The Untold Lie - Page 2

fellows like old
Windpeter himself and all fighters and woman-chasers
and generally all-around bad ones.

Hal was the worst of the lot and always up to some
devilment. He once stole a load of boards from his
father's mill and sold them in Winesburg. With the
money he bought himself a suit of cheap, flashy
clothes. Then he got drunk and when his father came
raving into town to find him, they met and fought with
their fists on Main Street and were arrested and put
into jail together.

Hal went to work on the Wills farm because there was a
country school teacher out that way who had taken his
fancy. He was only twenty-two then but had already been
in two or three of what were spoken of in Winesburg as
"women scrapes." Everyone who heard of his infatuation
for the school teacher was sure it would turn out
badly. "He'll only get her into trouble, you'll see,"
was the word that went around.

And so these two men, Ray and Hal, were at work in a
field on a day in the late October. They were husking
corn and occasionally something was said and they
laughed. Then came silence. Ray, who was the more
sensitive and always minded things more, had chapped
hands and they hurt. He put them into his coat pockets
and looked away across the fields. He was in a sad,
distracted mood and was affected by the beauty of the
country. If you knew the Winesburg country in the fall
and how the low hills are all splashed with yellows and
reds you would understand his feeling. He began to
think of the time, long ago when he was a young fellow
living with his father, then a baker in Winesburg, and
how on such days he had wandered away into the woods to
gather nuts, hunt rabbits, or just to loaf about and
smoke his pipe. His marriage had come about through one
of his days of wandering. He had induced a girl who
waited on trade in his father's shop to go with him and
something had happened. He was thinking of that
afternoon and how it had affected his whole life when a
spirit of protest awoke in him. He had forgotten about
Hal and muttered words. "Tricked by Gad, that's what I
was, tricked by life and made a fool of," he said in a
low voice.

As though understanding his thoughts, Hal Winters spoke
up. "Well, has it been worth while? What about it, eh?
What about marriage and all that?" he asked and then
laughed. Hal tried to keep on laughing but he too was
in an earnest mood. He began to talk earnestly. "Has a
fellow got to do it?" he asked. "Has he got to be
harnessed up and driven through life like a horse?"

Hal didn't wait for an answer but sprang to his feet
and began to walk back and forth between