he stopped and threw his burden down a short grassy bank into the road.
Then turning he went, bareheaded, through the gate and up the street.

"I will go for Mary Underwood," he thought, his mind returning to the
friend who years before had walked with him on country roads and whose
friendship he had dropped because of John Telfer's tirades against all
women. He stumbled along the sidewalk, the rain beating down upon his bare
head.

"We need a woman in our house," he kept saying over and over to himself.
"We need a woman in our house."




CHAPTER VII


Leaning against the wall under the veranda of Mary Underwood's house, Sam
tried to get in his mind a remembrance of what had brought him there. He
had walked bareheaded through Main Street and out along a country road.
Twice he had fallen, covering his clothes with mud. He had forgotten the
purpose of his walk and had tramped on and on. The unexpected and terrible
hatred of his father that had come upon him in the tense silence of the
kitchen had so paralysed his brain that he now felt light-headed and
wonderfully happy and carefree.

"I have been doing something," he thought; "I wonder what it is."

The house faced a grove of pine trees and was reached by climbing a little