“Over to Wilbur’s Fork. There’s a couple of men over there that are shaky. I’ve had to keep after them or they’d be listening to Rafe Gadbeau and letting their land go.”
“But,” Ruth exclaimed, “now when they know, can’t they see what is to their own interest! Are they blind?”
“I know,” said Jeffrey dully. “But you know 76 how it is with those people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to scratch and scrape for a little money. They don’t see many dollars together from one year’s end to the other. Even a little money, ready, green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them.”
“Good luck, then, Jeff,” she said cheerily; “and get back early if you can.”
“Sure,” he said easily as he picked up his hat.
“And, say, Ruth.” He turned back quietly to her. “If––if I shouldn’t be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I wouldn’t say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he’s not very sharp sometimes. Will you?”
“Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please.”
“Oh, sure,” he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other side.
Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth.
This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had seen it in his face and his talk. 77 He was fighting with a power that he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged struggle.