“And away went Doddie.
“I was not sorry to rest awhile; the fireside was so pleasant, and the room all so cheerful. The hostess, a fragile little fair-haired body, who must have been bewitchingly pretty a few years back, and who did not look a bit like a fanner’s wife, brought in a tray laden with bread, cheese, and butter, and a mug of home-brewed beer.
“To have refused partaking of this cheer would have been most unmannerly. I did justice to it, therefore, and we soon got quite friendly. Two hours passed very quickly indeed; then I was startled to hear the wind howling in the chimney, and the rain beating against the panes.
“‘I knew it was coming,’ said my host, whose name, I found, was Morris. ‘That is one reason I asked you in; the other was,’—here he smiled very pleasantly—‘a selfish one—I don’t have a talk with a gentleman once in a month. Mary, fill our mugs again—it’s only home-brewed, sir—and I’ll tell the gentleman why we love old Doddie so.’
“Mary sat by the fire quietly knitting, while Mr Morris told me the following particulars of old Doddie.
“‘Been a rover all my life,’ he began, ‘till three years ago, when Mary’s father brought us home here to his native place, bought this little farm for us, then died—poor old soul! He’d been a farmer out in Mexico, but didn’t save much. Like myself, he seemed but to live to prove the truth of the proverb that a rolling stone never gathers moss. But he was never such a rolling stone as I, sir. Bless you! no. I’ve been everything—Oxford graduate, coffee-planter, actor, soldier, trapper, miner, ne’er-do-weel. Eh, Mary?’
“Mary merely smiled, but she gave him one kindly glance that spoke volumes.
“‘Well, sir, my story—and it is short enough I mean to make it—commences, anyhow, in my trapper days, and there are two things it proves: the first is, that even a redskin can be grateful; and the second is, that Tom Morris has been a lucky dog, and drawn, at all events, one trump card in his day.
“‘I was living in a log hut in one of the wildest parts of the north-west of Mexico, and had been for nearly a year. The hut didn’t belong to me. There was nobody in it but a half-starved dog when I came upon it, so I just took quiet possession; but the owner never returned, and from stains of a very suspicions colour all about the doorway, I guessed he had been killed and robbed by the Indians.
“‘I had an idea there was gold somewhere thereabout. I had this idea from the very first, and I wasn’t altogether wrong. I found enough to cause me to stay on and on. I spent most of my time prospecting among the hills, the forests, and the canons, killing enough game and enough fish to keep me alive, with the help of a few sweet potatoes that grew in a patch close by the hut.