"I understand." She spoke quietly. "Doctor Hoyle sent you to be helped like he was--and you have been right kind to more than us. You've helped that many it seems like you were sent here for we-all as well as for your own sake, but that can't help me now, Doctor; it--" "Ah, yes it can. I'm far from well yet. I shall be, but I must stay on for a long time, and I want some interest here. I want to see things of my own growing. The ground up around my little cabin is stony and very poor, and I want to rent this little farm of yours. Listen--I'll pay enough so you need not sell your cattle, and you--you can go on with your weaving. You can work in the house again as you have always done. Sometime, when your mother is stronger, you can take up your life again and go to school--as you meant to live--can't you?" "That can never be now. If you take the farm or not, I must bide on here in the old way. I must take up the life my mother lived and my grandmother, and hers before her. It is mine, forever, to live it that way--or die." "Why do you talk so?" "God knows, but I can't tell you. Thank you, suh. I will be right glad to rent you the farm. I'd a heap rather you had it than any one else I ever knew, for we care more for it than you would guess, but for the rest--no. I must bide and work till I die; only maybe I can save little Hoyle and give him a chance to learn something, for he never could work--being like he is." Thryng's eyes danced with joy as he regarded her. "Hoyle is not going to be always as he is, and he shall have the chance to learn something also. Look up, Miss Cassandra, look squarely into my eyes and laugh. Be happy, Miss Cassandra, and laugh. I say it." She laughed softly then. She could not help it. "Wasn't that what the 'Voices' were saying last night when you followed?" "Yes, yes. They seemed like they were calling, 'Hope, hope,' but they were not the real 'Voices.' You made it." "Yes, I made it; and I was truly calling that to you. And you replied; you came to me." "Ah, but that is different from the 'Voices' she heard." "But if they called the truth to you--what then?" "Doctah, there is no longer any hope for me. God called me and let me cut off all hope, once. I did it, and now, only death can change it." "If I believe you, you must believe me. We won't talk of it any more. I'm hungry. Your mother was churning up there; let's go and get some buttermilk, and settle the business of the rent. You've run three good furrows and I'll run three more beside them--my first, remember, in all my life. Then we'll plant that strip to sunflowers. Come, Hoyle, tie the mule and follow us." So David carried his way. They walked merrily back to the house, chattering of his plans and what he would raise. He knew nothing whatever of the sort of crops to be raised, and she was naïvely gay at his expense, a mood he was overjoyed to awaken in her. He vowed that merely to walk over ploughed ground made a man stronger.