as he often thought, was finished. His listening and straining, hopes and heart-burnings were at an end in that place. As he came to Cottonwood, like a bird blown far from its native haunts by the storm, so he would leave.
He had gathered nothing but sorrow there, and cares which left their mark in new lines in his solemn, homely face. Perhaps, in the great prearrangement, there had been something else set down to his labors beyond that unfriendly land. A man must go on until he found his place.
His boots were rolled in his blanket, together with his brave black coat. This roll he must carry on his back, for he hadn't money enough left out of the expense of Fannie's burial to buy one leg of a horse.
Hartwell's last word had thrown Uncle Boley into a silent and speculative spell. He sat on his work-bench out of old habit, although dressed in his alpaca coat and derby hat, looking out of his dusty window with fixed stare.
"Yes, that might be so, might be so," he sighed. "Change and doin's seems to be the lot of some folks, peace and easy goin' of others. I've been makin' boots for fifty years and more, and I've made many a pair that men's tromped off in to git rich, or git shot, but I've just kep' right on makin' boots. It wasn't laid out for me to do anything
