already selected her as one of those who come into their
spiritual heritage only through defeat, did not enter into the
half-humorous consideration with which he now regarded her.

Turning presently into the sunken road by the ice-pond, he came
in a little while to the overgrown fence surrounding the Blake
farm. In the tobacco field beyond the garden he saw Christopher's
blue-clad figure rising from a blur of green, and, following the
ragged path amid the yarrow, he joined the young man where he
stood at work.

As the lawyer reached his side Christopher glanced up
indifferently to give a nod of welcome. His crop had all been
cut, and be was now engaged in hanging the wilting plants from
long rails supported by forked poles. At his feet there were
little green piles of tobacco, and around him from the sunbaked
earth rose a headless army of bruised and bleeding stubble.

So thriftless were the antiquated methods he followed that the
lawyer, as he watched him, could barely repress a smile. Two
hundred years ago the same crop was probably raised, cut and
cured on the same soil in the same careless and primitive
fashion. Beneath all the seeming indifference to success or
failure Carraway discerned something of that blind reliance upon
chance which is apt to be the religious expression of a rural and
isolated people.

"Yes, I'll leave it out awhile, I reckon, unless the weather
changes," replied Christopher, in answer to the lawyer's inquiry.