"But if they called the truth to you—what then?"
"Doctah, there is no longer any hope for me. God called me and let me cut off all hope, once. I did it, and now, only death can change it."
"If I believe you, you must believe me. We won't talk of it any more. I'm hungry. Your mother was churning up there; let's go and get some buttermilk, and settle the business of the rent. You've run three good furrows and I'll run three more beside them—my first, remember, in all my life. Then we'll plant that strip to sunflowers. Come, Hoyle, tie the mule and follow us."
So David carried his way. They walked merrily back to the house, chattering of his plans and what he would raise. He knew nothing whatever of the sort of crops to be raised, and she was naïvely gay at his expense, a mood he was overjoyed to awaken in her. He vowed that merely to walk over ploughed ground made a man stronger.
On the porch he sat and drank his buttermilk and, placing his paper on the step, drew up a contract for rent. Then Cassandra went to her weaving, and he and Hoyle returned to the field, where with much labor he succeeded in turning three furrows beside Cassandra's, rather crooked and uncertain ones, it is true, but quite as good as hers, as Hoyle reluctantly admitted, which served to give David a higher respect for farmers in general and ploughmen especially.
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH DAVID DISCOVERS CASSANDRA'S TROUBLE
After turning his furrows, David told Hoyle to ride the mule to the stable, then he sat himself on the fence, and meditated. He bethought him that in the paper he had drawn up he had made no provision for the use of the mule. He wiped his forehead and rubbed the perspiration from his hair, and coughed a little after his exertion, glad at heart to find himself so well off.