did not venture so much as to look at August, who sat opposite her, and
who was the most unhappy person at the table, because he did not know
what all the unhappiness was about. Mr. Anderson's brow foreboded a
storm, Mrs. Anderson's face was full of an earthquake, Cynthy Ann was
sitting in shadow, and Julia's countenance perplexed him. Whether she
was angry with him or not, he could not be sure. Of one thing he was
certain: she was suffering a great deal, and that was enough to make him
exceedingly unhappy.

Sitting through his hurried meal in this atmosphere surcharged with
domestic electricity, he got the notion--he could hardly tell how--that
all this lowering of the sky had something to do with him. What had he
done? Nothing. His closest self-examination told him that he had done no
wrong. But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience
condemned him for some unknown crime that had brought about all this
disturbance of the elements. The ham did not seem very good, the cabbage
he could not eat, the corn-dodger choked him, he had no desire to wait
for the pie. He abridged his meal, and went out to the barn to keep
company with his horses and his misery until it should be time to return
to his plow.

Julia sat and sewed in that tedious afternoon. She would have liked one
more interview with August before his departure. Looking through the
open hall, she saw him leave the barn and go toward his plowing. Not
that she looked up. Hawk never watched chicken more closely than Mrs.
Anderson watched poor Jule. But out of the corners of her eyes Julia saw
him drive his horses before him from the stable. At the field in which
he worked was on the other side of the house from where she sat she
could not so much as catch a glimpse of him as he held his plow on its
steady course. She wished she might have helped Cynthy Ann in the