It was with a proud consciousness of having well fulfilled his mission that Billy Traynor once more bent his steps towards Massa. Besides providing himself with books of travel and maps of the regions they were about to visit, he had ransacked Genoa for weapons, and accoutrements, and horse-gear. Well knowing the youth's taste for the costly and the splendid, he had suffered himself to be seduced into the purchase of a gorgeously embroidered saddle mounting, and a rich bridle, in Mexican taste; a pair of splendidly mounted pistols, chased in gold and studded with large turquoises, with a Damascus sabre, the hilt of which was a miracle of fine workmanship, were also amongst his acquisitions; and poor Billy fed his imagination with the thought of all the delight these objects were certain to produce. In this way he never wearied admiring them; and a dozen times a day would he unpack them, just to gratify his mind by picturing the enjoyment they were to afford.
“How well you are lookin', my dear boy!” cried he, as he burst into the youth's room, and threw his arms around him; “'tis like ten years off my life to see you so fresh and so hearty. Is it the prospect of the glorious time before us that has given this new spring to your existence?”
“More likely it is the pleasure I feel in seeing you back again,” said Massy; and his cheek grew crimson as he spoke.
“'Tis too good you are to me,—too good,” said Billy, and his eyes ran over in tears, while he turned away his head to hide his emotion; “but sure it is part of yourself I do be growing every day I live. At first I could n't bear the thought of going away to live in exile, in a wilderness, as one may say; but now that I see your heart set upon it, and that your vigor and strength comes back just by the mere anticipation of it, I'm downright delighted with the plan.”
“Indeed!” said the youth, dreamily.
“To be sure I am,” resumed Billy; “and I do be thinking there 's a kind of poethry in carrying away into the solitary pine forest minds stored with classic lore, to be able to read one's Horace beside the gushing stream that flows on nameless and unknown, and con over ould Herodotus amidst adventures stranger than ever he told himself.”
“It might be a happy life,” said the other, slowly, almost moodily.
“Ay, and it will be,” said Billy, confidently. “Think of yourself, mounted on that saddle on a wild prairie horse, galloping free as the wind itself over the wide savannas, with a drove of rushing buffaloes in career before you, and so eager in pursuit that you won't stop to bring down the scarlet-winged bustard that swings on the branch above you. There they go, plungin' and snortin', the mad devils, with a force that would sweep a fortress before them; and here are we after them, makin' the dark woods echo again with our wild yells. That's what will warm up our blood, till we 'll not be afeard to meet an army of dragoons themselves. Them pistols once belonged to Cariatoké, a chief from Scio; and that blade—a real Damascus—was worn by an Aga of the Janissaries. Isn't it a picture?”
The youth poised the sword in his hand, and laid it down without a word; while Billy continued to stare at him with an expression of intensest amazement.
“Is it that you don't care for it all now, that your mind is changed, and that you don't wish for the life we were talkin' over these three weeks? Say so at once, my own darlin', and here I am, ready and willin' never to think more of it. Only tell me what's passin' in your heart; I ask no more.”