nothing.

By that time, indeed, he had sunk into a harsh silence on all topics. He
went through the exhausting routine of farming with an iron-like
endurance, watched with set lips the morning and afternoon trains leave
the valley, and noted the growth of the pine-tree with a burning heart.
His only recreation was collecting time-tables, prospectuses of steamship
companies, and what few books of travel he could afford. The only society
he did not shun was that of itinerant peddlers or tramps, and occasionally
a returned missionary on a lecture tour.

And always the pine-tree had grown, insolent in the pride of a creature
set in the right surroundings. The imprisoned man had felt himself dwarfed
by its height. But now, he looked up at it again, and laughed aloud. It
had come late, but it had come. He was fifty-seven years old, almost
three-score, but all his life was still to be lived. He said to himself
that some folks lived their lives while they did their work, but he had
done all his tasks first, and now he could live. The unexpected arrival of
the timber merchant and the sale of that piece of land he'd never thought
would bring him a cent--was not that an evident sign that Providence was
with him. He was too old and broken now to work his way about as he had
planned at first, but here had come this six hundred dollars like rain
from the sky. He would start as soon as he could sell his stock.

The thought reminded him of his evening chores, and he set off for the
barn with a fierce jubilation that it was almost the last time he would
need to milk. How far he wondered, could he go on that money? He hurried
through his work and into the house to his old desk. The faded
text-ornament stood on the top shelf, but he did not see it, as he hastily
tumbled out all the time tables and sailing-lists. The habit of looking at