Half a mile away at the right other wood-cutters were at work. When
the wind was the right way he could now and then hear the strokes of
their axes and a shout. Often as he worked alone, swinging his axe
steadily with his breath in a white cloud before his face, he amused
himself miserably--as one might with a bitter sweetmeat--with his old
dreams.
He had no dreams in the present; they all belonged to the past, and
he dreamed them over as one sings over old songs. Sometimes it seemed
quite possible that they still belonged to his life, and might still
come true.
Then he would hear a hoarse shout through the still air from the
other side of the swamp, and he would know suddenly that Charlotte
would never wait in his home yonder, while he worked, and welcome him
home at night.
The other wood-cutters had families. They had to pass his lot on
their way out to the open road. Barney would either retreat farther
among the snowy thickets, or else work with such fury that he could
seem not to see them as they filed past.
Often he did not go home at noon, and ate nothing from morn until
night. He cut wood many days that winter when the other men thought
the weather too severe and sat huddled over their fires in their
homes, shoving their chairs this and that way at their wives'
commands, or else formed chewing and gossiping rings within the
glowing radius of the red-hot store stove.
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