As half-consciously and dreamily he gazed up, between sleeping and waking, the life of the tree became for him that of a world in miniature.
But when he heard the door guardedly open and close, he would turn his gaze from that direction as from a minor to a major delight—for then he knew that on the other side of the bed would be the face of Dorothy Harper. "Right smart's goin' ter deepend on how hard he fights hisself," Uncle Jase told Dorothy one day as he took up his hat and saddle-bags. "I reckon ef he feels sartin he's got enough ter live fer—he kin kinderly holp nature along right lavish."
That same day Maggard opened his eyes while the girl was sitting by his bedside.
His smile was less dazzling out of a thin, white face, than it had been through the tan of health, but such as it was he flashed it on her gallantly.
"I don't hone fer nothin' else ter look at—when you're hyar," he assured her. "But when you hain't hyar I loves ter look at ther old tree."
"Ther old tree," she replied after him, half guiltily; "I've been so worrited, I'd nigh fergot hit."
His smile altered to a steady-eyed seriousness in which, too, she recognized the intangible quality that made him seem to her different from all the other men she had known.
He had been born and lived much as had the men about him. He had been chained to the same hard and dour materialism as they, yet for him life had another essence and dimension, because he had been born with a soul capable of dreams.
"Thet fust night—when I lay a-waitin' fer ye ter come back—an' misdoubtin' whether I'd last thet long," he told her almost under his breath, "seemed like ter me thet old tree war kinderly a-safeguardin' me."
She bent closer and her lips trembled.