"Well," said Devine, "I have a notion that it's not going to be very long before we see you back again. You have got used to us, and you're going to find the folks yonder slow. I can think of quite a few men who saved up, one or two of them for a very long while, to go home to the Old Country, and in about a month they'd had enough of it. The country was very much as they left it—but they had altered."
He stopped a moment, with a little chuckle, before he continued. "Now, there was Sandy Campbell, who ran the stamps at the Canopus for me. He never spent a dollar when he could help it, and, when he'd quite a pile of them, he told me he was just sickening for a sight of Glasgow. Well, I let him go, and that day six weeks Sandy came round to the mine again. The Old Country was badly played out, he said, but, for another month, that was all he would tell me, and then the facts came out. Sandy's friends had met him at the Donaldson wharf, and started a circus over the whisky. Somebody broke the furniture, and Sandy doubled up a policeman who, he figured, had insulted him, so they had him up for doing it before whatever they call a magistrate in that country. Sandy's remarks were printed in a Glasgow paper, and he showed it me.
"'Forty shillings. It's an iniquity,' he said. 'Is this how ye treat a man who has come six thousand miles to see his native land? I will not find ye a surety. I'm away back by the first Allan boat to a country where they appreciate me.'"
Brooke laughed. "Still, I don't quite see how Sandy's case applies to me."
"I guess it does. One piece of it, anyway. Sandy knew where he was appreciated, and we have room for a good many men of your kind in this country. That's about all I need say. When you feel like it, come right back to me."
He went out a few minutes later, and Brooke lay still thoughtfully, with his old ambitions re-awakening. There was, he surmised, a good deal of truth in Devine's observations, and work in the mountain province that he could do. Still, he felt that even to make his mark there would be no great gain to him now. Barbara could not forgive him, but she was in England, and he might, at least, see her. Whether that would be wise he did not know, and scarcely fancied so, but the faint probability had its attractions, and he would go and stay there—until he had recovered his usual vigor, at least.
It was, however, a little while before the doctors would permit him to risk the journey, and several months had passed when he stood with a kinsman and his wife on the lawn outside an old house in an English valley. The air was still and warm, and a full moon was rising above the beeches on the hillside. Its pale light touched the river, that slid smoothly between the mossy stepping-stones, and the shadows of clipped yew and drooping willow lay black upon the grass. There was a faint smell of flowers that linger in the fall, and here and there a withered leaf was softly sailing down, but that night it reminded Brooke of the resinous odors of the Western pines, and the drowsy song of the river, of the thunder of the torrent that swirled by Quatomac. His heart was also beating a trifle more rapidly than usual, and for that reason he was more than usually quiet.
"I suppose your friends will come?" he said, indifferently.
Mrs. Cruttenden, who stood close by him, laughed. "To the minute! Major Hume is punctuality itself. I fancy he will be a little astonished to-night."
"I shall be pleased to meet him again. He was to bring Miss Hume?"