advice from someone--the older Mrs. Mall or Dr. Bradley--but
habitual reserve held her back. After all, she decided finally,
what did it matter? Meanwhile, financially, things were going
better than ever.

Martin had the most improved farm in the neighborhood; he was
looked up to by everyone as one of the most intelligent men in
the county, and his earnings were swelling, going into better
stock and the surplus into mortgages which he accumulated with
surprising rapidity. Occasionally, he would wonder why he was
working so hard, saving so assiduously and investing so
consistently. His growing fortune seemed to mean little now that
his affluence was thoroughly established. For whom was he
working? he would ask himself. For the life of him, he could not
answer. Surely not for his Rag-weed of Sharon. Nellie? She was
well enough fixed and he didn't care a shot for her husband. Then
why? Sometimes he pursued this chain of thought further, "I'll
die and probably leave five times as much as I have now to her
and who knows what she'll do with it? I'll never enjoy any of it
myself. I'm not such a fool as to expect it. What difference can
a few thousand dollars more or less make to me from now on? Then
why do I scheme and slave? Pshaw! I've known the answer ever
since I first turned the soil of this farm. The man who thinks
about things knows there's nothing to life. It's all a grinding
chase for the day when someone will pat my cheek with a spade."

He might have escaped this materialism through the church, but to
him it offered no inducements. He could find nothing spiritual in
it. In his opinion, it was a very carnal institution conducted by
very hypocritical men and women. He smiled at their Hell and