Book Three: Chapter VIII

by Sherwood Anderson

　　When Clara Butterworth, the daughter of Tom Butterworth, was eighteen yearsold she graduated from the town high school. Until the summer of herseventeenth year, she was a tall, strong, hard-muscled girl, shy in thepresence of strangers and bold with people she knew well. Her eyes wereextraordinarily gentle.

　　The Butterworth house on Medina Road stood back of an apple orchard andthere was a second orchard beside the house. The Medina Road ran south fromBidwell and climbed gradually upward toward a country of low hills, andfrom the side porch of the Butterworth house the view was magnificent.The house itself was a large brick affair with a cupola on top and wasconsidered at that time the most pretentious place in the county.

　　Behind the house were several great barns for the horses and cattle. Mostof Tom Butterworth's farm land lay north of Bidwell, and some of his fieldswere five miles from his home; but as he did not himself work the land itdid not matter. The farms were rented to men who worked them on shares.Beside the business of farming Tom carried on other affairs. He owned twohundred acres of hillside land near his house and, with the exception ofa few fields and a strip of forest land, it was devoted to the grazingof sheep and cattle. Milk and cream were delivered each morning to thehouseholders of Bidwell by two wagons driven by his employees. A half mileto the west of his residence there was a slaughter house on a side road andat the edge of a field where cattle were killed for the Bidwell market. Tomowned it and employed the men who did the killing. A creek that came downout of the hills through one of the fields past his house had been dammed,and south of the pond there was an ice house. He also supplied the townwith ice. In his orchards beneath the trees stood more than a hundredbeehives and every year he shipped honey to Cleveland. The farmer himselfwas a man who appeared to do nothing, but his shrewd mind was always atwork. In the summer throughout the long sleepy afternoons, he drove aboutover the county buying sheep and cattle, stopping to trade horses with somefarmer, dickering for new pieces of land, everlastingly busy. He had onepassion. He loved fast trotting horses, but would not humor himself byowning one. "It's a game that only gets you into trouble and debt," he saidto his friend John Clark, the banker. "Let other men own the horses and gobroke racing them. I'll go to the races. Every fall I can go to Clevelandto the grand circuit. If I go crazy about a horse I can bet ten dollarshe'll win. If he doesn't I'm out ten dollars. If I owned him I would maybebe out hundreds for the expense of training and all that." The farmer wasa tall man with a white beard, broad shoulders, and rather small slenderwhite hands. He chewed tobacco, but in spite of the habit kept both himselfand his white beard scrupulously clean. His wife had died while he was yetin the full vigor of life, but he had no eye for women. His mind, he oncetold one of his friends, was too much occupied with his own affairs andwith thoughts of the fine horses he had seen to concern itself with anysuch nonsense.

　　For many years the farmer did not appear to pay much attention to hisdaughter Clara, who was his only child. Throughout her childhood she wasunder the care of one of his five sisters, all of whom except the one wholived with him and managed his household being comfortably married. His ownwife had been a somewhat frail woman, but his daughter had inherited hisown physical strength.

　　When Clara was seventeen, she and her father had a quarrel that eventuallydestroyed their relationship. The quarrel began late in July. It was a busysummer on the farms and more than a dozen men were employed about thebarns, in the delivery of ice and milk to the town, and at the slaughteringpens a half mile away. During that summer something happened to the girl.For hours she sat in her own room in the house reading books, or lay ina hammock in the orchard and looked up through the fluttering leaves ofthe apple trees at the summer sky. A light, strangely soft and enticing,sometimes came into her eyes. Her figure that had been boyish and strongbegan to change. As she went about the house she sometimes smiled atnothing. Her aunt hardly noticed what was happening to her, but her father,who all her life had seemed hardly to take account of her existence, wasinterested. In her presence he began to feel like a young man. As in thedays of his courtship of her mother and before the possessive passion inhim destroyed his ability to love, he began to feel vaguely that life abouthim was full of significance. Sometimes in the afternoon when he wentfor one of his long drives through the country he asked his daughter toaccompany him, and although he had little to say a kind of gallantry creptinto his attitude toward the awakening girl. While she was in the buggywith him, he did not chew tobacco, and after one or two attempts to indulgein the habit without having the smoke blow in her face, he gave up smokinghis pipe during the drives.

　　Always before that summer Clara had spent the months when there was noschool in the company of the farm hands. She rode on wagons, visited thebarns, and when she grew weary of the company of older people, went intotown to spend an afternoon with one of her friends among the town girls.

　　In the summer of her seventeenth year she did none of these things. At thetable she ate in silence. The Butterworth household was at that time runon the old-fashioned American plan, and the farm hands, the men who drovethe ice and milk wagons and even the men who killed and dressed cattle andsheep, ate at the same table with Tom Butterworth, his sister, who was thehousekeeper, and his daughter. Three hired girls were employed in the houseand after all had been served they also came and took their places attable. The older men among the farmer's employees, many of whom had knownher from childhood, had got into the habit of teasing the daughter of thehouse. They made comments concerning town boys, young fellows who clerkedin stores or who were apprenticed to some tradesman and one of whom hadperhaps brought the girl home at night from a school party or from one ofthe affairs called "socials" that were held at the town churches. Afterthey had eaten in the peculiar silent intent way common to hungry laborers,the farm hands leaned back in their chairs and winked at each other. Twoof them began an elaborate conversation touching on some incident in thegirl's life. One of the older men, who had been on the farm for many yearsand who had a reputation among the others of being something of a wit,chuckled softly. He began to talk, addressing no one in particular. Theman's name was Jim Priest, and although the Civil War had come upon thecountry when he was past forty, he had been a soldier. In Bidwell he waslooked upon as something of a rascal, but his employer was very fond ofhim. The two men often talked together for hours concerning the meritsof well known trotting horses. In the war Jim had been what was calleda bounty man, and it was whispered about town that he had also been adeserter and a bounty jumper. He did not go to town with the other menon Saturday afternoons, and had never attempted to get into the Bidwellchapter of the G. A. R. On Saturdays when the other farm hands washed,shaved and dressed themselves in their Sunday clothes preparatory to theweekly flight to town, he called one of them into the barn, slipped aquarter into his hand, and said, "Bring me a half pint and don't you forgetit." On Sunday afternoons he crawled into the hayloft of one of the barns,drank his weekly portion of whisky, got drunk, and sometimes did not appearagain until time to go to work on Monday morning. In the fall Jim took hissavings and went to spend a week at the grand circuit trotting meeting atCleveland, where he bought a costly present for his employer's daughter andthen bet the rest of his money on the races. When he was lucky he stayed onin Cleveland, drinking and carousing until his winnings were gone.

　　It was Jim Priest who always led the attacks of teasing at the table, andin the summer of her seventeenth year, when she was no longer in the moodfor such horse-play, it was Jim who brought the practice to an end. At thetable Jim leaned back in his chair, stroked his red bristly beard, nowrapidly graying, looked out of a window over Clara's head, and told a taleconcerning an attempt at suicide on the part of a young man in love withClara. He said the young man, a clerk in a Bidwell store, had taken a pairof trousers from a shelf, tied one leg about his neck and the other to abracket in the wall. Then he jumped off a counter and had only been savedfrom death because a town girl, passing the store, had seen him and hadrushed in and cut him down. "Now what do you think of that?" he cried. "Hewas in love with our Clara, I tell you."

　　After the telling of the tale, Clara got up from the table and ran out ofthe room. The farm hands joined by her father laughed heartily. Her auntshook her finger at Jim Priest, the hero of the occasion. "Why don't youlet her alone?" she asked.

　　"She'll never get married if she stays here where you make fun of everyyoung man who pays her any attention." At the door Clara stopped and,turning, put out her tongue at Jim Priest. Another roar of laughter arose.Chairs were scraped along the floor and the men filed out of the house togo back to the work in the barns and about the farm.

　　In the summer when the change came over her Clara sat at the table and didnot hear the tales told by Jim Priest. She thought the farm hands who ateso greedily were vulgar, a notion she had never had before, and wished shedid not have to eat with them. One afternoon as she lay in the hammock inthe orchard, she heard several of the men in a nearby barn discussing thechange that had come over her. Jim Priest was explaining what had happened."Our fun's over with Clara," he said. "Now we'll have to treat her in a newway. She's no longer a kid. We'll have to let her alone or pretty soon shewon't speak to any of us. It's a thing that happens when a girl begins tothink about being a woman. The sap has begun to run up the tree."

　　The puzzled girl lay in the hammock and looked up at the sky. She thoughtabout Jim Priest's words and tried to understand what he meant. Sadnesscrept over her and tears came into her eyes. Although she did not know whatthe old man meant by the words about the sap and the tree, she did, in adetached subconscious way, understand something of the import of the words,and she was grateful for the thoughtfulness that had led to his telling theothers to stop trying to tease her at the table. The half worn-out old farmhand, with the bristly beard and the strong old body, became a figure fullof significance to her mind. She remembered with gratitude that, in spiteof all of his teasing, Jim Priest had never said anything that had in anyway hurt her. In the new mood that had come upon her that meant much. Agreater hunger for understanding, love, and friendliness took possession ofher. She did not think of turning to her father or to her aunt, with whomshe had never talked of anything intimate or close to herself, but turnedinstead to the crude old man. A hundred minor points in the character ofJim Priest she had never thought of before came sharply into her mind.In the barns he had never mistreated the animals as the other farm handssometimes did. When on Sunday afternoons he was drunk and went staggeringthrough the barns, he did not strike the horses or swear at them. Shewondered if it would be possible for her to talk to Jim Priest, to ask himquestions about life and people and what he meant by his words regardingthe sap and the tree. The farm hand was old and unmarried. She wondered ifin his youth he had ever loved a woman. She decided he had. His words aboutthe sap were, she was sure, in some way connected with the idea of love.How strong his hands were. They were gnarled and rough, but there wassomething beautifully powerful about them. She half wished the old man hadbeen her father. In his youth, in the darkness at night or when he wasalone with a girl, perhaps in a quiet wood in the late afternoon when thesun was going down, he had put his hands on her shoulders. He had drawn thegirl to him. He had kissed her.

　　Clara jumped quickly out of the hammock and walked about under the trees inthe orchard. Her thoughts of Jim Priest's youth startled her. It was asthough she had walked suddenly into a room where a man and woman weremaking love. Her cheeks burned and her hands trembled. As she walked slowlythrough the clumps of grass and weeds that grew between the trees where thesunlight struggled through, bees coming home to the hives heavily ladenwith honey flew in droves about her head. There was something heady andpurposeful about the song of labor that arose out of the beehives. It gotinto her blood and her step quickened. The words of Jim Priest that keptrunning through her mind seemed a part of the same song the bees weresinging. "The sap has begun to run up the tree," she repeated aloud. Howsignificant and strange the words seemed! They were the kind of words alover might use in speaking to his beloved. She had read many novels, butthey contained no such words. It was better so. It was better to hear themfrom human lips. Again she thought of Jim Priest's youth and boldly wishedhe were still young. She told herself that she would like to see him youngand married to a beautiful young woman. She stopped by a fence that lookedout upon a hillside meadow. The sun seemed extraordinarily bright, thegrass in the meadow greener than she had ever seen it before. Two birds ina tree nearby made love to each other. The female flew madly about and waspursued by the male bird. In his eagerness he was so intent that he flewdirectly before the girl's face, his wing nearly touching her cheek. Shewent back through the orchard to the barns and through one of them to theopen door of a long shed that was used for housing wagons and buggies, hermind occupied with the idea of finding Jim Priest, of standing perhaps nearhim. He was not about, but in the open space before the shed, John May, ayoung man of twenty-two who had just come to work on the farm, was oilingthe wheels of a wagon. His back was turned and as he handled the heavywagon wheels the muscles could be seen playing beneath his thin cottonshirt. "It is so Jim Priest must have looked in his youth," the girlthought.

　　The farm girl wanted to approach the young man, to speak to him, to ask himquestions concerning many strange things in life she did not understand.She knew that under no circumstances would she be able to do such a thing,that it was but a meaningless dream that had come into her head, but thedream was sweet. She did not, however, want to talk to John May. At themoment she was in a girlish period of being disgusted at what she thoughtof as the vulgarity of the men who worked on the place. At the table theyate noisily and greedily like hungry animals. She wanted youth that waslike her own youth, crude and uncertain perhaps, but reaching eagerly outinto the unknown. She wanted to draw very near to something young, strong,gentle, insistent, beautiful. When the farm hand looked up and saw herstanding and looking intently at him, she was embarrassed. For a moment thetwo young animals, so unlike each other, stood staring at each other andthen, to relieve her embarrassment, Clara began to play a game. Among themen employed on the farm she had always passed for something of a tomboy.In the hayfields and in the barns she had wrestled and fought playfullywith both the old and the young men. To them she had always been aprivileged person. They liked her and she was the boss's daughter. One didnot get rough with her or say or do rough things. A basket of corn stoodjust within the door of the shed, and running to it Clara took an ear ofthe yellow corn and threw it at the farm hand. It struck a post of the barnjust above his head. Laughing shrilly Clara ran into the shed among thewagons, and the farm hand pursued her.

　　John May was a very determined man. He was the son of a laborer in Bidwelland for two or three years had been employed about the stable of a doctor,something had happened between him and the doctor's wife and he had leftthe place because he had a notion that the doctor was becoming suspicious.The experience had taught him the value of boldness in dealing with women.Ever since he had come to work on the Butterworth farm, he had been havingthoughts regarding the girl who had now, he imagined, given him directchallenge. He was a little amazed by her boldness but did not stop to askhimself questions, she had openly invited him to pursue her. That wasenough. His accustomed awkwardness and clumsiness went away and he leapedlightly over the extended tongues of wagons and buggies. He caught Clarain dark corner of the shed. Without a word he took her tightly into hisarms and kissed her, first upon the neck and then on the mouth. She laytrembling and weak in his arms and he took hold of the collar of her dressand tore it open. Her brown neck and one of her hard, round breasts wereexposed. Clara's eyes grew big with fright. Strength came back into herbody. With her sharp hard little fist she struck John May in the face; andwhen he stepped back she ran quickly out of the shed. John May did notunderstand. He thought she had sought him out once and would return. "She'sa little green. I was too fast. I scared her. Next time I'll go a littleeasy," he thought.

　　Clara ran through the barn and then walked slowly to the house and wentupstairs to her own room. A farm dog followed her up the stairs and stoodat her door wagging his tail. She shut the door in his face. For the momenteverything that lived and breathed seemed to her gross and ugly. Her cheekswere pale and she pulled shut the blinds to the window and sat down on thebed, overcome with the strange new fear of life. She did not want even thesunlight to come into her presence. John May had followed her through thebarn and now stood in the barnyard staring at the house. She could see himthrough the cracks of the blinds and wished it were possible to kill himwith a gesture of her hand.

　　The farm hand, full of male confidence, waited for her to come to thewindow and look down at him. He wondered if there were any one else in thehouse. Perhaps she would beckon to him. Something of the kind had happenedbetween him and the doctor's wife and it had turned out that way. Whenafter five or ten minutes he did not see her, he went back to the work ofoiling the wagon wheels. "It's going to be a slower thing. She's shy, agreen girl," he told himself.

　　One evening a week later Clara sat on the side porch of the house with herfather when John May came into the barnyard. It was a Wednesday evening andthe farm hands were not in the habit of going into town until Saturday, buthe was dressed in his Sunday clothes and had shaved and oiled his hair. Onthe occasion of a wedding or a funeral the laborers put oil in their hair.It was indicative of something very important about to happen. Clara lookedat him, and in spite of the feeling of repugnance that swept over her, hereyes glistened. Ever since the affair in the barn she had managed to avoidmeeting him but she was not afraid. He had in fact taught her something.There was a power within her with which she could conquer men. The touchof her father's shrewdness, that was a part of her nature, had come to herrescue. She wanted to laugh at the silly pretensions of the man, to make afool of him. Her cheeks flushed with pride in her mastery of the situation.

　　John May walked almost to the house and then turned along the path thatled to the road. He made a gesture with his hand and by chance TomButterworth, who had been looking off across the open country towardBidwell, turned and saw both the movement and the leering confident smileon the farm hand's face. He arose and followed John May into the road,astonishment and anger fighting for possession of him. The two men stoodtalking for three minutes in the road before the house and then returned.The farm hand went to the barn and then came back along the path to theroad carrying under his arm a grain bag containing his work clothes. He didnot look up as he went past. The farmer returned to the porch.

　　The misunderstanding that was to wreck the tender relationship that hadbegun to grow up between father and daughter began on that evening. TomButterworth was furious. He muttered and clinched his fists. Clara's heartbeat heavily. For some reason she felt guilty, as though she had beencaught in an intrigue with the man. For a long time her father remainedsilent and then he, like the farm hand, made a furious and brutal attack onher. "Where have you been with that fellow? What you been up to?" he askedharshly.

　　For a time Clara did not answer her father's question. She wanted toscream, to strike him in the face with her fist as she had struck the manin the shed. Then her mind struggled to take hold of the new situation. Thefact that her father had accused her of seeking the thing that had happenedmade her hate John May less heartily. She had some one else to hate.

　　Clara did not think the matter out clearly on that first evening but, afterdenying that she had ever been anywhere with John May, burst into tears andran into the house. In the darkness of her own room she began to think ofher father's words. For some reason she could not understand, the attackmade on her spirit seemed more terrible and unforgivable than the attackupon her body made by the farm hand in the shed. She began to understandvaguely that the young man had been confused by her presence on that warmsunshiny afternoon as she had been confused by the words uttered by JimPriest, by the song of the bees in the orchard, by the love-making of thebirds, and by her own uncertain thoughts. He had been confused and hewas stupid and young. There had been an excuse for his confusion. It wasunderstandable and could be dealt with. She had now no doubt of her ownability to deal with John May. As for her father--it was all right for himto be suspicious regarding the farm hand, but why had he been suspicious ofher?

　　The perplexed girl sat down in the darkness on the edge of the bed, and ahard look came into her eyes. After a time her father came up the stairsand knocked at her door. He did not come in but stood in the hallwayoutside and talked. She remained calm while the conversation lasted, andthat confused the man who had expected to find her in tears. That she wasnot seemed to him an evidence of guilt.

　　Tom Butterworth, in many ways a shrewd, observing man, never understood thequality of his own daughter. He was an intensely possessive man and once,when he was newly married, there had been a suspicion in his mind thatthere was something between his wife and a young man who had worked on thefarm where he then lived. The suspicion was unfounded, but he dischargedthe man and one evening, when his wife had gone into town to do someshopping and did not return at the accustomed time, he followed, and whenhe saw her on the street stepped into a store to avoid a meeting. She wasin trouble. Her horse had become suddenly lame and she had to walk home.Without letting her see him the husband followed along the road. It wasdark and she heard the footsteps in the road behind her and becomingfrightened ran the last half mile to her own house. He waited until shehad entered and then followed her in, pretending he had just come from thebarns. When he heard her story of the accident to the horse and of herfright in the road he was ashamed; but as the horse, that had been left ina livery stable, seemed all right when he went for it the next day hebecame suspicious again.

　　As he stood outside the door of his daughter's room, the farmer felt as hehad felt that evening long before when he followed his wife along the road.When on the porch downstairs he had looked up suddenly and had seen thegesture made by the farm hand, he had also looked quickly at his daughter.She looked confused and, he thought, guilty. "Well, it is the same thingover again," he thought bitterly, "like mother, like daughter--they areboth of the same stripe." Getting quickly out of his chair he had followedthe young man into the road and had discharged him. "Go, to-night. I don'twant to see you on the place again," he said. In the darkness before thegirl's room he thought of many bitter things he wanted to say. He forgotshe was a girl and talked to her as he might have talked to a mature,sophisticated, and guilty woman. "Come," he said, "I want to know thetruth. If you have been with that farm hand you are starting young. Hasanything happened between you?"

　　Clara walked to the door and confronted her father. The hatred of him, bornin that hour and that never left her, gave her strength. She did not knowwhat he was talking about, but had a keen sense of the fact that he, likethe stupid, young man in the shed, was trying to violate something veryprecious in her nature. "I don't know what you are talking about," she saidcalmly, "but I know this. I am no longer a child. Within the last week I'vebecome a woman. If you don't want me in your house, if you don't like meany more, say so and I'll go away."

　　The two people stood in the darkness and tried to look at each other. Clarawas amazed by her own strength and by the words that had come to her. Thewords had clarified something. She felt that if her father would but takeher into his arms or say some kindly understanding word, all could beforgotten. Life could be started over again. In the future she wouldunderstand much that she had not understood. She and her father could drawclose to each other. Tears came into her eyes and a sob trembled in herthroat. As her father, however, did not answer her words and turned to gosilently away, she shut the door with a loud bang and afterward lay awakeall night, white and furious with anger and disappointment.

　　Clara left home to become a college student that fall, but before she lefthad another passage at arms with her father. In August a young man who wasto teach in the town schools came to Bidwell, and she met him at a suppergiven in the basement of the church. He walked home with her and came onthe following Sunday afternoon to call. She introduced the young man, aslender fellow with black hair, brown eyes, and a serious face, to herfather who answered by nodding his head and walking away. She and the youngman walked along a country road and went into a wood. He was five yearsolder than herself and had been to college, but she felt much the older andwiser. The thing that happens to so many women had happened to her. Shefelt older and wiser than all the men she had ever seen. She had decided,as most women finally decide, that there are two kinds of men in the world,those who are kindly, gentle, well-intentioned children, and those who,while they remain children, are obsessed with stupid, male vanity andimagine themselves born to be masters of life. Clara's thoughts on thematter were not very clear. She was young and her thoughts were indefinite.She had, however, been shocked into an acceptance of life and she was madeof the kind of stuff that survives the blows life gives.

　　In the wood with the young school teacher, Clara began an experiment.Evening came on and it grew dark. She knew her father would be furious thatshe did not come home but she did not care. She led the school teacherto talk of love and the relationships of men and women. She pretended aninnocence that was not hers. School girls know many things that they do notapply to themselves until something happens to them such as had happened toClara. The farmer's daughter became conscious. She knew a thousand thingsshe had not known a month before and began to take her revenge upon men fortheir betrayal of her. In the darkness as they walked home together, shetempted the young man into kissing her, and later lay in his arms for twohours, entirely sure of herself, striving to find out, without risk toherself, the things she wanted to know about life.

　　That night she again quarreled with her father. He tried to scold her forremaining out late with a man, and she shut the door in his face. Onanother evening she walked boldly out of the house with the school teacher.The two walked along a road to where a bridge went over a small stream.John May, who was still determined that the farmer's daughter was inlove with him, had on that evening followed the school teacher to theButterworth house and had been waiting outside intending to frighten hisrival with his fists. On the bridge something happened that drove theschool teacher away. John May came up to the two people and began to makethreats. The bridge had just been repaired and a pile of small, sharp-edgedstones lay close at hand. Clara picked one of them up and handed it to theschool teacher. "Hit him," she said. "Don't be afraid. He's only a coward.Hit him on the head with the stone."

　　The three people stood in silence waiting for something to happen. John Maywas disconcerted by Clara's words. He had thought she wanted him to pursueher. He stepped toward the school teacher, who dropped the stone that hadbeen put into his hand and ran away. Clara went back along the road towardher own house followed by the muttering farm hand who, after her speech atthe bridge, did not dare approach. "Maybe she was making a bluff. Maybeshe didn't want that young fellow to get on to what is between us," hemuttered, as he stumbled along in the darkness.

　　In the house Clara sat for a half hour at a table in the lighted livingroom beside her father, pretending to read a book. She half hoped he wouldsay something that would permit her to attack him. When nothing happenedshe went upstairs and to bed, only again to spend the night awake and whitewith anger at the thought of the cruel and unexplainable things life seemedtrying to do to her.

　　In September Clara left the farm to attend the State University atColumbus. She was sent there because Tom Butterworth had a sister who wasmarried to a manufacturer of plows and lived at the State Capital. Afterthe incident with the farm hand and the misunderstanding that had sprungup between himself and his daughter, he was uncomfortable with her in thehouse and was glad to have her away. He did not want to frighten his sisterby telling of what had happened, and when he wrote, tried to be diplomatic."Clara has been too much among the rough men who work on my farms and hadbecome a little rough," he wrote. "Take her in hand. I want her to becomemore of a lady. Get her acquainted with the right kind of people." Insecret he hoped she would meet and marry some young man while she was away.Two of his sisters had gone away to school and it had turned out that way.

　　During the month before his daughter left home the farmer tried to besomewhat more human and gentle in his attitude toward her, but did notsucceed in dispelling the dislike of himself that had taken deep rootin her nature. At table he made jokes at which the farm hands laughedboisterously. Then he looked at his daughter who did not appear to havebeen listening. Clara ate quickly and hurried out of the room. She did notgo to visit her girl friends in town and the young school teacher cameno more to see her. During the long summer afternoons she walked in theorchard among the beehives or climbed over fences and went into a wood,where she sat for hours on a fallen log staring at the trees and the sky.Tom Butterworth also hurried out of his house. He pretended to be busy andevery day drove far and wide over the country. Sometimes he thought he hadbeen brutal and crude in his treatment of his daughter, and decided hewould speak to her regarding the matter and ask her to forgive him. Thenhis suspicion returned. He struck the horse with the whip and drovefuriously along the lonely roads. "Well, there's something wrong," hemuttered aloud. "Men don't just look at women and approach them boldly, asthat young fellow did with Clara. He did it before my very eyes. He's beengiven some encouragement." An old suspicion awoke in him. "There wassomething wrong with her mother, and there's something wrong with her. I'llbe glad when the time comes for her to marry and settle down, so I can gether off my hands," he thought bitterly.

　　On the evening when Clara left the farm to go to the train that was totake her away, her father said he had a headache, a thing he had neverbeen known to complain of before, and told Jim Priest to drive her to thestation. Jim took the girl to the station, saw to the checking of herbaggage, and waited about until her train came in. Then he boldly kissedher on the cheek. "Good-by, little girl," he said gruffly. Clara was sograteful she could not reply. On the train she spent an hour weepingsoftly. The rough gentleness of the old farm hand had done much to take thegrowing bitterness out of her heart. She felt that she was ready to beginlife anew, and wished she had not left the farm without coming to a betterunderstanding with her father.