A Busy Year at the Old Squire's

by C. A. Stephens

"That is my wife," he said, noticing that I saw her. "She is a good woman. She takes good care of me."

I felt that it would be unkind to press him further and turned to go.

"Would you like to send any word to your folks or to grandmother and the old Squire?" I asked.

"Better not," said he with a kind of solemn sullenness. "I am out of all that. I'm the same's dead."

I could see that he wished it so. He had not really and in so many words acknowledged his identity; but when I turned to go he followed me to the log fence round the garden and as I got over grasped my hand and held on for the longest time! I thought he would never let go. His hand felt rather cold. I suppose the sight of me and the home speech brought his early life vividly back to him. He swallowed hard several times without speaking, and again I saw his wrinkled face working. He let go at last, went heavily back and picked up his hoe; and as we drove on I saw him hoeing stolidly.

The driver said that he had cleared up the little farm and built the log house and barn all by his own labor. For five years he had lived alone, but later he had married the widow of a Scotch immigrant. I noticed that this French-Canadian driver called him "M'sieur Andrews." It would seem that he had changed his name and begun anew in the world—or had tried to. How far he had succeeded I am unable to say.

I could not help feeling puzzled as well as depressed. The proper course under such circumstances is not wholly clear. Had his former friends a right to know what I had discovered? Right or wrong, what I decided on was to say nothing so long as the old man lived. Three years afterwards I wrote to a person whose acquaintance I had made at Three Rivers, asking him whether an old American, residing at a place I described, were still living, and received a reply saying that he was and apparently in good health. But two years later this same Canadian acquaintance, remembering my inquiry, wrote to say that the old man I had once asked about had just died, but that his widow was still living at their little farm and getting along as well as could be expected.

Then one day as the old Squire and I were driving home from a grange meeting I told him what I had learned five years before concerning the fate of his old friend. It was news to him, and yet he did not appear to be wholly surprised.

"I don't know, sir, whether I have done right or not, keeping this from you so long," I said after a moment of silence.

"I think you did perfectly right," the old Squire said after a pause. "You did what I myself, I am sure, would have done under the circumstances."