achine went skimming down the road, and when it reached the pike
and Charles picked up his friends, Fred watched its slow ascent of
Listening Hill, and waited for it to disappear beyond the crest.

CHAPTER IX

ON AN ORCHARD SLOPE

Fred moved off across the fields in quest of Perry. Charles never left
him wholly happy. His long absence from home had in a way lessened his
reliance on family ties, and an interview with his brother deepened the
sense of his own dullness. He wondered whether it were not proof of his
general worthlessness that he was so quickly adjusting himself to the
conditions of rural life; and yet from such reflections his spirit
quickly rebounded. In the very soil itself, he felt a kinship, born of a
hidden, elusive, cramped vein of poetic feeling that lay deep in his
nature. All life, he vaguely realized, is of a piece: man and the earth
to which he is born respond to the same laws. He contemplated the
wheatfield, tilled partly by his own hands, with a stirring of the heart
that was new to his experience. He was wedded to this land; his hope was
bound up in it; and he meant to serve it well.

He sprang over the fence into a woods pasture on Amzi Montgomery's farm
and strode on. He picked up a walnut and carried it in his hand,
sniffing the pungent odor of the rind. It was as warm as spring, and the
dead leaves, crisp and crackling under his tread, seemed an anomaly. The
wood behind him, he crossed a pasture toward the barn and hesitated,
seeing that Perry was entertaining visitors. He had fallen into the
habit of dropping in at the Perrys' on Sunday afternoons and he was
expected to-day, so he kept on. As he reached the barn lot, he
identified Amzi Montgomery and Phyllis Kirkwood, to whom Perry was
apparently dilating on the good points of a Jersey calf that was eyeing
the visitors wonderingly.

"Don't be afraid, Holton; my lecture is just over. You've heard it
before and I'm not going to repeat it," Perry called to him.

"How do you do, Mr. Holton," said Phil.

He pulled off his hat and walked up to shake hands with her.

"I didn't expect to find you here. I usually come over Sunday
afternoons."

"Does that mean you wouldn't have come if you'd known we were here!"
laughed Phil. "Oh, Uncle Amy, this is Mr. Fred Holton. He's your
next-door neighbor."

Amzi turned from his observation of the calf and took the cigar from his
mouth. He remembered Fred Holton as a boy and the young man h