For a time—­how long I do not know—­I stood thinking.  Presently I discovered, moving slowly along the margin of the field below me, the old professor with his tin botany box.  And somehow I had no feeling that he was intruding upon my new land.  His walk was slow and methodical, his head and even his shoulders were bent—­almost habitually—­from looking close upon the earth, and from time to time he stooped, and once he knelt to examine some object that attracted his eye.  It seemed appropriate that he should thus kneel to the earth.  So he gathered his crop and fences did not keep him out nor titles disturb him.  He also was free!  It gave me at that moment a peculiar pleasure to have him on my land, to know that I was, if unconsciously, raising other crops than I knew.  I felt friendship for this old professor:  I could understand him, I thought.  And I said aloud but in a low tone, as though I were addressing him: 

—­Do not apologise, friend, when you come into my field.  You do not interrupt me.  What you have come for is of more importance at this moment than corn.  Who is it that says I must plow so many furrows this day?  Come in, friend, and sit here on these clods:  we will sweeten the evening with fine words.  We will invest our time not in corn, or in cash, but in life.—­

I walked with confidence down the hill toward the professor.  So engrossed was he with his employment that he did not see me until I was within a few paces of him.  When he looked up at me it was as though his eyes returned from some far journey.  I felt at first out of focus, unplaced, and only gradually coming into view.  In his hand he held a lump of earth containing a thrifty young plant of the purple cone-flower, having several blossoms.  He worked at the lump deftly, delicately, so that the earth, pinched, powdered and shaken out, fell between his fingers, leaving the knotty yellow roots in his hand.  I marked how firm, slow, brown, the old man was, how little obtrusive in my field.  One foot rested in a furrow, the other was set among the grass of the margin, near the fence—­his place, I thought.

His first words, though of little moment in themselves, gave me a curious satisfaction, as when a coin, tested, rings true gold, or a hero, tried, is heroic.

“I have rarely,” he said, “seen a finer display of rudbeckia than this, along these old fences.”

If he had referred to me, or questioned, or apologised, I should have been disappointed.  He did not say, “your fences,” he said “these fences,” as though they were as much his as mine.  And he spoke in his own world, knowing that if I could enter I would, but that if I could not, no stooping to me would avail either of us.

“It has been a good autumn for flowers,” I said inanely, for so many things were flying through my mind that I could not at once think of the great particular words which should bring us together.  At first I thought my chance had passed, but he seemed to see something in me after all, for he said: