same levity it wore then, and excited him in the same way. He saw
her laughing with Ed over his dismay. He sat down and wrote a
letter to her at last-a letter that came from the ferocity of the
medieval savage in him:

"It you want to go to hell with Ed Kinney, you can. I won't say a
word. That's where he'll take you. You won't see me again."

This he signed and sealed, and then he bowed his head and wept
like a girl. But his tears did not soften the effect of the letter. It
went as straight to its mark as he meant it should. It tore a seared
and ragged path to an innocent, happy heart, and be took a savage
pleasure in the thought of it as he rode away on the cars toward
the South.

III

The seven years lying between 188o and 1887 made a great
change in Rock River and in The adjacent farming land. Signs
changed and firms went out of business with characteristic
Western ease of shift. The trees grew rapidly, dwarfing The houses
beneath them, and contrasts of
newness and decay thickened.

Will found The country changed, as he walked along The dusty
road from Rock River toward "The Comers." The landscape was at
its fairest and liberalest, with its seas of corn deep green and
moving with a mournful rustle, in sharp contrast to its flashing
blades; its gleaming fields of barley, and its wheat already mottled
with soft gold in The midst of its pea-green.