"Seth Lawson," they explained to some newcomers. "He's got a place at last. Drivin' the baggage wagon from Burgin to Harrodsburg and back again."
Tom Grums, the grocer, puffed a few whiffs of his pipe.
"That's the man," he explained succinctly, "whut was goin' to conquer the West. That's the man whut said he was goin' to build the Magic City at the forks of two rivahs wheah the wind didn't blow."
By and by, when he had unhitched and fed his horse Seth came down the street, passed the whittlers of the little sticks and went on up the Lexington Pike to his home and Celia's.
He walked laggingly. There was something that he must tell Celia and he was afraid. It was impossible for him to keep the place.
He was not young enough. He was not sufficiently nimble. They wanted a younger man, they told him, to lift the trunks. He had been months getting the place and now he had lost it. He had lost it within a week.
He walked slowly through the hall to the kitchen where Celia stood at the old stove, cooking their supper. He sat by the window presently, watching her.
No. He wouldn't tell her. He could not. He hadn't the courage to face the scorn of her eye, to face the cold steely blue of it.
He ate the supper she set silently before him slowly. It had the taste to sawdust.
After supper he went out on the porch awhile and sat looking into the dusk, looking over the fine soft green of the dim grass on the opposite lawns, his mind going back to the scorched and parched grasses of the prairie.