But if they called the truth to you--what then?"

"Doctah, there is no longer any hope for me. God called me and let me
cut off all hope, once. I did it, and now, only death can change it."

"If I believe you, you must believe me. We won't talk of it any more.
I'm hungry. Your mother was churning up there; let's go and get some
buttermilk, and settle the business of the rent. You've run three good
furrows and I'll run three more beside them--my first, remember, in all
my life. Then we'll plant that strip to sunflowers. Come, Hoyle, tie the
mule and follow us."

So David carried his way. They walked merrily back to the house,
chattering of his plans and what he would raise. He knew nothing
whatever of the sort of crops to be raised, and she was naively gay at
his expense, a mood he was overjoyed to awaken in her. He vowed that
merely to walk over ploughed ground made a man stronger.

On the porch he sat and drank his buttermilk and, placing his paper on
the step, drew up a contract for rent. Then Cassandra went to her
weaving, and he and Hoyle returned to the field, where with much labor
he succeeded in turning three furrows beside Cassandra's, rather crooked
and uncertain ones, it is true, but quite as good as hers, as Hoyle
reluctantly admitted, which served to give David a higher respect for
farmers in general and ploughmen especially.

CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH DAVID DISCOVERS CASSANDRA'S TROUBLE

After turning his furrows, David told Hoyle to ride the mule to the
stable, then he sat himself on the fence, and meditated. He bethought
him that in the paper he had drawn up he had made no provision for the
use of the mule. He wiped his forehead and rubbed the perspiration from
his hair, and coughed a little after his exertion, glad at heart to find
himself so well off.

He would come and plough a little every day. Then he began to calculate
the number of days it would take him to finish the patch, measuring the
distance covered by the six furrows with his eye, and comparing it with
the whole. He laughed to find that, at the rate of six furrows a day,
the task would take him well on into the summer. Plainly he must find a
ploughman.

Then the laying out of the ground! Why should he not have a vineyard up
on the farther hill slope? He never could have any fruit from it, but
what of that! Even if he went away and never returned, he would know it
to be adding its beauty to this wonderful dream. Who could know