"We'll fix that all right. But say, isn't it terrible to wait. I don't mind work, but I hate to wait, and I ought not to go out yonder again before day after tomorrow." "What, ought not to go before day after tomorrow! You ought not to go before next week." "Oh, come, now, old man, don't say that. This thing of waiting is awful. I think I could stand to be hanged if they'd do it at once, but the waiting would put me out. I never could wait. And besides I don't believe in it. One day I saw an old man at a soldiers' home and I asked him concerning his prospects and he said that he was waiting, and when I asked him what for, he said, 'to die.' And then I couldn't help but ask him what he was going to do then. I don't believe in waiting for anything; my idea is to go to it at once." "Yes, that's all very well; but the old soldier was right after all, for life is but waiting for death." "No," said Warren, "life is a constant fight against death, and we don't wait so long if we are fighting. If I thought as you do, I couldn't wait--I'd have to go out and hunt up death at once. I reckon you are low-spirited today. I'm glad I'm not a writer, Lyman. Writing saps all a man's spirit and leaves him no nourishment." "I have always regarded the necessity to write as a sad infliction," Lyman replied. "A man steals from himself his most secret beliefs and emotions and puts them in the mouth of his characters. He is a sham." "You ain't, old fellow." "I am a fraud. Where are you going?" "I've got to stir about," Warren answered. "I have to think when I sit still and I don't want to think. The truth is, I want to know how she stands. I wish I had a picture of her as she stood at the churn. It would make the fortune of a painter. Believe I'll get up a prayer-meeting at Mt. Zion." "What, you get up a prayer-meeting?" "Yes, so I can go home with her through the woods. I think that after a season of prayer and song she would lean toward me." "Why not wait for a thunder storm and comfort her between flashes of lightning?" "I wish I could get up a thunder storm. I'd like for that girl to grab me and choke me half to death. Well, I've got to stir around." Warren went away, and during all the evening Lyman sat picking a nervous quarrel with himself. CHAPTER XXX. THE HOME. Lyman saw nothing of Warren the next day, but on the day following he strode into the room, whistling in tuneless good humor.