"I don't want to hear what you've heard. Keep it to yourself if you've heard anything!" Barney shouted. "I didn't know as you knew," Caleb stammered, apologetically. "I didn't know as you'd heard, Barney." Caleb went to the edge of the field, and sat down on a great stone under a wild-cherry tree. He was not feeling very well; his head was dizzy, and his wife had given him a bowl of thoroughwort and ordered him not to work. Caleb pushed his hat back and passed his hand across his forehead. It was hot, and his face was flushed. He watched his son following up his work with dogged energy as if it were an enemy, and his mind seemed to turn stupid in the face of speculation, like a boy's over a problem in arithmetic. There was no human being so strange and mysterious, such an unknown quantity, to Caleb Thayer as his own son. He had not one trait of character in common with him--at least, not one so translated into his own vernacular that he could comprehend it. It was to Caleb as if he looked in a glass expecting to see his own face, and saw therein the face of a stranger. The wind was quite cool, and blew full on Caleb as he sat there. Barney kept glancing at him. At length he spoke. "You'll get cold if you sit there in that wind, father," he sang out, and there was a rude kindliness in his tone. Caleb jumped up with alacrity. "I dunno but I shall. I guess you're right. I wa'n't goin' to set here but a minute," he answered, eagerly. Then he went over to Barney again, and stood near watching him. Barney's hoe clinked on a stone, and he stooped and picked it out of the loam, and threw it away. "There's a good many stone in this field," said the old man. "There's some." "It was a heap of work clearin' of it in the first place. You wa'n't more'n two year old when I cleared it. My brother Simeon helped me. It was five year before he got the fever an' died." Caleb looked at his son with anxious pleading which was out of proportion to his words, and seemed to apply to something behind them in his own mind. Barney worked on silently. "I don't believe but what--if you was--to go over there--you could get her back again now, away from that Payne fellar," Caleb blurted out, suddenly; then he shrank back as if from an anticipated blow. Barney threw a hoeful of earth high in air and faced his father. "Once for all, father," said he, "I don't want to hear another word about this." "I shouldn't have said nothin', Barney, but I kinder thought--" "I don't care what you thought. Keep your thoughts to yourself." "I know she allers thought a good deal of you, an'--" "I don't want another word out of your mouth about it, father." "Well, I ain't goin' to say nothin' about it if you don't want me to, Barney; but you know how mother feels, an'-- Well, I ain't goin' to say no more." Caleb passed his hand across his forehead, and set off across the field. Just before he was out of hearing, Barney hailed him.