"I guess he is. Husk more corn'n any man he c'n hire."
In the edge of the village they passed an open lot on the left, marked with circus-rings of different eras.
"There's the old ball-ground. Do they have circuses on it just the same as ever?"
"Just the same."
"What fun that field calls up! The games of ball we used to have! Do you play yet?"
"Sometimes. Can't stoop as well as I used to." He smiled a little. "Too much fat."
It all swept back upon Howard in a flood of names and faces and sights and sounds; something sweet and stirring somehow, though it had little of æsthetic charms at the time. They were passing along lanes now, between superb fields of corn, wherein ploughmen were at work. Kingbirds flew from post to post ahead of them; the insects called from the grass. The valley slowly outspread below them. The workmen in the fields were "turning out" for the night. They all had a word of chaff with McTurg.
Over the western wall of the circling amphitheatre the sun was setting. A few scattering clouds were drifting on the west wind, their shadows sliding down the green and purpled slopes. The dazzling sunlight flamed along the luscious velvety grass, and shot amid the rounded, distant purple peaks, and streamed in bars of gold and crimson across the blue mist of the narrower upper Coollies.
The heart of the young man swelled with pleasure almost like pain, and the eyes of the silent older man took on a far-off, dreaming look, as he gazed at the scene which had repeated itself a thousand times in his life, but of whose beauty he never spoke.
Far down to the left was the break in the wall through which the river ran on its way to join the Mississippi. They climbed slowly among the hills, and the valley they had left grew still more beautiful as the squalor of the little town was hid by the dusk of distance. Both men were silent for a long time. Howard knew the peculiarities of his companion too well to make any remarks or ask any questions, and besides it was a genuine pleasure to ride with one who understood that silence was the only speech amid such splendors.