She assented silently, and quickened her steps down the long incline; then, as she stumbled in the darkness, he threw the lantern over upon her side. "If you will lean on me I think I can steady you," he suggested, waiting until she turned and laid her hand upon his arm. "That's better now; go slowly and leave the road to me. How in thunder did you come over it in the pitch dark?"
"I fell several times," she replied, with a little unsteady laugh, "and my feet are oh! so hurt and bruised. Tomorrow I shall go on crutches."
"A bad night's work, then."
"But not so bad as it might have been," she added cheerfully.
"You mean if I had not found you it would have been worse. Well, I'm glad that much good has come out of it. I have spared you a cold—so that goes down to my credit; otherwise—But what difference does it make?" he finished impatiently. "We must have met sooner or later even if I had run across the world instead of merely across a tobacco field. After all, the world is no bigger than a tobacco field, when it comes to destiny."
"To destiny?" she looked up, startled. "Then there are fatalists even among tobacco-growers?"
He met her question with a laugh. "But I wasn't always a tobacco- grower, and there were poets before Homer, who is about the only one I've ever read. It's true I've tried to lose the little education I ever had—that I've done my best to come down to the level of my own cattle; but I'm not an ox, after all, except in strength, and one has plenty of time to think when one works in the field all day. Why, the fancies I've had would positively turn your head."
"Fancies—about what?"
"About life and death and the things one wants and can never get.
I dream dreams and plot unimaginable evil—"
"Not evil," she protested.