The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields by James Lane Allen
page 93 of 245 (37%)
page 93 of 245 (37%)
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home. How could he ever meet them, ever tell them? How would they
ever understand? If he could only say to his father: "I have sinned and I have broken your heart: but forgive me." But he could not say this: he did not believe that he had done wrong. Yet all that he would now have to show in their eyes would be the year of his wasted life, and a trunk full of the books that had ruined him. Ah, those two years before he had started to college, during which they had lived happily together! Their pride in him! their self- denial, affection--all because he was to be a scholar and a minister! He fancied he could see them as they sat in the house this moment, not dreaming he was anywhere near. One on each side of the fireplace; his mother wearing her black dress and purple shawl: a ball of yarn and perhaps a tea-cake in her lap; some knitting on her needles; she knit, she never mended. But his father would be mending--leather perhaps, and sewing, as he liked to sew, with hog bristles--the beeswax and the awls lying in the bottom of a chair drawn to his side. There would be no noises in the room otherwise: he could hear the stewing of the sap in the end of a fagot, the ticking of one clock, the fainter ticking of another in the adjoining room, like a disordered echo. They would not be talking; they would be thinking of him. He shut his eyes, compressed his lips, shook his head resolutely, and leaped down. He had gone about twenty yards, when he heard a quick, incredulous bark down by the house and his dog appeared in full view, looking up that way, motionless. Then he came on running and barking resentfully, and a short distance off stopped again. |
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