When he had finished, and excused himself to go repair a weak place in

the corral fence, Carley sat silent, wrapped in strange meditation.

Whither had faded the vulgarity and ignominy she had attached to Glenn's

raising of hogs? Gone--like other miasmas of her narrow mind! Partly she

understood him now. She shirked consideration of his sacrifice to his

country. That must wait. But she thought of his work, and the more she

thought the less she wondered.

First he had labored with his hands. What infinite meaning lay unfolding

to her vision! Somewhere out of it all came the conception that man was

intended to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. But there was more

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to it than that. By that toil and sweat, by the friction of horny palms,

by the expansion and contraction of muscle, by the acceleration of

blood, something great and enduring, something physical and spiritual,

came to a man. She understood then why she would have wanted to

surrender herself to a man made manly by toil; she understood how a

woman instinctively leaned toward the protection of a man who had used

his hands--who had strength and red blood and virility who could fight

like the progenitors of the race. Any toil was splendid that served this

end for any man. It all went back to the survival of the fittest.

And suddenly Carley thought of Morrison. He could dance and dangle

attendance upon her, and amuse her--but how would he have acquitted

himself in a moment of peril? She had her doubts. Most assuredly he

could not have beaten down for her a ruffian like Haze Ruff. What then

should be the significance of a man for a woman?

Carley's querying and answering mind reverted to Glenn. He had found

a secret in this seeking for something through the labor of hands. All

development of body must come through exercise of muscles. The virility

of cell in tissue and bone depended upon that. Thus he had found in toil

the pleasure and reward athletes had in their desultory training. But

when a man learned this secret the need of work must become permanent.

Did this explain the law of the Persians that every man was required to

sweat every day?

Carley tried to picture to herself Glenn's attitude of mind when he

had first gone to work here in the West. Resolutely she now denied her

shrinking, cowardly sensitiveness. She would go to the root of this

matter, if she had intelligence enough. Crippled, ruined in health,

wrecked and broken by an inexplicable war, soul-blighted by the

heartless, callous neglect of government and public, on the verge of

madness at the insupportable facts, he had yet been wonderful enough,

true enough to himself and God, to fight for life with the instinct of

a man, to fight for his mind with a noble and unquenchable faith.

Alone indeed he had been alone! And by some miracle beyond the power of

understanding he had found day by day in his painful efforts some hope

and strength to go on. He could not have had any illusions. For Glenn

Kilbourne the health and happiness and success most men held so dear

must have seemed impossible. His slow, daily, tragic, and terrible task

must have been something he owed himself. Not for Carley Burch! She like

all the others had failed him. How Carley shuddered in confession of

that! Not for the country which had used him and cast him off! Carley

divined now, as if by a flash of lightning, the meaning of Glenn's

strange, cold, scornful, and aloof manner when he had encountered young

men of his station, as capable and as strong as he, who had escaped the

service of the army. For him these men did not exist. They were less

than nothing. They had waxed fat on lucrative jobs; they had basked in

the presence of girls whose brothers and lovers were in the trenches

or on the turbulent sea, exposed to the ceaseless dread and almost

ceaseless toil of war. If Glenn's spirit had lifted him to endurance

of war for the sake of others, how then could it fail him in a precious

duty of fidelity to himself? Carley could see him day by day toiling in

his lonely canyon--plodding to his lonely cabin. He had been playing

the game--fighting it out alone as surely he knew his brothers of like

misfortune were fighting.




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