North of Boston | Page 4

and the shade of
trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having
thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good
neighbours."
The Death of the Hired Man
MARY sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren.
When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened
passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on
his guard. "Silas is back."
She pushed him outward with her through
the door
And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said.
She took the
market things from Warren's arms
And set them on the porch, then
drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
"When was I
ever anything but kind to him?

But I'll not have the fellow back," he
said.
"I told him so last haying, didn't I?
'If he left then,' I said, 'that
ended it.'
What good is he? Who else will harbour him
At his age
for the little he can do?
What help he is there's no depending on.


Off he goes always when I need him most.
'He thinks he ought to
earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
So he won't
have to beg and be beholden.'
'All right,' I say, 'I can't afford to pay

Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.'
'Someone else can.' 'Then
someone else will have to.'
I shouldn't mind his bettering himself
If
that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that,
there's someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,--

In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back
to us. I'm done."
"Sh! not so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said.
"I
want him to: he'll have to soon or late."
"He's worn out. He's asleep
beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe's I found him here,

Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and
frightening, too--
You needn't smile--I didn't recognise him--
I
wasn't looking for him--and he's changed.
Wait till you see."

"Where did you say he'd been?"
"He didn't say. I dragged him to the
house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to
make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept
nodding off."
"What did he say? Did he say anything?"
"But little."

"Anything? Mary, confess
He said he'd come to ditch the meadow
for me."
"Warren!"
"But did he? I just want to know."
"Of course
he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn't grudge
the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He
added, if you really care to know,
He meant to clear the upper pasture,
too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I
wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped
to look

Two or three times--he made me feel so queer--
To see if he
was talking in his sleep.
He ran on Harold Wilson--you remember--

The boy you had in haying four years since.
He's finished school,
and teaching in his college.
Silas declares you'll have to get him back.

He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they
will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other
things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On
education--you know how they fought
All through July under the

blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along
beside to pitch it on."
"Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot."

"Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn't think
they would. How some things linger!
Harold's young college boy's
assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding

Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathise. I know
just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold's
associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of
Harold's saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked
it--that an argument!
He said he couldn't make the boy believe
He
could find water with a hazel prong--
Which showed how much good
school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all

He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to
build a load of hay----"
"I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment.

He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for
future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the
unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big
birds' nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He's trying to
lift, straining to lift himself."
"He thinks if he could teach him that,
he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to
see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,

And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look
forward to with hope,
So now and never any different."
Part of a
moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to
the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her