He must spur himself to the start or he'd never finish.

But his mind was in ferment.

What if the boy had written to his sister?
Must he vagabond forth again with the morning into a world of bucolic dawns, alarm-clock farmers, roosters, corncribs and mules?
By the powers of wildfire, no! He would buy a motorcycle.
On tires or toes he could wind Brian around his finger and he would! In a flurry of bitter abstraction, he floundered into a marsh and emerged mud-spattered and indignant.

Briers tore at him.

Below the sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace.