“Lord,” the Colonel would murmur, “it’s awful to have only a thick-skulled Englishman to pour out my troubles to. But I must talk to somebody. Your mother, lad, is a good woman, with more brains in one bump than you have in your whole cranium. But she’s so deaf I’m afraid I’ll bite her ear off trying to make her hear me. Then, too, she has a nice way with her of thinking out loud. Of course, she can’t hear herself, but I can hear her, and when her thoughts turn to me I tell you I hear a lot that I would rather not hear. ‘Rough on the surface, but a good man at heart, God bless him.’ That’s the kind of bouquets I get from your mother, Dick, whenever I open up and tell her what I intend to do with those Bushwhackers. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a baby, the kind gentleman. He’s a Hallibut, every inch of him, and I carried him about when he was a baby.’ That’s the kind of rubbish I get when she’s in the room. By George! if she wasn’t an old family servant I’d fire her and I’d fire you, too, you good-for-nothing, you. Why, fellow, just you watch those dogs get down and crawl when I speak to ’em. Does that look as though I was a kind-hearted gentleman? Does it?—answer me, sir.”
“It do not, sir. You surely are ’ell, sir, yes sir.”
“Only sensible remark you have made since this cursed winter set in. Yes, I’m a rough ’un, I guess. I’m a match for that big hairy McTavish, or any of them, eh?”
“You are, sir.”
“And you think they’ll find it out,—you do, don’t you?”
“They’ll find they have t’ deal with a tartar, sir. They’ll wish th’ ’eavens would fall an’ cover ’em, sir, I’m thinkin’.”
Dick would answer solemnly and the Colonel would slap him on the back and tell him that there was some hope for him yet.
Very often the big man would prefer to be alone, and there in his great chair he would sit listening to the wind moaning through the bare trees. Very often his thoughts would stray away back to the far-away days when he roamed the hills and valleys of the land where he had held and lost his happiness. And as he dreamed, his head would bend lower on his breast and his hand would unconsciously tighten on the arm of his chair. And after his dream he would awaken slowly, and, sighing, arise and stand before the portrait on the wall. All men have their little flower-gardens of memory—Colonel Hallibut’s lay away back among the far hills.
“If she only had not gone,” he would murmur. “If she only had not gone, or if only I had gone with her. Dear little Phoebe, my heart gets hungry for you, and now I can only lead you along the old paths in fancy, girl.”
And the pictured face would grow wistful and he would whisper: