And that was all!  I should have been thankful for one word more, even had it shot me through the heart, as mine did him.  But he did not speak it; and, after a few moments, with one accord, we set to work again, repairing the stone fence.  Hollingsworth, I observed, wrought like a Titan; and, for my own part, I lifted stones which at this day—­or, in a calmer mood, at that one—­I should no more have thought it possible to stir than to carry off the gates of Gaza on my back.

XVI.  LEAVE-TAKINGS

A few days after the tragic passage-at-arms between Hollingsworth and me, I appeared at the dinner-table actually dressed in a coat, instead of my customary blouse; with a satin cravat, too, a white vest, and several other things that made me seem strange and outlandish to myself.  As for my companions, this unwonted spectacle caused a great stir upon the wooden benches that bordered either side of our homely board.

“What’s in the wind now, Miles?” asked one of them.  “Are you deserting us?”

“Yes, for a week or two,” said I.  “It strikes me that my health demands a little relaxation of labor, and a short visit to the seaside, during the dog-days.”

“You look like it!” grumbled Silas Foster, not greatly pleased with the idea of losing an efficient laborer before the stress of the season was well over.  “Now, here’s a pretty fellow!  His shoulders have broadened a matter of six inches since he came among us; he can do his day’s work, if he likes, with any man or ox on the farm; and yet he talks about going to the seashore for his health!  Well, well, old woman,” added he to his wife, “let me have a plateful of that pork and cabbage!  I begin to feel in a very weakly way.  When the others have had their turn, you and I will take a jaunt to Newport or Saratoga!”

“Well, but, Mr. Foster,” said I, “you must allow me to take a little breath.”

“Breath!” retorted the old yeoman.  “Your lungs have the play of a pair of blacksmith’s bellows already.  What on earth do you want more?  But go along!  I understand the business.  We shall never see your face here again.  Here ends the reformation of the world, so far as Miles Coverdale has a hand in it!”

“By no means,” I replied.  “I am resolute to die in the last ditch, for the good of the cause.”

“Die in a ditch!” muttered gruff Silas, with genuine Yankee intolerance of any intermission of toil, except on Sunday, the Fourth of July, the autumnal cattle-show, Thanksgiving, or the annual Fast,—­ “die in a ditch!  I believe, in my conscience, you would, if there were no steadier means than your own labor to keep you out of it!”

The truth was, that an intolerable discontent and irksomeness had come over me.  Blithedale was no longer what it had been.  Everything was suddenly faded.  The sunburnt and arid aspect of our woods and pastures, beneath the August sky, did but imperfectly symbolize the lack of dew and moisture, that, since yesterday, as it were, had blighted my fields of thought, and penetrated to the innermost and shadiest of my contemplative