Some hours may have passed as he lay there, and sleep came; for I fancy it was a dream that brought the final sharp thought into his brain. He dragged himself up on one elbow, the old queer smile on his lips.
"I will try," he said.
It took him some time to make his way out into the main road, but he did it at last, straightening his wet hair under the old cap.
"It's so like a dog to die that way! I'll try, just once, how the world looks when I face it."
He sat down outside of a blacksmith's forge, the only building in sight, on the pump-trough, and looked wearily about. His head fell now and then on his breast from weakness.
"It won't be a very long trial. I'll not beg for food, and I'm not equal to much work just now,"—with the same grim half-smile.
No one was in sight but the blacksmith and some crony, looking over a newspaper. Inside. They nodded, when they saw him, and said,—
"Hillo!"
"Hillo!" said Yarrow.
Then they went on with their paper. That was the only sound for a long time. Some farmers passed after a while, giving him good-morning, in country-fashion. A trifle, but it was warm, heartsome: he had put the world on trial, you know, and he was not very far from death. Men more soured than Yarrow have been surprised to find it was God's world, with God's own heart, warm and kindly, speaking through every human heart in it, if they touched them right. About noon, the blacksmith's children brought him his dinner in a tin bucket, leaving it inside. When they came out, one freckled baby-girl came up to Yarrow.