The great trunk still lay there, fast
rotting to dust on the carpet of pine cones. He had never sold it for
timber. He would never use it for the rafters of his home.
As he looked back now all that past life of his appeared to him fair and
desirable. He remembered the early morning risings in his boyhood,
and it seemed to him that he had enjoyed every one of them to its
fullest--that it was only the present that showed stale and unprofitable
in his eyes. A rosy haze obscured all that was harsh and unlovely in the
past, and he thought of himself as always eager and enthusiastic then,
as always finding happiness in the incidents that befell him. The year
when he had gone away, and worked in the factory in order to educate
himself, was revealed as a period of delightful promise, of wonderful
opportunity. In remembering his love for Molly, he forgot the quarrels,
the jealousies, the heartburnings, and recalled only the exquisite
instant of their first lover's kiss. Then, he told himself, that even
while he had enjoyed his life, it had cheated him, and he would not live
it over again if he could.
Turning presently in the other direction, he discerned a patch of vivid
blue in the pasture, and knew that it was Blossom crossing the fields to
Solomon Hatch's.
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