the road from the village, on his pony.
He didn't stop, as was his habit, but cantered by, head down and reins
loose. Then, as if he'd forgotten somethin', he wheeled the horse
sharp around, trotted back, threw the bridle over a fence-post, an'
came in. I saw somethin' was the matter from the absent-minded way he
talked an' by his lookin' mostly at the floor.

Strange, too, he began about crops an' prices; then he had somethin'
to say about the village, and from that to livin' in big cities, an'
how such places changes people's natures, makin' women different
creatures--more bold, more forgetful of friends, less kindly to their
sex, than those of the country; an' he said it all as slowly an'
softly an' solemnly as those ministers pray who don't think the Lord's
deaf. He seemed to be tryin' to get at somethin' by goin' round it;
an' I thought that somethin' was me.

"Neighbor King," I said finally, "you always speak so kindly of women
folks that it seems odd to me that you never have a woman on your
farm; an' odder still that you've never married."

"Mrs. Pyncheon," his face lightin' up like the sky just before
sunrise, "you an' I are old an' tried friends, an' I know you'll
respect an' keep secret what I'm going to tell you, an' what, to be
plain, I came to tell you. I knew, an' I didn't wonder, that you
thought it strange I'd never married. The Lord only knows how I hunger
for a woman's love, a woman's talk, a woman's presence where I can see
her. I would give all I am worth if I could take a good woman by the
hand as my wife, an' go forth even to begin life over again. Hunger
an' thirst are terrible; but they are easily borne in comparison with
the hunger an' thirst for a woman's love that I have endured for
years. No one can realize my lonesomeness, Mrs. Pyncheon;" an'
reachin' out he caught my hands in his. "I've been your friend for
years. You know it. I believe you've been mine. Will you continue such
when I keep from you a truth I dare not tell, an' give you in its
place a fact that you must know? I know you to be brave an' strong.
You'll be so now, an' secret, too--for no one here knows what I'm
goin' to tell you. Mrs. Pyncheon, I am a married man."

I couldn't help it; but the news was so sudden an' so startlin' that
my hands came away from his with a wrench, an' I drew away, feelin'
hurt an' shamed, if not guilty; an' I felt a flush of anger burnin' my
cheeks.

"There! there! don't misjudge me, Mrs. Pync