Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/46



EORGE, hurrying homeward, knew well that he had banked away another huge purpose in his life, yet as he sped on his way his new purpose seemed somehow to belong entirely to tomorrow. Today became once more ominously imminent. For two hours or more he had forgotten time. Now he was painfully conscious of it. The cabbage patch bulked like a mountain; it stretched like a moral morass in which he saw himself struggling.

An unexplained fear forced him to hurry. Something made him sick with a vague, illdefined unescapable apprehension of impending calamity. He attributed this to mere guilty conscience.

Six o'clock and his father would be at home—grim and uncompromising when he found the spading but half-completed. To save time, the lad angled across lots, darting behind Flannigan's diminutive barn and making a dash for the Judson garden. But as he gained the fence on one side of it, something halted him.

There was an unusual stir around that loved little home. He thought he heard a cry of