CHAPTER XVIII.
ON THE RAILROAD TRACK.
Still walking, with bent head, and a brain which vainly strove to work its way to clearness through the perplexities of his heart, Joseph went on. When, wearied at last, though not consciously calmer, he paused and looked about him, it was like waking from a dream. Some instinct had guided him on the way to Philip's forge: the old road had been moved to accommodate the new branch railway, and a rapid ring of hammers came up from the embankment below. It was near the point of the hill where Lucy's schoolhouse stood, and even as he looked she came, accompanied by her scholars, to watch the operation of laying the track. Elwood Withers, hale, sunburnt, full of lusty life, walked along the sleepers directing the workmen.
"He was right,—only too right!" muttered Joseph to himself. "Why could I not see with his eyes? 'It's the bringing up,' he would say; but that is not all. I have been an innocent, confiding boy, and thought that years and acres had made me a man. O, she understood me—she understands me now; but in spite of her, God helping me, I shall yet be a man."
Elwood ran down the steep side of the embankment, greeted Lucy, and helped her to the top, the children following with whoops and cries.
"Would it have been different," Joseph further soliloquized, "if Lucy and I had loved and married? It is
