"I spent my first summer as a farmer in a tent yonder, and in several ways it was the happiest one I've ever known. I couldn't cook, and as a rule when I unyoked my oxen after the day's work I was too played out to light a fire. I lived on messes that would probably kill me now, and my clothes went to bits before the summer was half-way through, but I was bubbling over with aspirations and a whole-hearted optimism then. I had scarcely a dollar, but I had what seemed better—an unwavering belief in the future. It was just as good then to lie down, healthily tired, and listen to the little leaves whispering in the cool of the dusk as it was to get up with the dawn without a care, fit and ready for what must be done."
"Oh, yes," assented Thorne, "I know. They never cast a stove in a foundry that would give you the same warmth as the red fire in the birch bluff, and the finest tea that goes to Russia wouldn't taste as good as what you drink flavored with wood smoke out of a blackened can. Then there's the empty prairie with the long trail leading on to something you feel will be better still beyond the horizon. Silence, space, liberty. How they get hold of you!"
"Then, what do you expect instead of them when you give them up?"
"It strikes me that you should be able to tell me."
Hunter smiled in a rather weary fashion and glanced back toward his house.
"Well," he said, "I've a place that's generally supposed to be the smartest one within sixty miles, and some status in the country, whatever it may be worth—my wife sees to that. The Grits would make me a leader if I cared for politics."
"Then why don't you? Your wife would like it."
"I think you ought to know. We both escaped from the cities, and while you drive your wagon I follow the plow. Men like you and I have nothing to do with wire-pullers' tricks, juggling committees, and shouting crowds. It's my part to make a little more wheat grow."
Thorne looked at him with a thoughtful face.
"I wonder," he said, "why you want to prevent me from doing the same?"