He had never been so long from home before; the nearer he approached it, the more intense his longings grew, and he passed rapidly through the open glades, disappearing momentarily in the obscurity of the thickets, past the deserted sugar camp, until finally the woods grew lighter, the trees more scattered, and he reached the open pasture lands in sight of the low farm-house, which held his mother and home. How strange, and yet familiar, even an absence of only three months made everything! The distance of his journey seemed to have expanded the months into years.
He entered by a back way, and found his mother in the little front sitting-room. She arose with—"Oh, Barton, have you come?" and received from his lips and eyes the testimonials of his heart. She was slight, lithe, and well made, with good Puritan blood, brain, and resolution; and as she stood holding her child by both his hands, and looking eagerly into his face, a stranger would have noticed their striking resemblance. Her face, though womanly, was too marked and strong for beauty. Both had the square decisive brow, and wide, deep eyes—hers a lustrous black, and his dark gray or blue, as the light was. Her hair was abundant, and very dark; his a light brown, thick, wavy, and long. Both had the same aquiline nose, short upper-lip, bland, firm, but soft mouth, and well-formed chin. Her complexion was dark, and his fair—too fair for a man.
"Yes, mother, I have come; are you glad to see me?"
"Glad—very glad, but sorry." She had a good deal of the Spartan in her nature, and received her son with a sense of another failure, and failures were not popular with her. "I did not hear from you—was anxious about you; but now, when you come back to the nothing for you here, I know you found less elsewhere."
"Well, mother, I know I am a dreadful drag even on your patience, and I fear a burden besides, instead of a help. I need not say much to you; you, at least, understand me. It was a mistake to go away as I did, and I bring back all I carried away, with the result of some reflection. I can do as much here as anywhere. I hoped I could do something for you, and I, poor unweaned baby and booby, can do better for myself near you than elsewhere."
Not much was said. She was thoughtful, deep natured, tender, and highly strung, though not demonstrative, and these qualities in him were modified by the soft, sensuous, imaginative elements that came to him—all that he inherited, except his complexion, from his father.
His mother gave him supper, and he sat and inquired about home events, and gave her a pleasant account of their relatives in the lower part of the State. He said nothing of the discovery he had made among them—her own family relatives—that she had married beneath her, and had never been forgiven; and he fancied that he discovered some opening of old, old sorrows, dating back to her girlhood days, as he talked of her relatives. The two younger brothers came rattling in—George, a handsome, eager young threshing-machine, a bright, broad-browed boy, and Edward, older, with drooping head and thoughtful face, and with something of Bart's readiness at reply. George ran to him—
"Oh, Bart, I am so glad! and there is so much—a flock of turkeys—and a wolverine, and oh! so many pigeons and everything—more than you can shoot in all the fall!"
"Well, captain, we will let them all live, I guess, unless that wolverine comes around!"
"There is a real, true wolverine; several have seen him, and he screeches, and yells, and climbs trees, and everything!"