"Isn't she a good wife?"
"Fifty thousand times too good for me."
The Welshman refilled his pipe, and, after puffing for a few moments, said--
"What one man sighs for, another man groans at. Of course it's absurd tor such a rough-and-ready chap as me to say that if I had a wife fifty thousand times too good for me, I should look upon her as a blessing. I've never had much experience of women. The only woman I ever loved was my old mother; but although I dare say I am ignorant enough with regard to womankind, I often think that the world is like a garden, and that the women and children are the flowers in it."
"Is the world like a garden to you! I've heard that you've had pretty hard lines in it, too."
"So I have. But, you see, it is not my fault. I might make things worse for myself, but I don't know how I could make them better."
"Very fine philosophy that, I dare say," Richard continued to grumble; "but all men are not made the same, and all men don't think the same. What is one man's meat is another man's poison. You like this sort of life; you don't feel it any hardship to walk thirty or forty miles a day. You were never brought up to expect anything better. I was. And I can't sit still, and be grateful for misfortune."
Far away, through the miles of tall gaunt trees that stood in dark relief, like sentinels of the night, the watch-fires were glimmering! men bodily weary, but into whose hearts had stolen the peacefulness of nature, were lying contentedly about, enjoying the sweet incense of repose. Heaven's eyes were looking down upon them; God's handiwork surrounded and encompassed them. The solemn trees, the bright stars; the evanescent flash that marked the lizard's track; the hushed air that glided through the forests of the New World, the faintest tracery of whose minutest leaf is more marvellous than man's greatest work; and all the myriad visible and invisible wonders of the wondrous earth: contributed to the holiness of the night. The Welshman looked round and beyond, where the glimmering watch-fires lost themselves in dark depths. Then he looked at Richard, and said, as if wishful to woo him to a softer mood,--
"If she were here--"
"My wife?" queried Richard.