Mary had been killed, into the timber below, and so
came to the wall that was the border of his father’s farm, and crossed into
the swamp.
Whitcher Swamp is on the whole no pleasant place for a stroll; yet it has
its charms for the wild things, and for this reason John loved it. Where he
struck the marshy ground it was relatively easy going; and he took a way he
knew and came to the brook and moved along it a little ways to a certain
broad and open pool.
He thought the brook was lower than he had ever seen it at this season;
and once he knelt and felt the water, and found it warm. He smiled at this
with a certain gratification for the pool he sought was a spring hole, water
bubbling up through pin gravel in the brook’s very bed, and the trout would
be there to dwell in that cooler stream. When he came near the place,
screened behind alders so that he could not be seen, he uttered an
exclamation, and became as still as the trees about him while he watched.
There were trout in the pool, a very swarm of them, lying close on the
yellow gravel bottom. The water, clear as crystal, was no more than three
feet deep; and he could see them ever so plainly. Big fat fish, monsters, if
one considered the brook in which he found them. He judged them all to be
over nine inches, several above a foot, one perhaps fourteen inches long;
and his eyes were shining. They were so utterly beautiful, every line of their
graceful bodies, and every dappled spot upon their backs and sides as clear
as though he held them in his hands.
He rigged line and hook, nicked a long worm upon the point, and
without so much as shaking an alder branch thrust his rod through and
swung the baited hook and dropped it lightly in the very center of the pool,
full fifteen feet from shore. Then he swung upward with a strong steady
movement, for he had seen a great trout strike as the worm touched the
water, had seen the chewing jaws of the fish mouthing its titbit. And as he
swung, the gleaming body came into the air, through an arc above his head,
into the brush behind him, where he dropped on his knees beside it and
gave it merciful death with the haft of his heavy knife, and dropped it into
his basket.
Fly fishermen will laugh with a certain scorn; or they will call John
Evered a murderer. Nevertheless, it is none so easy to take trout even in this
crude fashion of his. A shadow on the water, a stirring of the bushes, a too-
heavy tread along the bank—and they are gone. Nor must they be hurried.
The capture of one fish alarms the rest; the capture of two disturbs them;
the taking of three too quickly will send them flying every whither.
John, after his first fish, filled and lighted his pipe, then caught a second;
and after another interval, a third—fat, heavy trout, all of them; as much as
three people would care to eat; and John was not minded to kill more than
he could use. He covered the three with wet moss in his basket, and then he
crept back through the alders and lay for a long time watching the trout in
the pool, absorbing the beauty of their lines, watching how they held
themselves motionless with faintest quivers of fin, watching how they fed.
 A twelve-inch trout rose and struck at a leaf upon the pool’s surface, and
John told himself, “They’re hungry.” He laughed a little, and got an inch-
long twig and tied it to the end of his line in place of hook. This he cast out
upon the pool, moving it to and fro erratically. Presently a trout swirled up
and took it under, and spat it out before John could twitch the fish to the
surface. John laughed aloud, and cast again. He stayed there for a long hour
at this sport, and when the trout sulked he teased them with bits of leaf or
grass. Once he caught a cricket and noosed it lightly and dropped it on the
water. When the fish took it down John waited for an instant, then tugged
and swung the trout half a dozen feet into the air before he could disgorge
the bait.
“Hungry as sin,” John told himself at last; and his eyes became sober as
he considered thoughtfully. There were other men about, as good fishermen
as he, and not half so scrupulous. If they should come upon this pool on
such a day——
He did a thing that might seem profanation to the fisherman who likes a
goodly bag. He gathered brush and threw it into the pool; he piled it end to
end and over and over; he found two small pines; dead in their places
among their older brethren; and he pushed them from their rotting roots and
dragged them to the brook and threw them in. When he was done the pool
was a jungle, a wilderness of stubs and branches; a sure haven for trout, a
spot almost impossible to fish successfully. While he watched, when his
task was finished, he saw brown darting shadows in the stream as the trout
shot back into the covert he had made; and he smiled with a certain
satisfaction.
“They’ll have to fish for them now,” he told himself.
He decided to try and see whether a man might take a trout from the pool
in its ambushed state. It meant an hour of waiting, a snagged hook or two, a
temper-trying ordeal with mosquitoes and flies. But in the end he landed
another fish, and was content. He went back through the swamp and up to
the farm, well pleased.
Moving along the brook he saw other pools where smaller fish were
lying; and that night he told Ruth what he had seen. “You can see all the
trout you’re minded to, down there now,” he said.
The girl nodded unsmilingly. She had not yet learned to laugh again,
since her sister’s death. They were a somber household, these three—
Evered steadily silent, the girl sober and stern, John striving in his awkward
fashion to win mirth from her and speech from Evered.
The early summer was to pass thus. And what was in Evered’s mind as
the weeks dragged by no man could surely know. His eye was as hard as
ever, his voice as harsh; yet to Ruth it seemed that new lines were forming
in his cheeks, and his hair, that had been black as coal, she saw one
afternoon was streaked with gray. Watching, thereafter, she marked how the
white hairs increased in number. Once she spoke of it to John,
constrainedly, for there was no such pleasant confidence between these two
as there had been.
John nodded. “Yes,” he said, “he’s aging. He loved her, Ruth; loved her
hard.”
Ruth made no comment, but there was no yielding in her eyes. She was
in these days implacable; and Evered watched her now and then with
something almost pleading in his gaze. He began to pay her small
attentions, which came absurdly from the man. She tried to hate him for
them.
Once John sought to comfort his father, spoke to him gently of the dead
woman; and Evered cried out, as though to assure himself as well as silence
John: “She was tricking me, John! Leaving me. With Semler, that very
day.”
He would not let John reply, silenced him with a fierce oath and flung
away. It might have been guessed that his belief in his wife’s treachery was
like an anchor to which Evered’s racked soul clung; as though he found
comfort and solace in the ugly thought, a justifying consolation.
 X

J OHN went no more to the brooks that summer; but what he had told Ruth
led her that way more than once. Westley, the game warden, stopped at
the house one day, and found her alone, and asked her whether John was
fishing. She told him of John’s one catch.
“Swamp Brook is full of trout,” she said; “penned in the holes and the
shallows.”
Westley nodded. “It’s so everywhere,” he agreed. “I’m dipping and
shifting them. Tell John to do that down in the swamp if he can find the
time.”
She asked how it should be done; and when Westley had gone she
decided that she would herself go down and try the trick of it if the drought
still held.
The drought held. No rain came; and once in early August she spent an
afternoon along the stream, and transported scores of tiny trout to feeding
grounds more deep and more secure. Again a week later; and still again as
the month drew to a close.
It was on this third occasion that the girl came upon Darrin. Working
along the brook with dip net and pail she had marked the footprints of a
man in the soft earth here and there. The swamp was still, no air stirring, the
humming of insects ringing in her ears. A certain gloom dwelt in these
woods even on the brightest day; and the black mold bore countless traces
and tracks of the animals and the small vermin which haunted the place at
night. Ruth might have been forgiven for feeling a certain disquietude at
sight of those man tracks in the wild; but she had no such thought. She had
never learned to be afraid.
She came upon Darrin at last with an abruptness that startled her. The
soft earth muffled her footsteps; she was within two or three rods of him
before she saw him, and even then the man had not heard her. He was
kneeling by the brook and at first she thought he had been drinking the
water. Then she saw that he was studying something there upon the ground;
and a moment later he got up and turned and saw her standing there. At first
he was so surprised that he could not speak, and they were still, looking at
each other. The girl, bareheaded, in simple waist and heavy short skirt, with
rubber boots upon her feet so that she might wade at will, was worth
looking at. The man himself was no mean figure—khaki flannel shirt,
knickerbockers, leather putties over stout waterproof shoes. She carried pail
in one hand, dip net in the other; and she saw that he had a revolver slung in
one hip, a camera looped over his shoulder.
He said at last, “Hello, there!” And Ruth nodded in the sober fashion that
was become her habit. The man asked, “What have you got? Milk, in that
pail? Is this your pasture land?”
“Trout,” she told him; and he came to see the fish in a close-packed
mass; and he exclaimed at them, and watched while she put them into the
stream below where he had been kneeling. He asked her why she did it, and
she told him. At the same time she looked toward where he had knelt,
wondering what he saw there. She could see only some deep-imprinted
moose tracks; and moose tracks were so common in the swamp that it was
not worth while to kneel to study them.
He saw her glance, and said, “I was looking at those tracks. Moose,
aren’t they?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“They told me there were moose in here,” he said. “I doubted it, though.
So far south as this.”
“There are many moose in the swamp,” she declared.
He asked, “Have you ever seen them?”
She smiled a little. “Once in a while. A cow moose wintered in our barn
two years ago.”
He slapped his thigh lightly. “Then this is the place I’m looking for,” he
exclaimed.
She asked softly, “Why?” She was interested in the man. He was not like
John, not like anyone whom she had known; except, perhaps, Dane Semler.
A man of the city, obviously. “Why?” she asked.
“I want to get some pictures of them,” he explained. “Photographs. In
their natural surroundings. Wild. In the swamp.”
“John took a snapshot of the cow that wintered with us,” she said. “I
guess he’d give you one.”
 The man laughed. “I’d like it,” he told her; “but I want to get a great
many.” He hesitated. “Where is your farm?”
She pointed out of the swamp toward the hill.
“Near?” he asked.
And she said, “It’s right over the swamp.”
“Listen,” he said eagerly. “My name’s Darrin—Fred Darrin. What’s
yours?”
“Ruth MacLure.”
“Why you’re Evered’s sister-in-law, aren’t you?”
She nodded, her cheeks paling a little. “Yes.”
“I was coming to see Evered to-night,” he said. “I want to board at the
farm while I work on these pictures—that is, I want permission to camp
down here by the swamp somewhere, and get milk and eggs and things
from you. Do you think I can?”
“Camp?” she echoed.
“Yes.”
She looked round curiously, as though she expected to see his equipment
there. “Haven’t you a tent?”
He laughed. “No. I’ve a tarp for a shelter; and I can cut some hemlock
boughs and build a shack; if you’ll let me trespass.”
“You could sleep in the barn I guess,” she said. “Or maybe in the house.”
He shook his head. “No roof for mine. This is my vacation, you
understand. I can sleep under a roof at home.”
“You’ll be getting wet all the time.”
“I’ll dry when the sun comes out.”
She asked, “Who’s going to cook for you?”
“I’m a famous cook,” he told her.
She had the rooted distrust of the open air which is common among the
people of the farms. She could not see why a man should sleep on the
ground when he might have hay or a bed; and she could not believe in the
practicality of cooking over an open fire; especially when there was a stove
at hand.
“You’ll have to see Mr. Evered,” she said uneasily.
 So it happened that they two went back through the swamp together and
up the hill; and they came side by side to meet Evered and John in the
barnyard by the kitchen door.
They had their colloquy there in the open barnyard, while the slanting
rays of the sun drew lengthening shadows from where they stood. Darrin
spoke to Evered. John went into the house after a moment and built a fire
for Ruth; and then he came out again while the girl went about the business
of supper.
Darrin was a good talker; and Evered’s silence made him seem like a
good listener. When John came out he was able to tell Darrin something of
the moose in the swamp, their haunts and their habits. Darrin listened as
eagerly as he had talked. He told them at last what he had come to do; he
explained how by trigger strings and hidden cameras and flash-light
powders he hoped to capture the images of the shy giants of the forest. John
listened with shining eyes. The project was of a sort to appeal to him. As for
Evered, he had little to say, smoked stolidly, stared out across his fields. The
sunlight on his hair accentuated the white streaks in it, and John looking
toward him once thought he had never seen his father look so old.
When Darrin put forward his request for permission to camp in the
woodlot near the swamp, Evered swung his heavy head round and gave the
other man his whole attention for a space. It was John’s turn for silence
now. He expected Evered to refuse, perhaps abusively. Evered had never
liked trespassers. He said they scared his cows, trampled his hay, stole his
garden stuff or his apples. But Evered listened now with a certain patience,
watching Darrin; and Darrin with a nimble tongue talked on and made
explanations and promises.
In the end Evered asked, “Where is it your mind to camp?”
“I’ve picked no place. I’ll find a likely spot.”
“You could sleep in the barn,” said Evered, as Ruth had said before him;
and Darrin laughed.
“As a matter of fact,” he explained, “half the sport of this for me is in
sleeping out of doors on the ground. I’m on vacation, you know. Other men
like hunting, and so do I; but mine is a somewhat different kind, that’s all. I
won’t bother you; you’ll not see much of me, for I’ll be about the swamp at
all hours of the night, and I’ll sleep a good deal in the day. You’ll hardly
know I’m there. Of course, I don’t want to urge you against your will.”
 Evered’s lips flickered into what might have passed for a smile. “I’m not
often moved against my will,” he said. “But I’ve no objection to your
sleeping in my ground. If you keep out of the uncut hay.”
“I will.”
“And put out your fires. I don’t want to be burned up.”
Darrin laughed. “I’m not a novice at this, Mr. Evered,” he said. “You’ll
not have to kick me off.”
Evered nodded; and John said, “You want to keep out of the bull’s
pasture too. You’ll know it. There’s a high wire fence round.”
Darrin said soberly, “I’ve heard of the red bull.”
“He killed my wife,” said Evered; and there was something so stark in
the bald statement that it shocked and silenced them. Evered himself
flushed when he had spoken, as though his utterance had been
unconsidered, had burst from his overfull heart.
“I know,” Darrin told him.
John said after a moment’s silence, “If there’s any way I can help—I
know the swamp. As much as any man. And I’ve seen the moose in there.”
There was a certain eagerness in his voice; and Darrin said readily, “Of
course. I’d like it.”
He said he would tramp to town and come with his gear next morning.
John offered to drive him over, but he shook his head. As he started away
Ruth came to the kitchen door, and he looked toward her, and she said
hesitantly, “Don’t you want to stay to supper?”
He thanked her, shook his head. Evered and John in the barnyard
watched him go; and Evered saw Ruth leave the kitchen door and move to a
window from which she could see him go up the lane toward the main road.
Evered asked John: “What do you make of him?”
“I like him,” said John. “I’m—glad you let him stay.”
“Know why I let him stay?”
“Why—no.”
“See him and Ruth together? See her watching him?”
“I didn’t notice.”
Evered’s lips twitched in the nearest approach to mirth he ever permitted
himself. “Ought to have better eyes, John; if you’re minded to keep hold o’
Ruth. She likes him. If I’d swore at him, shipped him off, she’d have been
all on his side from the start.”
John, a little troubled, shook his head. “Ruth’s all right,” he said. “Give
her time.”
Evered said, that wistful note in his voice plain for any man to hear, “I
don’t want Ruth leaving us. So I let Darrin stay.”
 XI

D ARRIN came to the farm. He made his camp by the spring where Mary
Evered had loved to sit, and where she had been killed. John knew this
at the time, was on the spot when Darrin built his fireplace in a bank of
earth, waist high, and watched the other shape hemlock boughs into a rain-
shedding shelter.
He did not remonstrate; but he did say, “Shouldn’t think you’d want to
sleep here.”
Darrin looked at him curiously; and he laughed a little.
“You mean—the red bull?” he asked. And when John nodded he said,
“Oh, I’m not afraid of ghosts. The world’s full of ghosts.” There was a
sudden hardness in his eye. “I’m a sort of a ghost myself, in a way.”
John wondered what he meant; but he was not given to much
questioning, and did not ask. Nevertheless, Darrin’s word stayed hauntingly
in his mind.
He told Ruth where Darrin was camping; and the girl listened
thoughtfully, but made no comment. John knew that Ruth was accustomed
to go to the spring now and then, as her sister had done. He wondered
whether she would go there now. There was no jealousy in John; his heart
was not built for it. Nevertheless, there was a deep concern for Ruth, deeper
than he had any way of expressing. The matter worried him a little.
They did not speak of Darrin’s camping place to Evered, and Evered
asked no questions. Darrin came to the house occasionally for supplies, but
it happened that he did not encounter Evered at such times. He was always
careful to ask for the man, to leave some word of greeting for him; and once
he bade them tell Evered to come down and see his camp. They did not do
so. Some instinct, unspoken and unacknowledged, impelled both Ruth and
John to keep Evered and Darrin apart. Neither was conscious of this feeling,
yet both were moved by it.
John, prompted to some extent by his father’s warning, had begun in an
awkward fashion to seek to please Ruth and to win back favor in her eyes.
He felt himself uneasy and at a loss in the presence of Darrin, felt himself at
a disadvantage in any contest with the other. John was a man of the country,
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