SOWING THE WIND
The noonday meal was a rather quiet, constrained affair. None of the three was in a talkative mood, Donald was still distrait, Big Jerry obviously in physical and mental distress, and Rose too full of troubled sympathy for conversation. Frequently Donald caught her gaze fixed on the old man's face with an expression of unutterable love; and as often, when she saw him watching her, her face lighted for a moment with a tender, compassionate smile.
The eagerly anticipated vacation and reunion had truly begun badly, and it was with a sense of relief that Donald finished the simple dinner, and announced that he guessed he would go for a little tramp in the woods, while Rose was performing her household tasks.
"Hain't yo' ergoin' ter tote yo'r rifle-gun?" queried Big Jerry, as he noticed that the doctor was leaving the house without a weapon.
"No, not this trip. I'm not in a mood for hunting. All I want is a walk,—and a stout club and Mike will be protection enough against anything in these woods. Good-by, Smiles. I'll be back before supper-time, hungry as a bear."
He left the clearing for the virgin woods at random, striding along briskly and with rising spirits, and at first unmindful of the direction that he was taking.
In fact he had, subconsciously—even in his recreation—refused to follow the easiest way, and had struck out on the up-mountain trail.
For a while Donald walked on, regardless of whither. Then the consciousness of the fact that he was in a—to him—unknown part of the mountain, and nearing the summit, brought with it a recollection of the words spoken that morning by little Lou, "Judd air erway ergin ... up in the mountain."
Still, he kept on, for, although he told himself that he had not the slightest intention of seeking the mountaineer, or the solution of Smiles' troubled look, and most certainly was not courting trouble, purposeless curiosity impelled him higher and higher into the hitherto unexplored fastnesses. Now the timberlands lay beneath him, for, although the hardy laurel continued in profusion, albeit somewhat dried and withered, the trees were thinning out and becoming more scraggly, and more frequently the naked rocks, split and seamed, thrust themselves up through the baked soil, "like vertebræ in the backbone of the mountain," thought Donald. Now they were toned and softened by moss and lichen; now barren of vegetation, rugged and gaunt, split asunder by the ancient elements. In the distress which had come like a cloud over the sunlight of his spirits, so gayly anticipative a few hours previous, they flung a wordless challenge to the battling instinct in the man, and he accepted it with the thought that the best balm for troubled minds is strenuous bodily action.