“Jim!” his wife’s voice called from the back door.
“Yeoup!” he shouted back, and then sang on:
“‘—excludes the night,
An’ pleasures banish pain.
“‘There everlastin’ spring abides,’”
“Oh, Jim!”
“Yeoup!” he shouted, as the call came the second time. “Whatch y’ want?”
“Come here!”
“All right—
“‘An’ never-with’rin’ flowers;
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This heavenly land from ours.’”
Rankin stooped in the anguish of a fat man, and gathered up an armful of the kindlings he had been splitting, and started toward the house. As he stamped up the steps into the kitchen, he sang on: