who had made him and them, he must take a wife and have children.
He strode away from the old house, conscious of no choice of direction except that he was avoiding the road toward Melicent's and the Barlow, now the Polos, place; he found himself upon the path which traced the traditional retreat of Timothy Clarke and Esther, his wife, and their children when they fled from the Indians two and a half centuries ago.
Calvin came to the lonely copse, upon unused land still in the possession of the family, where Timothy had fallen and Esther had taken the gun from his hand, loaded it and shot an Indian and then hurried her children on into Haverhill. And standing there alone in the silence, with the afternoon sunlight golden through the trees, Calvin thought what a people had been they who were his fathers, who had crossed the empty sea and settled this savage land, what men had begot and what women had borne children who in their time became like their fathers, begetting children like them again—Calvins, Timothies and Jeremies of Queen Anne's war, of 1776, of John Adams' administration and of Antietam, and whose wives, Esther, Susan and Abigail had been of soul and body like them.
He was their seed; and he was like them; or he might be. If he married a wife, like their wives, he could beget children of their soul and body. Melicent was like them. But only once before, and that when he had looked upon the scene of Polos, the Greek, taking over the Barlow place, had thought of her stirred him. He summoned idea of her now, to make it stir him again as he drooped before his duty to his forefathers, to his home and family, to the blood of them all within him.
As he stood there, trying to imagine himself marrying
