e very lucky."

"Yes, I am in that respect."

"Well, I've done all that I shall do in the matter. I've become quite
calm, fatalistic. There's nothing else to be." He gathered up his
reins.

"That's a good team you have," Lee remarked.

"Of the very best. I disliked to use them in this cold, but Charlie
had gone with the car to Kennard. Va! He is never at home any more. It
would be well if I made him drive a team on your ditch."

"Send him along; I'll give him a job," Lee said.

The banker shook his head.

"He would say I was crazy and he wouldn't come. He doesn't even attend
to matters that require attention. This winter he has been running too
much with idle men in town and spending money as if it took no effort
to get it, as if it could be picked off of weeds. It's very
perplexing. I am too easy with Charlie, I let him have his way too
much. I should put him in a pair of overalls for a while and say, 'You
are going out with a band of sheep; you have to work.' Several times
I've made up my mind to do that, but when the moment came I couldn't
say it. He isn't robust, he has always had the best of everything, and
he's been educated in a college."

"Cut off his allowance and take away his automobile. He would stay at
home and attend to business then," Lee offered.

"But it would shame him. He isn't a little boy any longer; he's thirty
years old. The trouble is that he isn't like me, particular and
careful; he's wild and impatient and reckless. His mother wasn't that
way, I am not that way--I don't know where he got that nature."

Menocal senior drove off and Bryant turned back to his work. The pity
of the thing was, as the banker had stated, that they had been hasty
in the beginning, that they had not sought to come to an
understanding, some arrangement. It was another mistake. To Lee his
whole past here was beginning to appear a record of oversights,
incredible misjudgements, blinded blunders, and ghastly mistakes.

CHAPTER XXIV

Ghastly mistakes! Some cynic has said the only mistake in life a man
can make is "to go broke." Bryant did not realize until afterward the
irony lurking in the penumbra of the talk with Menocal. He was broke,
unable to proceed, even while he listened to the banker's
commendation. The workmen were busy, it was true, and the horses were
pulling loaded fresnos, and plows were cutting the trench deeper; but
that was an expiring motion, a last falling gesture. Only a few
wretc