and get well, but take it slowly, and not excite yourself.  He believes in your gleaner, and he knows all about machinery.  He says the patent makes it puffectly safe, and you can take your own time about pushing it; it’s su’a to go.  And motha liked you.  She’s not one to talk a great deal—­she always leaves that to father and me—­but she’s got deep feelings, and she just worshipped the baby!  I neva saw her take a child in her ahms before; but she seemed to want to hold the baby all the time.”  She stopped, and then added, tenderly, “Now, I know what you ah’ thinking about, Geo’ge, and I don’t want you to think about it any more.  If you do, I shall give up.”

They had come to a bad piece of road where a Slough of thick mud forced the wagon-way over the stumps of a turnout in the woods.  “You had better let me have the reins, Clementina,” he said.  He drove home over the yellow leaves of the hickories and the crimson leaves of the maples, that heavy with the morning dew, fell slanting through the still air; and on the way he began to sing; his singing made her heart ache.  His father came out to put up the colt for him; and Hinkle would not have his help.

He unhitched the colt himself, while his father trembled by with bent knees; he clapped the colt on the haunch and started him through the pasture-bars with a gay shout, and then put his arm round Clementina’s waist, and walked her into the kitchen amidst the grins of his mother and sisters, who said he ought to be ashamed.

The winter passed, and in the spring he was not so well as he had been in the fall.  It was the out-door life which was best for him, and he picked up again in the summer.  When another autumn came, it was thought best for him not to risk the confinement of another winter in the North.  The prolongation of the summer in the South would complete his cure, and Clementina took her baby and went with him to Florida.  He was very well, there, and courageous letters came to Middlemount and Ohio, boasting of the gains he had made.  One day toward spring he came in languid from the damp, unnatural heat, and the next day he had a fever, which the doctor would not, in a resort absolutely free from malaria, pronounce malarial.  After it had once declared itself, in compliance with this reluctance, a simple fever, Hinkle was delirious, and he never knew Clementina again for the mother of his child.  They were once more at Venice in his ravings, and he was reasoning with her that Belsky was not drowned.

The mystery of his malady deepened into the mystery of his death.  With that his look of health and youth came back, and as she gazed upon his gentle face, it wore to her the smile of quaint sweetness that she had seen it wear the first night it won her fancy at Miss Milray’s horse in Florence.

XXXIX.