And the fence neared its end.  The young man almost regretted it, eager as he had become to test his strength in the great city.  Physically, it was grand for him.  What thews he gained; what bands of muscle criss-crosses between and below his shoulders!  What arms he had and what full cushions formed upon his chest!  That was the maul.  How he ate and drank and slept!

The days shortened, and the hoar frosts in the early morning made the fence look a thing in silver-work strung through the woods.  Where the oxen had stepped in some soft place were now, at the beginning of the day, thin flakes of ice.  Even in the depth of the clover-mow the change of temperature was manifest, and Harlson slept with a blanket close about him.  The autumn had come briskly.  And the last ash was felled, the oxen for the last time scrambled through the wood with the heavy logs, and for the last time ax and maul and wedge did sturdy service.  One day Grant Harlson lifted the last rail into place; then climbed upon the fence, looked critically along it, and knew his work in the country was well done.  He was absorbed in the material aspect of it just then.  It was a good fence.  Fifteen years later he strolled one afternoon, cigar in mouth, across the wheat-field where the wood had been, and inspected the fence he had built alone that summer, away back.  The rails had grown gray from the effect of time and storms, and a rider was missing here and there, but the structure was a sound one generally, and still equal to all needs.  It was a great fence, well built.  He looked at the wasting evidence of the great ax strokes upon the rail ends, and said, as did Brakespeare, when he visited the castle of Huguemont and noted where his sword had chipped the stairway stone in former fight; “It was a gallant fray.”

There was the getting of pay—­the selling of a Morgan yearling colt sufficed the owner of the land for that—­and the end of one part of one human being’s life was reached.  He went to town again and lived there a week or two.  A life not held in bonds, but somehow under all control.  It was curious; he could not understand it; but, even in the wood, he had out-grown Mrs. Rolfston.  He was with her much.  There was no let nor hindrance to their united reckless being, but all was different from the beginning.  He was not selfish with her; he grew more courteous and thoughtful, yet the woman knew she could not keep him.  There were stormy episodes and tender ones, threats and tears, and plottings and pleadings, and all to the same unavailing end.  Your woman of thirty of this sort is a Hecla ever in eruption, but becoming sometimes, like Hecla, in the ages, ice-surrounded.  She has her trials, this woman, but her trials never kill her.  The rending of the earth, earthy, is never fatal.  She recovers.  With her, good digestion ever waits on appetite, though an occasional appetite be faulty.

And one day Grant Harlson left the town, his face turned cityward.  The country boy—­this later young man of the summer—­was no more.  To fill his place among the mass of bipeds who conduct the affairs of the world so badly and so blunderingly, was but one added to the throng of strugglers in one of men’s great permanent encampments.