Leighton paused.
"I never saw you again," he went on, "until that day when we met down there at the ends of the earth. Aunt Jed had sent you down there to hide you from me. Before she died she told me where you were and sent me to you. She needn't have told me to go after you.
"As you go on and meet a wider world, you will hear strange things of your father. Believe them all, and then, if you can, still remember. Don't waste love. That's a prayer and a charge. I've wasted a lot of life and self, but never a jot of love. Now go, boy. Tell them I've stayed behind for supper."
Lewis did not hurry. When he reached the homestead, it was already late. Mrs. Tuck had kept their supper hot for them. When she saw Lewis come in alone, she rushed up to him with eager questions of his father. Lewis looked with new eyes upon her kindly anxious face.
"It's all right," he said. "Dad stayed behind. He doesn't want any supper."
Mrs. Tuck looked shrewdly at him, and then turned away.
"It ain't never all right," she said half to herself, "when a man full-grown don't want his supper."
Lewis saw nothing more of his father that night. He tried to keep awake, but it was long after sleep had conquered him that Leighton came in. And during the days that followed he saw less and less of his father. Early in the morning Leighton would be up. He would eat, and then wander about the place listlessly with his cigar. His head hanging, he would wander farther and farther from the house until, almost without volition, he would suddenly strike off in a straight line across the hills.
Lewis would have noticed the desertion more had it not been for Natalie. Natalie claimed and held all his days. Together they walked and drove till Lewis had learned all the highways and byways that Natalie had long since discovered. She liked the byways best, and twice she drove through crowding brush to the foot of the lane that was barred.
"I've often come here," she said, "and I've even tried to pull those bars down, but they're solider than they look. I'm not strong enough. Will you help me some day? I want to follow that dear old mossy lane to its end, if it has one. It looks as if it led straight into the land of dreams."