Fifteen years later he strolled one afternoon, cigar in mouth, across the wheat-field where the wood had been, and inspected the fence he had built alone that summer, away back.

The rails had grown gray from the effect of time and storms, and a rider was missing here and there, but the structure was a sound one generally, and still equal to all needs.

It was a great fence, well built.

He looked at the wasting evidence of the great ax strokes upon the rail ends, and said, as did Brakespeare, when he visited the castle of Huguemont and noted where his sword had chipped the stairway stone in former fight; "It was a gallant fray." There was the getting of pay--the selling of a Morgan yearling colt sufficed the owner of the land for that--and the end of one part of one human being's life was reached.

He went to town again and lived there a week or two.