"And why not, daughter?" he asked. "And why can't a man succeed
after he's seventy? I was only seventy this year. And mebbe I
could succeed if only I could get to the Klondike--"

"Which you ain't going to get to," Mary shut him off.

"Oh, well, then," he sighed, "seein's I ain't, I might just as well
go to bed."

He stood up, tall, gaunt, great-boned and gnarled, a splendid ruin
of a man. His ragged hair and whiskers were not grey but snowy
white, as were the tufts of hair that stood out on the backs of his
huge bony fingers. He moved toward the door, opened it, sighed,
and paused with a backward look.

"Just the same," he murmured plaintively, "the bottoms of my feet
is itching something terrible."

Long before the family stirred next morning, his horses fed and
harnessed by lantern light, breakfast cooked and eaten by lamp
fight, Old Man Tarwater was off and away down Tarwater Valley on
the road to Kelterville. Two things were unusual about this usual
trip which he had made a thousand and forty times since taking the
mail contract. He did not drive to Kelterville, but turned off on
the main road south to Santa Rosa. Even more remarkable than this
was the paper-wrapped parcel between his feet. It contained his
one decent black suit, which Mary had been long reluctant to see
him wear any more, not because it was shabby, but because, as he
guessed what was at the back of her mind, it was decent enough to