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 The Honorable Ben had no eyes for them. And if Matt had noticed them as he passed it would only have been to observe the progress of the season by them, as automatically as a city man notes the hour on the street clocks. He was deeply ruminative. He did not look behind him to see whether Ben was following. He did not need to. He had a woodman's ears, and Ben's footsteps rustled and crackled on dead leaves and fallen branches.

The path joined an old wood road that led through a second-growth forest of beech and maple—a forest of gray tree-trunks and green underbrush, where the sunlight was caught in a net of low-hung branches and tossed among entangling leaves. Matt went placidly toward the glimmering streak of water at the end of the vista. Ben followed in a furious silence.

He could hardly have expected a more friendly reception. His relations with his brother had not been friendly—not since their school-days—not since Ben had hired himself to the owner of the Cappsville general store and Matt had remained at home to work his father's farm. When the father died he left the farm to both of them, and Ben had deeded his half of the property to Matt in return for a mortgage on the whole of it. He had taken advantage of Matt's impracticality in order to saddle him with a much larger mortgage than the place was worth, and then he had sold the