On the September evening, however, the gray gelding had behind him such a
load as he had never carried before. The two people in the buggy on that
evening were not foolish, meandering sweethearts, thinking only of love,
and allowing themselves to be influenced in their mood by the beauty of the
night, the softness of the black shadows in the road, and the gentle night
winds that crept down over the crests of hills. They were solid business
men, mentors of the new age, the kind of men who, in the future of America
and perhaps of the whole world, were to be the makers of governments, the
molders of public opinion, the owners of the press, the publishers of
books, buyers of pictures, and in the goodness of their hearts, the feeders
of an occasional starving and improvident poet, lost on other roads. In any
event the two men sat in the buggy and the gray gelding meandered along
through the hills. Great splashes of moonlight lay in the road. By chance
it was on the same evening that Clara Butterworth left home to become a
student in the State University. Remembering the kindness and tenderness of
the rough old farm hand, Jim Priest, who had brought her to the station,
she lay in her berth in the sleeping car and looked out at the roads,
washed with moonlight, that slid away into the distance like ghosts. She
thought of her father on that night and of the misunderstanding that had
grown up between them.
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