“Take no thought of the morrow, Mitchell,” said Peter, abstractedly. “I beg your pardon, Mitchell. I mean——”
“That’s all right, Peter,” said Mitchell. “You’re right; to-morrow is the past, as far as I’m concerned.”
Peter blinked down at him as if he were a new species.
“You’re an odd young man, Mitchell,” he said. “You’ll have to take care of that head of yours or you’ll be found hanging by a saddle-strap to a leaning tree on a lonely track, or find yourself in a lunatic asylum before you’re forty-five.”
“Or else I’ll be a great man,” said Mitchell. “But—ah, well!”
Peter turned his eyes to the fire and smiled sadly. “Not enjoyment and not sorrow, is our destined end or way,” he repeated to the fire.
“But we get there just the same,” said Mitchell, “destined or not.”
But to live, that each to-morrow,
Finds us further than to-day!
“Why, that just fits my life, Peter,” said Mitchell. “I might have to tramp two or three hundred miles before I get a cut[[3]] or a job, and if to-morrow didn’t find me nearer than to-day I’d starve or die of thirst on a dry stretch.”
[3] Cut—a pen or “stand” in a shearing shed.