The
road itself, below Elbow Rock, is forced by the steep side of the
mountain-spur and the precipitous bluff to turn inland from the river,
and so, climbing by an easier grade up past Tom Warden's place, crosses
the ridge above the schoolhouse, and comes back down the mountain again
in front of Auntie Sue's place, to its general course along the stream.
The little path forms thus a convenient short cut for any one following
the river road on foot.
Brian, seated on the river-bank a little way from the path where it
starts up the bluff, was trying to decide whether it would be better
for him to follow his desire and stay with Auntie Sue for a few weeks
or months, or whether he should not, in spite of the land he might clear
for her, return to the world where he could more quickly earn the money
to pay back that which he had stolen.
And as he sat there, the man was conscious that he had reached one
of those turning-points that are found in every life where results,
momentous and far-reaching, are dependent upon comparatively unimportant
and temporary issues. He could not have told why, and yet he felt a
certainty that, for him, two widely separated futures were dependent
upon his choice. Nor could he, by thinking, discover what those futures
held for him, nor which he should choose. Even as his boat that night
had hung on the edge of the eddy,--hesitating on the dividing-line
between the two currents,--so the man himself now felt the pull of his
life-currents, and hesitated,--undecided.
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