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A tear slipped down John McIntyre's hollow cheek, the first tear he had shed since he and Mary had laid their last baby in its little grave. It fell upon his toil-hardened hand unnoticed, for a resolution was forming in his heart. He arose, stumbled hurriedly indoors, and lit his lamp. He must find out at once if this wonderful thing could be true, if life and happiness might still be his.
The red light smiting the faces of the two showed great drops of sweat, the swell of toil-hardened muscles on the corded arms, and the rise of each straining chest. There was not a clash nor a falter, but, flash after flash, the blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch.
We simpletons labour with toil-hardened hands to earn a sweet woman who shall dwell with us poor devils.... And you mean to call the bargain naught?..." Fafner gloomily checks him: Words will not help them. And the possession of Freia in itself is to his mind of little account. But of great account to take her from the gods. In her garden grow golden apples, she alone has the art of tending these.
His face became stern instead of expectant; his toil-hardened frame was more erect, as he answered with unusual gentleness: "I have endeavored to prepare myself for your reply. How could I hope to win you as it were for the asking easily? Still, though I am painfully conscious of many possible reasons, may I venture to ask why it is impossible, Miss Savine?"
If she could only see poor old, faithful John Brooks again she would kneel at his feet just as she had done when she was a little child, lay her weary head down on his toil-hardened hand, tell him how she had suffered, and ask him how she could die and end it all. She longed so hungrily for some one to caress her, murmuring tender words over her.
Hollingsworth, too, with his philanthropic project, afforded the penny-a-liners a theme for some savage and bloody minded jokes; and, considerably to my surprise, they affected me with as much indignation as if we had still been friends. Thus passed several weeks; time long enough for my brown and toil-hardened hands to reaccustom themselves to gloves.
Did, too, for 'bout a year an' since then never a cent! I've a mind to send you to the county farm, that I have!" "Now, maw," Paw Hoover, a kindly, toil-hardened farmer, would say when he happened to overhear one of these outbursts, "Bessie's a good girl, an' I reckon she earns her keep, don't she, helpin' you like, round the place?" "Earn her keep?" Mrs. Hoover would shrill.
Sometimes they were forced up in harsh distinctness by a dazzling glare; sometimes they faded into blurred shadows as the pulsating flame upon the bank sank a little or was momentarily blown aside; but all the while gorged veins rose on bronzed foreheads and toil-hardened muscles were taxed to the utmost.
"To vote as he thinks he ought to," was his son's reply. Deacon Swift's eyes were bulging and reddening. "You you tell me dat?" His slender form towered above his son's, and his knotted, toil-hardened hands opened and closed. "You tell me dat? You with yo' bringin' up vote de way you think you're right? You lie! Tell me what dey paid you, or, befo' de Lawd, I'll taih you to pieces right hyeah!"
Emerging from out a sort of cell, or den, contrived by nature or art in the side of the cliff, he threw on a scanty fire, which burned between two hollowed rocks, a small log of pine wood, and then returning to his cave, and bringing from it an iron pot, which contained water, he scooped with his toil-hardened hands a resting-place for it in the ashes, and placed it on the embers.
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