“Don’t you go too far,” he menaced with an ugly leer.

“Keep that for your mother,” laughed Kate.  “You need never try a threat with me.  I am stronger than you are, and you may depend upon it I shall see that my strength never fails me again.  I know now that you are all Nancy Ellen said you were.”

“Well, if you married me knowing it, what are you going to do about it?” he sneered.

“I didn’t know it then.  I thought I knew you.  I thought she had been misinformed,” said Kate, in self-defence.

“Well,” he said insultingly, “if you hadn’t been in such a big hurry, you could soon have found out all you wanted to know.  I took advantage of it, but I never did understand your rush.”

“You never will,” said Kate.

Then she arose and went to see if the children had wakened.  All day she was thinking so deeply she would stumble over the chairs in her preoccupation.  George noticed it, and it frightened him.  After supper he came and sat on the porch beside her.

“Kate,” he said, “as usual you are ’making mountains out of mole hills.’  It doesn’t damn a fellow forever to ride or walk, I almost always walk, into town in the evening, to see the papers and have a little visit with the boys.  Work all day in a field is mighty lonesome; a man has got the have a little change.  I don’t deny a glass of beer once in awhile, or a game of cards with the boys occasionally; but if you have lived with me over five years here, and never suspected it before, it can’t be so desperately bad, can it?  Come now, be fair!”

“It’s no difference whether I am fair or unfair,” Kate said, wearily.  “It explains why you simply will not brace up, and be a real man, and do a man’s work in the world, and achieve a man’s success.”

“Who can get anywhere, splitting everything in halves?” he demanded.

“The most successful men in this neighbourhood got their start exactly that way,” she said.

“Ah, well, farming ain’t my job, anyway,” he said.  “I always did hate it.  I always will.  If I could have a little capital to start with, I know a trick that would suit you, and make us independent in no time.”

Kate said no word, and seeing she was not going to, he continued:  “I’ve thought about this till I’ve got it all down fine, and it’s a great scheme; you’ll admit that, even angry as you are.  It is this:  get enough together to build a saw mill on my strip of ravine.  A little damming would make a free water power worth a fortune.  I could hire a good man to run the saw and do the work, and I could take a horse and ride, or drive around among the farmers I know, and buy up timber cheaper than most men could get it.  I could just skin the eyes out of them.”

“Did it ever occur to you that you could do better by being honest?” asked Kate, wearily.

“Aw, well, Smarty! you know I didn’t mean that literally!” he scoffed.  “You know I only meant I could talk, and jolly, and buy at bed-rock prices; I know where to get the timber, and the two best mill men in the country; we are near the railroad; it’s the dandiest scheme that ever struck Walden.  What do you think about it?”