"'Well,' I says, 'I'm just out of the hospital, and whilst I may seem husky, I need a good quiet place and a nice easy job for a while. Moreover, I'm terrible hungry.'
"'You go 'long up to the house,' he says, 'and tell the girl in the kitchen to hand you out a plate of cold meat. I'll be along in a minute.'
"And off he went to the barn, leavin' me shakin' with his jolt. He was game all right! He figured me out as the prodigal son, and wa'n't goin' to knuckle. He intended for me to do all the knee exercise. I drifted along up the path toward the kitchen.
"Judas! but it did seem nice and familiar. It was all so green and flowery after camp. There ain't a tree or a patch of green grass left in Cripple; but there, in our old yard, were lylock-trees, and rose-bushes climbin' the porch, and pinks and hollyhocks—and beehives, just as they used to set—and clover. Say, it nearly had me snifflin'. It sure did."
The memory of it rather pinched his voice as he described it, but he went on.
"Of course I couldn't live down there now—it's too low, after a man has breathed such air as this."
He looked out at the big clouds soaring round Pike's Peak.
"But the flowers and the grass they did kind o' get me. I edged round on the front side of the house, and, sure enough, there sat mother, just as she used to—in the same old chair.
"Cap, I want to tell you, I didn't play no circus tricks on her. Her head had grown white as snow and she looked kind o' sad and feeble. I began to understand a little of the worry I'd been to her. I said good evening, and she turned and looked at me. Then she opened her arms and called out my name."
His voice choked unmistakably this time, and it was a minute or two before he resumed.