And it is my fault that she has died so ...

My fault ...

My fault." Remorse seized him; he shook his head at the pity of it, his eyes upon the floor.
"Many times it happened, after we had spent five or six years in one place and all had gone well, that we were beginning to get together a nice property--good pasturage, broad fields ready for sowing, a house lined inside with pictures from the papers ...
Then people came and settled about us; we bad but to wait a little, working on quietly, and soon we should have been in the midst of a well-to-do settlement where Laura could have passed the rest of her days in happiness ...

And then all of a sudden I lost heart; I grew sick and tired of my work and of the countryside; I began to hate the very faces of those who had taken up land near-by and used to come to see us, thinking that we should be pleased to have a visitor after being so long out of the way of them.

I heard people saying that farther off toward the head of the Lake there was good land in the forest; that some folk from St.Gedeon spoke of settling over on that side; and forthwith I began to hunger and thirst for this spot they were talking about, that I had never seen in my life and where not a soul lived, as for the place of my birth ...
"Well, in those days, when the work was done, instead of smoking beside the stove I would go out to the door-step and sit there without moving, like a man homesick and lonely; and everything I saw in front of me--the place I had made with these two hands after so much of labour and sweat--the fields, the fences, over to the rocky knoll that shut us in--I detested them all till I seemed ready to go out of my mind at the very sight of them.
"And then your mother would come quietly up behind me.