I'm
going up there."

"Sure enough? All right. When I get through with one thing I'll go at
another."

Milford trudged off across the fields toward the village of Antioch. At
a well beneath a tree where cows stood in the shade, he stopped to bathe
his face. He saw his dark countenance wrinkling in the disturbed water;
he committed the natural folly of talking to himself. "You are a fool,"
he said, looking down into his wavering eye. "You are a fool, and you
want to prove it." He smiled to think how easy it was to produce the
testimony. In such cases nature cheerfully gives her deposition.

He continued his way across the fields, through a skirt of wooded land
and out into a road. Bicycles crackled past him. A buggy overtook him.
Some one spoke. He looked round and recognized the "discoverer" and the
Norwegian. It was only a two-seated vehicle, but they invited him to
ride. He declined to accept their kindness, trying to hide his face. He
said that he had heard Mrs. Stuvic say that the buggy was not strong.
They were going to the village of Lake Villa. They might stop at the
mill and have a word with the Professor. Milford remarked that the
Professor would no doubt be pleased to see them, but that he was no
doubt very busy. They drove on without having noticed the wounds on his
face. To one not bent upon a vengeful mission, to a thoughtful man with
a mind in tone with the scented air, the soft sky, the spread of green,
the gleam of water, the clouds of blackbirds, such a stroll would have
been rich with an inner music played upon many sweet chords. At a
crossroads stood an old brick house, an ancient rarity upon a landscape
white-spotted with wooden cottages. It was a rest for the eye, a place
for a moment of musing, a page of a family's record, a bit of
dun-colored history. It was built long before the railroad set the
clocks of the country, before man entered into business copartnership
with the minute and employed the second as his agent. It was a relief to
look upon a worn door-sill, a rotting window-blind hanging by one hinge.
In the years long gone the congressman's carriage, laboring through the
mud, had halted there, and the statesman had warmed himself at a fire of
wood, delighting an old Whig with predictions of a glorious victory. At
this place Milford halted to get a drink of water and to sit for a few
moments in the shade. A man came out and asked him if he wanted a team.
He had a team that would not run