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Way of the Wind, The

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<hr /> <h3>CHAPTER XXIII.ToC</h3> <div class="imgl"> <ANTIMG border="0" src="images/image05.png" width-obs="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXIII." /></div> Kentucky! God's country! It was as if Seth had dropped out of a wind-blown cloud into a quiet garden, sweetly fenced about and away from the jar and fret of the world. Placid, content, tranquil, standing stock-still in the delicacy of its old-fashioned beauty, as if the world outside and beyond had never progressed. He wandered by old and rich plantations, carved by necessity into smaller farms, past big white stone gates opening to wide avenues which led up to them, looking wistfully in, still content to wander a space before he should experience the rapture of seeing Celia's face, loitering, the white happiness of that within his reach, half fearing to hold out his hand for it, fearing it might vanish, escape phantasmagorically, turn out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. Whip-poor-wills accompanied him in his wanderings, Bob Whites, Nightingales; and lazy ebon negroes, musical as birds, sang lilting Southern songs on the way to the tinkle of banjo and guitar. The negroes were not so kind as the birds. From them he suffered humiliation. More than once he was dubbed "Po' white!" by some haughty ebon creature from whose mouth he was supposedly taking the bread. But here, as in Missouri, he looked for consolation to the wet woods, to the still, soft, straight rain, to the sighing trees that softly soughed him welcome. After weary days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field, sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came to Burgin. The driver of the bus that conveyed passengers to Harrodsburg looked down upon him from the height of his perch. He was strange to Seth, but he recognized a something of the kinship of country in his face and manner. "Have a lif'?" he asked. Seth refused. It was bright daylight. He wished to steal into his old home under the covering of the twilight, he was so footsore and bedraggled. "I'll walk," he smiled, "but thank you just the same." Four miles, then, over hill, down dale, past dusty undergrowth, the brilliant blue of the skies above him, passing negroes who looked strangely at him out of rolling eyes, who jerked black thumbs in his direction over shoulders, saying: "See de po' white trash man, walkin' home!" But there were some Bob Whites singing in the bushes over the rail fences, singing, singing! A bird at the side of the road rested momentarily on a long, keen switch of a blackberry bush, the switch bent earthward, the bird flew off and the twig bent back again. At sight of him ground squirrels sped into the underbrush. Somewhere on the other side of the rail fences little negroes sang. They were too young yet to jerk their thumbs at him and say: "Po' white!" Now that he was so near to Celia his heart misgave him. How would she receive him, coming home to her a tramp, a dusty, tired, footsore tramp, wet, chilled to the bone, footsore and tired! So tired! He forged ahead, trying hard to throw off these thoughts. It was the scornful negroes who had engendered them. A mile from Harrodsburg he came to the toll gate. A woman whose yellow hair showed streaks of gray, raised the pole for him, smiling at him. "That man had eyes like Seth Lawsons," she said to her husband, who smoked his pipe on the porch while she raised and lowered the poles and so supported the family. She was the girl who had called good-by after Celia years before, when she left for her journey to the West and the Magic City. <hr style='width: 15%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;' /> It was twilight when Seth came to Celia's gate. A woman sat alone on the step of the portico, looking out down the pike. Seth paused, his hand on the latch, seeing which the woman shook her head negatively. Seth raised the latch, whereupon she suddenly stood, frowning. "I have nothing for you," she called out raspingly. "There is not a thing in the house to eat. Go away! Go away!" "Celia!" Seth cried out, stabbed to the heart. "I am not a beggar for bread, but give me a crust of kindness for the love of God! I am Seth." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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