f? 
A CHILD OF NATURE 
and hard-minded tanners, whose 
life had been an unbroken struggle 
with reluctant soil and uncertain 
skies, instinctively resented the calm 
assurance ot success which rested 
on John Foster's face like a deci- 
sive judgment on his life. These 
older men had looked askance at 
their neighbour for half a century, 
and they mutely protested against 
the irrevocable reversal of their 
judgment which the touch of death 
had made clear beyond all question- 
ing. To their unsympathetic glance 
there was something almost im- 
moral in this assumption of success 
by one whose career had been an 
obvious failure. There had been no 
evil in John Foster ; the hardest of 
[5] 
yj 
+> 
-y~ 
kttrt 
