Lifting his head he could see dimly the one great pine that
towered on the hill over its fellows, and he resolved, in the bitterness
of his defeat, that he would sell the whole wood to-morrow in Applegate.
He tried to think clearly--to tell himself that he had never believed in
her--that he had always known she would throw him over at the last--but
the agony in his heart rose in his throat, and he felt that he was
stifling in the open air of the pasture. His nature, large, impulsive,
scornful of small complexities, was stripped bare of the veneer of
culture by which its simplicity had been overlaid. At the instant he was
closer to the soil beneath his feet than the civilization of his race.
As he neared the brook, which divided his pasture from the fields
belonging to Jordan's Journey, the sound of angry voices came to his
ears, and through the bared twigs of the willows, he saw Archie and
Jonathan Gay standing a little apart, while the boy made threatening
gestures with a small switch he carried.
"I've told him he was not to come on our land and he's laughed in my
face!" cried Archie, turning to his brother.
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