"I hate him," I said. "Whatever happens, he will never get his money that way. But, oh, isn't it horrible to think that father should owe money to such a man! Is there no way in which he could be paid off now—at once?"
"Not any that I can see," said Harrod, sadly.
"Won't there be any money coming in for the hops?" I asked again, eagerly.
"Oh, if the season had been good for the hops!" echoed Harrod. And then he stopped short.
I did not ask any more, but I understood a great deal in that short sentence, and when I thought over all that he had said, I understood more still: that perhaps he had guessed long ago, when he first came, in what position father then stood; that perhaps he had even advised the hop speculation as a last chance, having as I knew he had, special facilities for disposing of a good crop. He had worked for us, he had our interests at heart, but the task that he had undertaken had been harder than he had guessed; knowing him as I did, I knew how very, very bitter must be to him the sense of failure. His work: that was the first thing with him, and he had failed in it.
"If it hadn't been for you, things would be much worse than they are," said I at last, full of a really simple and unselfish sympathy. "You have done a great deal for the farm."
"It might have been of some use if the circumstances had been different," said he, half testily. "As it is, I have done no good, no good at all. But that's neither here nor there. The thing is what to do now."
"Must something be done at once?" I asked, anxiously.
"Yes," answered he, briefly, "at once."
I was silent, looking out over the plain. The last of the daylight was dead; the moon fled in and out among the clouds that swept, swift and soft, over the blue of the deep night sky, on whose bosom she lay cradled sometimes as in a silver skiff, but that again would cross her face with ugly scars or hide her quite from sight—a murky veil that even her rich radiance could only inform with brightness as a memory upon the hem of it. The marsh always looked wider and more mysterious than ever under such a sky as that, until no one could have told where the land ended and sea began; it was all one vast, dim ocean—billows of land and billows of water were all one.