It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan and his motherly wife and the excellent Jane. It cost him a great pang to say good-bye to Nettie Morgan. Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling. She did not venture to come to the door. Kike found her alone in the little porch at the back of the house, trying to look unconcerned. Afraid to trust himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand coldly for a moment. But the sight of her pain-stricken face touched him to the quick: he seized her hand again, and, with eyes full of tears, said huskily: "Good-bye, Nettie! God bless you, and keep you forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the rest a hasty adieu and riding off eagerly, almost afraid to look back. He was more severe than ever in the watch he kept over himself after this. He could never again trust his treacherous heart.
Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee Settlement, "The Forks" had now come to be quite a village; the valley was filling with people borne on that great wave of migration that swept over the Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century. The cabin in which his mother lived was very little different from what it was when he left it. The old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude; the barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a little on one side, giving to the cabin, as Kike thought, an unpleasant air, as of a man a little exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon the side of his head to leer at you saucily. The mother received him joyously, and wiped her eyes with her apron when she saw how sick he had been. Brady was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed chairs sat suspiciously close together. Brady had long thought of changing his state, but both Brady and the widow were in mortal fear of Kike, whose severity of judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them. "If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd propose to the widdy. But what would the lad say to sich follies at my toime of loife? And the widdy's more afeard of him than I am. Did iver anybody say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther out of courtin' his mother, and his mother out of resavin' the attintions of a larnt grammairian loike mesilf? The misfortin' is that Koike don't have no wakenisses himsilf. I wish he had jist one, and thin I wouldn't keer. If I could only foind that he'd iver looked jist a little swate loike at iny young girl, I wouldn't moind his cinsure. But, somehow, I kape a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould coward that I am."
Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe improved, and the thoughtful mother had already made him a warm, though not very shapely, suit of jeans. It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again. She did not think him fit to go. But she did not dare to say so. How should she venture to advise one who seemed to her wondering heart to live in the very secrets of the Almighty? God had laid hands on him—the child was hers no longer. But still she looked her heart-breaking apprehensions as he set out from home, leaving her standing disconsolate in the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.
And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house, ventured to give him advice—partly by way of finding out whether Kike had any "wakeniss" or not.
"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I thrust you'll bear with me if I give you some advoice, though ye have got to be sich a praycher. Ye'll not take offinse, me lad?"
"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike, smiling sadly.
"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as shure as ye're born, and it's me own opinion as ye ought to git a good wife to nurse ye, and thin you could git a home and maybe do more good than ye do now."
Kike's face settled into more than its wonted severity. The remembrance of his recent vacillation and the sense of his present weakness were fresh in his mind. He would not again give place to the devil.
"Mr. Brady, there's something more important than our own ease or happiness. We were not made to seek comfort, but to give ourselves to the work of Christ. And see! your head is already blossoming for eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were all."
Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master solemnly and rode away, and Mr. Brady was more appalled than ever.