“He just made them a little speech in gratitude, and he assures me that all the time he was speaking the tears were chasing each other adown his cheeks.”
“I cannot wonder,” I said.
“And now,” I added, “where is he off to?”
“Ah! there you have another example of his pluck and his pride,” said Captain Reeves. “He has taken a harvest; with his wages from that, and with what he made at the herring fishery, he says he will be quite opulent all winter.”
“Poor young fellow!” I remarked, “he seems hardly strong enough to wield a scythe.”
“True; but Miguel is wonderfully wiry. It is the nerve and the heart that keep young men like him up.”
“Certainly,” I said; “and luckily, as it seems, he is not ashamed of honest labour.”
“No true-hearted, no real man is ever ashamed of hard work or poverty either. It is young men like Miguel that keep this great world of ours for ever moving onward, to better things I hope and pray.”
Instead of going directly home to the manse to-night, I went to The Cañon with Captain Reeves.
There was no one here this evening save little Mina, and she and I became greater friends than ever. She even told me how old she was, seeming rather proud than otherwise that she had reached the patriarchal age of fifteen. The illuminations in the grounds on the night of my first appearance were in celebration of her birthday.