"I always used to say, 'When my ship comes home,' I'd have this or that. Well, here is the ship—mine and Jasmine's, and it has come Home for me, and for Jasmine, too, I hope."
Stafford looked out over the veld. He saw the light of the sun, the joy of summer, the flowers, the buoyant hills, where all the guns were silent now; he saw a blesbok in the distance leaping to join its fellows of a herd which had strayed across the fields of war; he felt that stir of vibrant life in the air which only the new lands know; and he raised his head with the light of resolve growing in his eyes.
"Don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian Stafford," Alice Tynemouth had said.
Looking round, he saw men whose sufferings were no doubt as great as his own or greater; but they were living on for others' sakes. Despair retreated before a woman's insight.
"The Alpine fellow" wanted to live now.
CHAPTER XXXV
AT BRINKWORT'S FARM
"What are you doing here, Krool?" The face of the half-caste had grown more furtive than it was in the London days, and as he looked at Stafford now, it had a malignant expression which showed through the mask of his outward self-control.
"I am prisoner," Krool answered thickly.