SHE had walked up the railroad track with Hugh, this Sunday afternoon.
She saw Erik Valborg coming, in an ancient highwater suit, tramping sullenly¹ and alone, striking at the rails with a stick. For a second she unreasoningly wanted to avoid him, but she kept on, and she serenely² talked about God, whose voice, Hugh asserted, made the humming in the telegraph wires. Erik stared, straightened. They greeted each other with “Hello.”
“Hugh, say how-do-you-do to Mr. Valborg.”
“Oh, dear me, he’s got a button unbuttoned,” worried Erik, kneeling. Carol frowned, then noted⁴ the strength with which he swung the baby in the air.
“May I walk along a piece with you?”
“I’m tired. Let’s rest on those ties. Then I must be trotting⁵ back.”
They sat on a heap of discarded railroad ties, oak logs spotted⁶ with cinnamon-colored dry-rot and marked with metallic⁷ brown streaks⁸ where iron plates had rested. Hugh learned that the pile was the hiding-place of Injuns; he went gunning for them while the elders talked of uninteresting things.
The telegraph wires thrummed, thrummed, thrummed above them; the rails were glaring hard lines; the goldenrod smelled dusty. Across the track was a pasture of dwarf⁹ clover and sparse¹⁰ lawn cut by earthy cow-paths; beyond its placid¹¹ narrow green, the rough immensity of new stubble, jagged with wheat- stacks like huge pineapples.
Erik talked of books; flamed like a recent convert to any faith. He exhibited as many titles and authors as possible, halting only to appeal, “Have you read his last book? Don’t you think he’s a terribly strong writer?”

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