But the voice and the swift-moving car did not stir Clara. She tried not to hear the voice, and fixing her eyes on the soft landscape flowing past under the moon, tried to think of other times and places. She thought of nights when she had walked with Kate Chanceller through the streets of Columbus, and of the silent ride she had taken with Hugh that night they were married. Her mind went back into her childhood and she remembered the long days she had spent riding with her father in this same valley, going from farm to farm to haggle and dicker for the purchase of calves and pigs. Her father had not talked then but sometimes, when they had driven far and were homeward bound in the failing light of evening, words did come to him. She remembered one evening in the summer after her mother died and when her father often took her with him on his drives. They had stopped for the evening meal at the house of a farmer and when they got on the road again, the moon came out. Something present in the spirit of the night stirred Tom, and he spoke of his life as a boy in the new country and of his fathers and brothers. “We worked hard, Clara,” he said. “The whole country was new and every acre we planted had to be cleared.” The mind of the prosperous farmer fell into a reminiscent mood and he spoke of little things concerning his life as a boy and young man; the days of cutting wood alone in the silent, white forest when winter came and it was time for getting out firewood and logs for new farm buildings, the log rollings to which neighboring farmers came, when great piles of logs were made and set afire that space might be cleared for planting. In the winter the boy went to school in the village of Bidwell and as he was even then an energetic, pushing youth, already intent on getting on in the world, he set traps in the forest and on the banks of streams and walked the trap line on his way to and from school. In the spring he sent his pelts to the growing town of Cleveland where they were sold. He spoke of the money he got and of how he had finally saved enough to buy a horse of his own. Tom had talked of many other things on that night, of the spelling-downs at the schoolhouse in town, of huskings and dances held in the barns and of the evening when he went skating on the river and first met his wife. “We took to each other at once,” he said softly. “There was a fire built on the bank of the river and after I had skated with her we went and sat down to warm ourselves. “We wanted to get married to each other right away,” he told Clara. “I walked home with her after we got tired of skating, and after that I thought of nothing but how to get my own farm and have a home of my own.”