heard one of the horses forward lie down in its stall. Then he got his Bible from the shelf on which stood also a small black clock, surmounted by the gilded figure of an angel with a horn. The angel was drawn up to his full height, and the arm carrying the trumpet was slightly flexed, as though the impulse to blow had just possessed his mind.

At times at night, when he heard the clock striking through his sleep, Andrew would jump up suddenly in his bunk, knocking his head against the beams above it, with a cold sweat on him, and a dream of the Last Judgment ringing out of his brain.

Now, as he sat down with his Bible, he let it fall open on his knee, and dropped the index finger of his right hand haphazard on the page after the manner of the superstitiously religious. The passage he thus chanced upon was new to his reading.

15. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

16. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel.

And at the word the clock behind Andrew rang the half hour. He turned swiftly on his chair- but the angel still stood in his accustomed attitude, with the impulse to blow written in the curve of his arm, still waiting the word.

When he dropped his eyes to the page again, he saw that in his start he had lost the place; but he was vaguely thrilled by the words of the last verse he had read-of the shout, of the voice of the archangel. Somewhere he felt in them the presence of a personal truth, too indefinable to be detected by one of his slow mind. He sat brooding, the Bible closed upon his knees,

his hands, half clenched, hanging by the seat of the chair.

He was brought to himself by a knock on the door. It opened to admit a man carrying a package.

'Banton's,' said the man, mouthing a cigar. 'Package collect for Glenn. You him?'

'Eanh,' said Andrew. 'What is it?' 'How should I know? I've got trouble enough looking up this sty so late a Saturday.'

'You don't want to sniff at any sty you're into,' said Andrew, slowly. 'You're kind of likely to get butchered.'

'All right,' said the man, with a tentative approach toward jocularity in his tone.

'How much?"

The man named eight dollars, which Andrew paid.

'Give me a receipt,' said Andrew. The man pulled a notebook from his pocket and tore off a page. ‘Glenn. . . . Glenn?' 'Andrew.'

'All right.'

He went out on deck and down the gang.

'Here, pig! pig! pig!' he called from the dock; and the next instant his heels thumped rapidly away on the boards.

Hardly had the sound died out than Andrew heard a high unmusical whistle coming down the street. It reminded him of the squeak of a knife-grinder's barrow. Methodically he folded the receipt and placed it between the pages of the Bible, which he returned to its proper position on the shelf. He went out on deck and sat down facing his shadow outside of the cabin door. Black driven clouds scuttled across a half moon high over the valley from north to south; but on the canal there was no wind.

The whistle approached tortuously in tone and volume, and between the

notes halting footsteps became audible. At length a small figure of a man, surmounted by a large pack which gave him the appearance of an immense humpback, rose out of the darkness by the boat side.

'Hullo, Andrew,' said a high voice.
"That you, Harvey?'
‘Eanh.

'Come aboard a spell.'

The little man toiled up the gang and plunked his pack down at Andrew's feet.

'Just packed up,' he said. 'Aiming to work through the Watertown road.'

Harvey Cannywhacker was one of the cigar peddlers who used to haunt the canal and the surrounding country. They moved from town to town, rolling cigars according to demand; they were met on back roads and the trails leading into the lumber camps; they toiled along miles of towpath, sleeping in lock-tenders' shanties or appearing out of the dark beside boats tied up for the night. They went everywhere, knew everyone, saw everything, the bag upon their backs a badge of privilege.

'Been up to Lucy Cashdollar's. She said you'd got a cook.'

Eanh.

'Any good?'

'I don't know,' said Andrew.

'I seen Steve and her going into Mechanics' Hall,' said Harvey. 'He looked like he was making a set at her. She's a good-looker.'

Harvey slipped the palms of his hands outward along his knees, as though he were rolling a cigar, and he murmured under his breath his selling chant, 'One for a penny, a penny for one; built right and rolled tight; and warranted to drawr.'

'Ah,' he said aloud after a moment. "I knowed her back Port Leyden way. Her family was a great one with cows. She's a good hand for dairyin'.

'I been there. But it ain't no land for a little man like me.'

'I got money saved up,' Andrew said after a while. 'But I had n't ought to leave Steve. He would n't come.'

'He'd leave you if he wanted,' said Harvey.

'I had n't ought to leave him.' They listened awhile to the water wash.

two sides of a question and drifted between them until circumstances reared one of them to actuality. All his life he had hungered after a fat land; and all his life he had hung on to the bare living of his little farm by Boonville. Now that he had sold it, he had only a vague idea of how the sale had come about. Someone had offered him more than the farm was really worth.

'Who? Who'd I marry?'

'Marry your cook take her out to Ohio with you. She's good for dairyin'. I knew her Port Leyden way. I knew her folks.'

'Steve wants her,' said Andrew. 'What's he done for you?' Harvey got up from the deck and swung his pack on to his shoulders.

'Maybe I'll see you on the feeder. I aim to cut across Potato Hill and come down Delta way.'

opportunity of laying by a little money; his mother had left him a little money which he had refused to touch; his neighbors called him miserly. The boat had come as part payment for the farm; so now he was boating. That was all there was to it.

He got up and went back into the cabin and took off his shoes. His glance fell upon the package that had come earlier in the evening; but he did not open it.

May had fashioned a sort of partition

In the cabin behind Andrew the clock struck the hour, and he started again the words of the verses he had read coming back to him.

'Go west,' Harvey had said. 'It's a long, flat country. You was built for that land.'

The earth was heavy against a plough out there - his big hands itched for the helves. He had always wanted to go where he could raise heavy cattle.

But there was the question of Stephen. He had spent a life alone. until he had come across Stephen; he could not leave him now.

Hunched forward, with his hands hanging over his knees, Andrew muddled over his problem. His years of loneliness had unsuited him for discerning his own wishes; his mind was dozing; he ruminated moodily, but he seldom thought—rather he accepted

Andrew stretched out, with his arms under his head, scowling at the chink of light the lowered lamp cast over the curtains. The clock struck eleven in the cabin. May and Stephen were later than he had expected; or, seeing that it was Stephen, he might have expected it after all. . . . A man ought to marry, Harvey had said. . . . He heard the clock strike the half hour again, and he dozed.

He did not hear them when they came in a little later. They did not speak for a moment; but he saw their shadows make a single silhouette against the curtains. Then May's voice broke out, and Stephen warned her not to wake Andrew. They both laughed, quietly, a little awkwardly.

For a while each turned on the bunk on either side of Andrew; but his even breathing was undisturbed.

The wind rose and riffled the water against the stern of the Eastern Belle, and the clock struck midnight, and finally the three slept.

VI

They pulled out from the weighlock at six o'clock. Behind them the keeper of the lock stared sleepily at their wake and held the shuddering tails of his nightshirt down about his legs. A heavy mist lay on the water, which looked black along the quays and reflected the lower parts of boats, the decks of which remained invisible. Shadows in the whiteness marked the entrances to streets. A delicious stillness hovered round them, imparting ghostliness to the smooth glide of the boat. It seemed to May upon the cabin deck that the world slipped by beneath them while they hung quiet as a cloud in a noonday sky. Only the plodding heave of the black team ahead and Andrew's long stride connected them with earth.

As the horses moved out on to the open towpath, a breeze from the hills brought them the smell of meadows; trees rose up beside them now and then with a whispering of leaves and restless shapes. Looking behind her, May saw the lower houses appearing here and there, and a dull gold gleam on the water; but the mist still clung to the crest of the city. While she watched, she heard a stir upon the air; and the high crown of mist was filled with the sound of church bells ringing early Mass. A cow floundered out of a swale alongside the towpath, her big head glistening, a pocket of denser mist loitering about her horns. Cowbells echoed faintly from the hills; a dog barked; and a rooster crowed away off on her left. And all at once the glow on the water shot swiftly after the Eastern Belle and fell about May's face; and as

the mist lifted suddenly she saw that the sun was risen.

A little below her, on the small deck left for the steersman, Stephen stood, his brown shirt open over his chest, showing the smooth brown skin. He gave her his quick smile suddenly and cast a half-humorous glance ahead of them to where Andrew walked beside the black horses, hat in hand, with the new sunlight on his yellow hair.

'He says he's been telling you you been extravagant with them curtains and all.'

'Eanh,' said May with a slow smile. 'He'll probably give you some more talk every week. He was born kind of miserly; he can't help it.'

He spoke with the consciousness of his own liberality strong upon him; he forgot that the preceding night's entertainment had been borrowed.

'He's a kind of a sod,' Stephen said. 'He likes to set quiet and let his roots grow down close. I'll bet he set here on the boat all last night.'

May also glanced amusedly at Andrew and then looked back at Stephen, and they both laughed. Andrew heard them, for his head lifted quickly, but he walked on without turning.

"There's a package downstairs from Banton's,' said Stephen. 'I got it yesterday; it's for you. You'd better go and open it.'

She opened her eyes wide.
'For me?'

He laughed again.
'You better go see.'

She went into the cabin and sat down opposite the package. Her previous evening with Stephen had been a new experience to her. The crowded hall, the brilliance of the lanterns on the stage, the subdued murmuring of the crowd, at first had frightened her by their newness. But as she glanced round she perceived that Stephen was as handsome as any escort in the

assemblage; when he leaned close to her to whisper some remark, he looked almost beautiful; the reflection of the stage lighting just lit his soft eyes. Then she saw that men watched her as she moved, and it came upon her that she suited his looks; that the pair of them could match with any pair about them. Contrary to Stephen's expectation, instead of making her dependent on him, the experience gave her native hardiness a sudden perspective and she found a reliance in her own judgment. She was fond of him already, he could see that; but she was not carried away. She had let him kiss her on their return, several times; and she had responded with a warmth she had never divined in herself; but at that point she had stopped him. Though she appreciated his beauty, it did not dominate her. Instead of her fearing him, her feeling was one of almost contemptuous friendliness. He might take liberties with her, but he could not claim her. It was in this mood that she opened the package and unwrapped the nasturtium china set she coveted. A wave of pleasure swept her as the sun picked out the bright reds and greens and yellows against the white. She ranged the pieces on the table to admire their lines. There was a commodiousness about the belly of the teapot which transmitted through her hand, as she wiped away the shop dust, a comforting sense of establishment. She held it up in both hands and then poured herself imaginary tea into one of the cups. Her knowledge of china was limited to the ancestral assortment of odds and ends common to farmers' houses. An entire set dazed her. She raised the empty cup to her lips.

Then she ran out on deck to thank Stephen. He held her with one arm, and in her delight she almost granted him the efficacy of his bribe, for she read it as such in his eyes.

"There's hardly room for all of it,' she said.

'It ought to go into the cupboard.' "The teapot won't.'

'Set it out by the clock.'

'But there's only room for Andrew's Bible there.'

'Set it somewheres else,' he said.

She had longed for permission. She wanted the pot where she could see it continually. But as she turned to go down her eyes fell upon Andrew walking beside the team with his deliberate tread. The sight sobered her.

Andrew frightened her. Her instinct made her aware of a possible upheaval of his phlegmatic nature which would overwhelm her woman's nice sense of balance. Stephen was balance. Stephen was more easily understood, his purpose being readable and reducing all consideration of him in a woman's mind to the power of his beauty. Beyond his size and yellow hair, Andrew possessed no striking features; beside Stephen he resembled a somnolent great forest tree, unaffected by the surface breezes shivering the sapling, but terrible in the high winds. His blue eyes were not cold, but cool from lack of decision. His heavy face remained immobile, even in a fight, and was lighted only by a petty astuteness in money matters. She had had evidence of that already; he would give her no freedom. But at least she had a china set.

She placed the dishes in the cupboard, after hiding the former tin ones on a small shelf behind the stove, until she came to the teapot. This, as she had foreseen, would not fit in the cupboard, so she turned to the clock shelf. Andrew's Bible was one of the large leather varieties, blooming with manycolored prints; there was no chance of wedging the teapot between it and the clock. She took it down, and her shoulder sagged as she felt the weight. The pages opened slightly to let a slip