and his way of standing and looking, as if the whole world
wouldn't shift him. But she'd mother's soft heart for all that,
and I took the more notice of her crying and whimpering this time
because it was so strange for her.

If any one could have seen straight into my heart just then I was regularly
knocked over, and had two minds to go inside to Jim and tell him
we'd take George's splitting job, and start to tackle it first thing
to-morrow morning; but just then one of those confounded night-hawks
flitted on a dead tree before us and began his `hoo-ho',
as if it was laughing at me. I can see the place now --
the mountain black and dismal, the moon low and strange-looking,
the little waterhole glittering in the half-light, and this dark bird
hooting away in the night. An odd feeling seemed to come over my mind,
and if it had been the devil himself standing on the dead limb
it could not have had a worse effect on me as I stopped there,
uncertain whether to turn to the right or the left.

We don't often know in this world sometimes whether we are turning off
along a road where we shall never come back from, or whether we can go
just a little way and look at the far-off hills and new rivers,
and come home safe.

I remember the whole lot of bad-meaning thoughts coming with a rush
over my heart, and I laughed at myself for being so soft as to choose
a hard-working, pokey kind of life at the word of a slow fellow like George,
when I might be riding about the country on a fine horse,
eating and drinking of the best, and only doing what people said
half the old settlers had made their money by.