Free Fruits of the Earth by Frederick Philip Grove

that’s the best I can do. I am not my own master.”
    Ruth laughed. “Do you notice it at last?”
    â€œNotice what?”
    â€œThat you are not your own master?”
    Abe stared. This extension of his meaning might be just or unjust as you looked upon it. “Can’t be helped. I’ve got to have the land.”
    Again Ruth laughed.
    â€œRuth,” Abe said stormily, “don’t you see how I’m fixed? It took all I could do last fall to make both ends meet. I had to use cream cheques to pay off part of my loan at the bank. Once I get that quarter broken, things will ease up. My hand was forced. It would be a waste of money anyway to enlarge this shack beyond what’s absolutely necessary. In a year or two I’ll build a real house. Surely I should be able to ask my wife to put up with things for a while.”
    â€œIf you asked her. But you send your sister instead. Besides,” she added, rising and trembling with the audacity of what she was going to say, “you could ask me if in other things you treated me as your wife. With strangers one keeps one’s word.”
    â€œWith strangers?”
    â€œWhat else am I? I am living alongside of you. What do I know of your dream as Mary calls it? What do you know of me?”
    Abe raised his hands and moved to leave the room. “For goodness’ sake!” he said. “Don’t let’s have another scene! If you can’t understand, you can’t understand. I am doing my best.”
    When, that night, Abe had finished such chores as, in the division of labour, fell to his share, he found the dining-room empty, which had never happened before. Ruth had gone to bed.

THE SCHOOL
    S hilloe proved an exceedingly shy but accommodating neighbour who, once propitiated, would have gone to any length to help Nicoll or Abe. He had a large family, but nobody ever saw anything of the children except their backs, when they were running away. His wife seemed to have the gift of making herself invisible.
    In the fall of that year Abe went out of his way to secure an old French-Canadian thresherman with his crew, his name being Victor Lafontaine. He lived at St. Cecile, a village along the international highway to the city, sixteen miles north of Somerville. To get there, Abe went east over trackless prairie. Twice the man was out; but, being determined, Abe made a third trip. Shilloe was always in the field when he passed, laboriously breaking land with a hand-plough drawn by two pinto ponies much too light for the work. Abe had the queer feeling that eyes were peering at him from behind corners or through the curtains veiling the diminutive windows of the clay-plastered house.
    But on the last of his trips he saw, on the prairie north of Shilloe’s claim, a man who, in outline, resembled his onetimeneighbour, Hall. An old plough horse, a dirty blanket on his back, was grazing near the ditch. At sight of Abe the stranger made for the trail; and Abe stopped his horses. It was a bright, crisp morning of the early fall.
    The man who approached, medium-sized, pot-bellied, spindle-legged, with a dirt-grey moustache dividing his face, was clad in a multitude of successive ragged coats which increased the bulk of his upper body and made him look even more disproportioned than he was.
    â€œYou Spalding?” he asked when within speaking distance.
    â€œSpalding’s my name.”
    â€œI’ve filed on this yere homestead. Filed on it yesterday. Name’s Hartley. You don’t happen to have some second-hand lumber to sell?”
    â€œNo I haven’t.”
    â€œNor a horse or two?”
    â€œI have some colts.”
    â€œNo good,” Hartley said. “What I want is nags, gentle and aged. And I want them cheap and on time.”
    â€œNo,” Abe said. “I have nothing in that line.”
    â€œWhat’s the name of the feller there at the corner?”
    â€œNicoll.”
    â€œHow