After turning the matter over in his mind and thinking of
many fine flourishes and ringing periods to give colour to the speech he
had been compelled to send the gift by mail. And Sam, while the gift had
touched him deeply and had brought back to his mind the essential solid
goodness of the town amid the cornfields, so that he lost much of the
bitterness aroused by the attack upon Mary Underwood, had been able to
make but a tame and halting reply to the four. In his room in Chicago he
had spent an evening writing and rewriting, putting in and taking out
flourishes, and had ended by sending a brief line of thanks.
Valmore, whose affection for the boy had been a slow growth and who, now
that he was gone, missed him more than the others, once spoke to Freedom
Smith of the change that had come over young McPherson. Freedom sat in the
wide old phaeton in the road before Valmore's shop as the blacksmith
walked around the grey mare, lifting her feet and looking at the shoes.
"What has happened to Sam--he has changed so much?" he asked, dropping a
foot of the mare and coming to lean upon the front wheel. "Already the
city has changed him," he added regretfully.
Freedom took a match from his pocket and lighted the short black pipe.
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