In Our Time Read Free Page A

me a lot of money for pulling his squaw through pneumonia and I guess he wanted a row so he wouldn’t have to take it out in work.”
    His wife was silent. The doctor wiped his gun carefully with a rag. He pushed the shells back in against the spring of the magazine. He sat with the gun on his knees. He was very fond of it. Then he heard his wife’s voice from the darkened room.
    â€œDear, I don’t think, I really don’t think that any one would really do a thing like that.”
    â€œNo?” the doctor said.
    â€œNo. I can’t really believe that any one would do a thing of that sort intentionally.”
    The doctor stood up and put the shotgun in the corner behind the dresser.
    â€œAre you going out, dear?” his wife said.
    â€œI think I’ll go for a walk,” the doctor said.
    â€œIf you see Nick, dear, will you tell him his mother wants to see him?” his wife said.
    The doctor went out on the porch. The screen door slammed behind him. He heard his wife catch her breath when the door slammed.
    â€œSorry,” he said, outside her window with the blinds drawn.
    â€œIt’s all right, dear,” she said.
    He walked in the heat out the gate and along the path into the hemlock woods. It was cool in the woods even on such a hot day. He found Nick sitting with his back against a tree, reading.
    â€œYour mother wants you to come and see her,” the doctor said.
    â€œI want to go with you,” Nick said.
    His father looked down at him.
    â€œAll right. Come on, then,” his father said. “Give me the book, I’ll put it in my pocket.”
    â€œI know where there’s black squirrels, Daddy,” Nick said.
    â€œAll right,” said his father. “Let’s go there.”

Chapter III
    We were in a garden at Mons. Young Buckley came in with his patrol from across the river. The first German I saw climbed up over the garden wall. We waited till he got one leg over and then potted him. He had so much equipment on and looked awfully surprised and fell down into the garden. Then three more came over further down the wall. We shot them. They all came just like that.

The End of Something
    In the old days Hortons Bay was a lumbering town. No one who lived in it was out of sound of the big saws in the mill by the lake. Then one year there were no more logs to make lumber. The lumber schooners came into the bay and were loaded with the cut of the mill that stood stacked in the yard. All the piles of lumber were carried away. The big mill building had all its machinery that was removable taken out and hoisted on board one of the schooners by the men who had worked in the mill. The schooner moved out of the bay toward the open lake carrying the two great saws, the travelling carriage that hurled the logs against the revolving, circular saws and all the rollers, wheels, belts and iron piled on a hull-deep load of lumber. Its open hold covered with canvas and lashed tight, the sails of the schooner filled and it moved out into the open lake, carrying with it everything that had made the mill a mill and Hortons Bay a town.
    The one-story bunk houses, the eating-house, the company store, the mill offices, and the big mill itself stood deserted in the acres of sawdust that covered the swampy meadow by the shore of the bay.
    Ten years later there was nothing of the mill left except the broken white limestone of its foundations showing through the swampy second growth as Nick and Marjorie rowed along the shore. They were trolling along the edge of the channel-bank where the bottom dropped off suddenly from sandy shallows to twelve feet of dark water. They were trolling on their way to the point to set night lines for rainbow trout.
    â€œThere’s our old ruin, Nick,” Marjorie said.
    Nick, rowing, looked at the white stone in the green trees.
    â€œThere it is,” he said.
    â€œCan you remember when it was a mill?” Marjorie