asked, "do you mean to
do?"

"I mean," replied Christopher, "to stop trying to do what I am hindered
in doing, and do just once in my life what I want to do. Myrtle asked
me this morning if I wasn't going to plow the south field. Well, I ain't
going to plow the south field. I ain't going to make a garden. I ain't
going to try for hay in the ten-acre lot. I have stopped. I have worked
for nothing except just enough to keep soul and body together. I have
had bad luck. But that isn't the real reason why I have stopped. Look
at here, Mr. Wheaton, spring is coming. I have never in my life had a
chance at the spring nor the summer. This year I'm going to have the
spring and the summer, and the fall, too, if I want it. My apples may
fall and rot if they want to. I am going to get as much good of the
season as they do."

"What are you going to do?" asked Stephen.

"Well, I will tell you. I ain't a man to make mystery if I am doing
right, and I think I am. You know, I've got a little shack up on Silver
Mountain in the little sugar-orchard I own there; never got enough sugar
to say so, but I put up the shack one year when I was fool enough to
think I might get something. Well, I'm going up there, and I'm going
to live there awhile, and I'm going to sense the things I have had to
hustle by for the sake of a few dollars and cents."

"But what will your wife do?"

"She can have the money I've saved, all except enough to buy me a few
provisions. I sha'n't need much. I want a little corn meal, and I will
have a few chickens, and there is a barrel of winter apples left over
that she can't use, and a few potatoes. There is a spring right near the
shack, and there are trout-pools, and by and by there will be berries,
and there's plenty of fire-wood, and there's an old bed and a stove and
a few things in the shack. Now, I'm going to the store and buy what
I want, and I'm going to fix it so Myrtle can draw the money when she
wants it, and then I am going to the shack, and"--Christopher's voice
took on a solemn tone--"I will tell you in just a few words the gist of
what I am going for. I have never in my life had enough of the bread
of life to keep my soul nourished. I have tried to do my duties, but I
believe sometimes duties act on the soul like weeds on a flower. They
crowd it out. I am going up on Silver Mountain to get once, on this
earth, my fill of the bread of life."

Stephen Wheaton gasped. "But your wife, she will be alone,