Do you realize that such beautiful things as these are going on all around us, in an evil and trouble-ridden old world? That in nearly all lives there are such perfect moments? Only we don't remember them. We grow old and wrinkled and sick; we bicker with those we love; it grows harder to remember, easier to forget.
I was going to say that this was the end of the story of the Star of Hempfield, but I know better, of course. It was only the beginning.
"Nort, my boy, I knew it, I knew it!" said the old Captain, when Anthy and Nort told him, though as a matter of fact he had never dreamed of such a thing until two minutes before.
Fergus saw Nort and Anthy come in together, and knew without being told. He sat firmly on his stool until they went out again, so absorbed in their own happiness that they never noticed him at all, and then he climbed down and took off his apron deliberately. He felt about absently for his friendly pipe, put it slowly in his mouth, but did not light it. He stuck his small battered volume of Robert Burns's poems in his pocket—and going out of the back door struck out for the hills. The next morning he was back on his stool again just as usual. It would have been impossible to print the Star of Hempfield without Fergus MacGregor.
On a June day I finish this narrative and lay down my pen.
An hour ago I walked along the lane to the top of my pasture to take a look at the distant town. In the meadows the red clover is in full blossom, the bobolinks are hovering and singing over the low spots, and the cattle are feeding contentedly in all the pastures. I have never seen the wild raspberry bushes setting such a wealth of fruit, nor the blackberries so full of bloom. The grass is nearly ripe for the cutting.
At the top of the hill I stood for a long time looking off across the still countryside toward the town.... It is here, after all, that I belong!
I come to the end of the narrative of the Star of Hempfield with an indescribable sadness of regret. So much I proposed myself when I set out to write the story of my friends; and so very little have I accomplished! I can see now that I have not taken all of Hempfield—no, not the half of it—nor even all of my friends; but perhaps I have taken all that I could, all that was mine.
As I came down the hill my mind went out warmly toward the printing-office of the Star of Hempfield, and I thought of the pleasant old garden in front of it, of the curious bird house, built like a miniature Parthenon at the gable end, where the wrens were now rearing their broods, I thought of Dick, the canary, and of Tom, the cat, sleeping comfortably, as I so often saw him, in a patch of sunlight on the floor—and then, like a great wave of friendly warmth, came the full realization of my friends there in the office of the Star of Hempfield, so that I seemed to see them living before my eyes. I thought of how we had worked together for so many months, how we had enjoyed one another, had been thrust apart and drawn together again, had changed, indelibly, one another's inmost lives, and so played our little parts for a brief time upon the stage of life in a country town.