Some blessing power seemed to look at him from this grave yard of his hopes, from the gloomy hills, the prairie, and the river, which he never was to see again.

His hope accomplished could not have looked at him with surer content and fulfilment.

He turned away, ungrateful and moody.

Long afterwards he remembered the calm and brightness which his hand had not been raised to make, and understood the meaning of its promise.
He went to work now in earnest: he had to work for his bread-and-butter, you understand?
Restless, impatient at first; but we will forgive him that: you yourself were not altogether submissive, perhaps, when the slow-built expectation of life was destroyed by some chance, as you called it, no more controllable than this paltry burning of a mill.

Yet, now that the great hope was gone on which his brain had worked with rigid, fierce intentness, now that his hands were powerless to redeem a perishing class, he had time to fall into careless, kindly habit: he thought it wasted time, remorsefully, of course.