"I'd like ter see the way he'd fix up Sheby," said Mis' Doty. "He'd hev her dressed in silks an' satins--an' diamond earrings soon as look." "Ye'll hev to go ter Washin'ton City sure enough, Tom," was the remark made oftenest. "When do ye 'low to start?" But Tom was not as intoxicated by the prospect as the rest of them. His demeanour was thoughtful and unexhilarated. "Whar do ye 'low to build yer house when ye come into yer money, Tom?" he was asked, gravely. "Shall ye hev a cupoly? Whar'll ye buy yer land?" The instinct of Hamlin County tended towards expressing any sense of opulence by increasing the size of the house it lived in, or by building a new one, and invariably by purchasing land. Nobody had ever become rich in the neighbourhood, but no imagination would have found it possible to extend its efforts beyond a certain distance from the Cross-roads. The point of view was wholly primitive and patriarchal. Big Tom was conscious that he had become primitive and patriarchal also, though the truth was that he had always been primitive. As he sat on the embowered porch of his house in the evening and thought things over, while the two young voices murmured near him, his reflections were not greatly joyful. The years he had spent closed in by the mountains and surrounded by his simple neighbours had been full of peace. Since Sheba had belonged to him they had even held more than peace. The end had been that the lonely unhappiness of his youth had seemed a thing so far away that it was rather like a dream. Only Delia Vanuxem was not quite like a dream. Her pitying girlish face and the liquid darkness of her uplifted eyes always came back to him clearly when he called them up in thought. He called them up often during these days in which he was pondering as to what it was best to decide to do. "It's the boy who brings her back so," he told himself. "Good Lord, how near she seems! The grass has been growing over her for many a year, and I'm an old fellow, but she looks just as she did then." The world beyond the mountains did not allure him. It was easier to sit and see the sun rise and set within the purple boundary than to face life where it was less simple, and perhaps less kindly. It was from a much less advanced and concentrated civilisation he had fled in his youth, and the years which had passed had not made him more fitted to combat with what was more complex. "Trading for butter and eggs over the counter of a country store, and discussing Doty's corn crop and Hayworth's pigs hasn't done anything particular towards fitting me to shine in society," he said. "It suits _me_ well enough, but it's not what's wanted at a ball or a cabinet minister's reception." And he shook his head. "I'd rather stay where I am--a darned sight."