The Debatable Land

Map and hi

gold brown of the meadows, blue and gold of aster and golden-rod by roadsides and meadow edges, veiled purple of the sweet fern in high pastures, the year remembered that it was not a pageantry of

scattering them with a dry rustle

jump th

ht of it. It's

ai

d and look

cket fence, jumped and plunged through the lilacs, picked up her hat and swung into the pat

hesitated-"Don't be an idiot," and then laughed. "I'

your saying

sted. Morgan leaned his back to its post

y n

nk I want you to do what I tell you. Tha

ountain, which seemed to be brooding as well over its constitutional phenomena, whose causes were ages ago and

-(to carry a person on his shoulder miles, for instance, across the Cattle Ridge, together with the game-bag, when a person was tired, and begging not to be disgraced for a baby, and wo

when you go

you know, I believe u

right. I'll forgive hi

of sudden danger, attack of angry game-preserver or owner of posted stream, or any crisis of the woods when the partridge whirred or the fox broke into the open, Morgan's face would not flush nor his hand tremble; but he only seemed to gather his brows and centre himself on the subject, while little Nellie wondered and worshipped. So he stood for an

nless, forbidding. It was a caste system, a privileged aristocracy of one's elders, the dead-line of an old régime. Morga

unity to do things differently. It has its own régime, its t

rely his own candid statement. And regarding Thaddeus, his expression sprang equally from candor. A man's dislike for him was a poor reason for disliking that man. To carry malice was to carry a load. A man was an engine for covering ground and arriving at

sure of yours

you see, if Thaddeus Bourn tried to take a fall out of me, he'd want to be s

want to take a

hy should I mind

isliked by anybody, until

t m

Not b

by the United States.

an opinion of you that's miles long.

n with approval on

had business with only such as he could handle, put to the use of resolve, statement, or persuasion. If he was unable to express his mind completely, it was becau

somewhere about him he felt much the same. If you hated an enemy, there was a trifle of ice, a certain ambient glacier that once ground him badly, of whom he had no loving remembrance and the grooves whereof were on his bones. He was no moralist. The liar and the thief could find companionship there, the outcast existences more deserted, the murderer note the hawk risen red and screaming from the thicket, and admit a spirit that bettered his own. Only if you were not content in f

id Helen, dreamily. "He's

joke to have h

n and up the path between

rgan. It would be idiotic to hu

you didn't min

ugh. Take me up

u're on a