Why did he recall all this now, when he had never thought about the scene for so long. His mother had gone before too, ten years ago. He had despised his father's simple piety because he was not intellectual. He had scoffed at his attempts to teach him, scorned his affectionate nature, neglected him for pleasures and friends which had brought him to this.
What had he done with his stronger mind, his superior talents? His father was beloved, respected, a welcome visitor beside many a dying sinner's bed. He himself was a fugitive, an outcast, alone in the world.
Pondering these thoughts, he fell asleep, for he was very weak. His slumber was not lengthy, nor did he seem to have dreamed through it; but he started up from it suddenly, as at the call of a trumpet voice, shouting with triumph—
"Not lost, but found!"
Bewildered, confused, this voice seemed to him real. What did it mean?
All at once the barriers of pride gave way; there was no one to see him, and he turned his face to the wall, weeping bitterly.
A softer, better mood succeeded, and a stronger feeling of peace than he had felt for long. He determined to remain in this place until he was quite well; and did so, his health gradually returning to him.
Kirke's illness, and long residence among them, had been to these people as good as a wreck to the Cornish seaside population of old,—it had brought unusual prosperity to them. Small as their charges had appeared to him, they were really four times as high as the true value of the goods supplied to him had been to them. The simple villager was no simpleton when matters of trade and finance were in question; and, if they prayed at all, their petitions to Guadama, for years afterwards, would have been that the Lord of the White Elephant would be pleased to send them another sick stranger.
He had paid royally for the medicines in those red and yellow bamboo bottles, which the doctor had carried away again as full as he brought them. He had paid handsomely for the rice, the ngapé, the pickled tea which he could not eat, and over which his entertainers had enjoyed a high old time while their guest's butterfly soul was wandering about the world, at sport with other butterfly spirits, leaving its lawful owner unconscious upon his mat.