“It ain’t easy to bear his eyes, Kate.  I lay here and tried at first to smile at him and talk about other things—­but it ain’t easy to bear his eyes.  You take a dog, Kate.  It ain’t supposed to be able to look you in the eye for long; but s’pose you met up with a dog that could.  It’d make you feel sort of queer inside.  Which I felt that way while Dan was lookin’ at me.  Not that he was threatenin’ me.  No, it wasn’t that.  He was only thoughtful, but I kept gettin’ more nervous and more fidgety.  I felt after a while like I couldn’t stand it.  I had to crawl out of bed and begin walkin’ up and down till I got quieter.  But I seen that wouldn’t do.

“Then I begun to think.  I thought of near everything in a little while.  I thought of what would happen s’pose Dan should stay here.  Maybe you and him would get to like each other again.  Maybe you’d get married.  Then what would happen?

“I thought of the wild geese flyin’ north in the spring o’ the year and the wild geese flyin’ south in the fall o’ the year.  And I thought of Dan with his heart followin’ the wild geese—­God knows why!—­and I seen a picture of him standin’ and watchin’ them, with you nearby and not able to get one look out of him.  I seen that, and it made my blood chilly, like the air on a frosty night.

“Kate, they’s something like the power of prophecy that comes to a dyin’ man!”

“Dad!” she cried.  “What are you saying?”

She slipped to her knees beside the bed and drew his cold hands towards her, but Joe Cumberland shook his head and mildly drew one hand away.  He raised it, with extended forefinger—­a sign of infinite warning; and with the glow of the lamp full upon his face, the eyes were pits of shadow with stirring orbs of fire in the depths.

“No, I ain’t dead now,” he said, “but I ain’t far away from it.  Maybe days, maybe weeks, maybe whole months.  But I’ve passed the top of the hill, and I know I’m ridin’ down the slope.  Pretty soon I’ll finish the trail.  But what little time I’ve got left is worth more’n everything that went before.  I can see my life behind me and the things before like a cold mornin’ light was over it all—­you know before the sun begins to beat up the waves of heat and the mist gets tanglin’ in front of your eyes?  You know when you can look right across a thirty mile valley and name the trees, a’most the other side?  That’s the way I can see now.  They ain’t no feelin’ about it.  My body is all plumb paralyzed.  I jest see and know—­that’s all.

“And what I see of you and Dan—­if you ever marry—­is plain—­hell!  Love ain’t the only thing they is between a man and a woman.  They’s something else.  I dunno what it is.  But it’s a sort of a common purpose; it’s havin’ both pairs of feet steppin’ out on the same path.  That’s what it is.  But your trail would go one way and Dan’s would go another, and pretty soon your love wouldn’t be nothin’ but a big wind blowin’ between two mountains—­and all it would do would be to freeze up the blood in your hearts.”