In March a very exciting letter came from Henty.
"Dear Evan," it read, "wire me at once. Tell me if you'll come. I mean to British Columbia. The Nicola Valley is awaiting our arrival. There is a homestead there for each of us. My father will give me five hundred dollars, and I'll share with you, on a loan for life, if you'll come. A fellow only needs to pay ten dollars cash and hold down the land six months a year for three years, and make 'reasonable improvements.' I understand they are very lenient about improvements. Our five hundred dollars will look after that part of it. The soil is very fertile. I'm taking a cow with me and a clucking hen. In the winter months we can get a job bookkeeping or lumbering; or if our crop of onions turns out well this summer we won't need to work at all in winter. Wire. Don't let anything penetrate your nut for the next few hours but the word 'wire.' I must know. Don't let money keep you; if you need some, wire. What I have said goes, if you will come. A. P."
Evan was sitting in the elevated when he read the letter. It had come as he started to work and he had not had time to stop and read it at his lodging. Again at the Bridge he read it. Around him the crowds were surging, rushing to work with that morning vigor that looks as though it would last forever. The merry throng about Evan seemed like his friends; the thought that he should leave them made him lonesome. What would he do without the morning paper? Where would he buy peppermint chocolates at twenty-five cents a pound? Even more trivial questions than these occupied his mind.
Stuffing the letter in his pocket, he boarded the up-town L, and got off at Twenty-third Street. The Metropolitan tower looked disdainfully at him: it was the New York flag-pole, and he was about to desert the colors. At noon-hour he sat in the little restaurant on Twentieth Street West. He had the letter memorized by this time, but he drew a bank-book from his pocket to make sure he was familiar with its contents. Yes, the eighty dollars were still there.
After work he was tired. He was always tired after a day's office work. The hour before supper was always one of yawning, of hurry, dust and reflection. Taking the subway down to the Bridge, he wedged up the steps between two foreigners who had been regaling themselves with garlic, and looked wistfully at Loft's. There was a candy-fiend in his stomach crying for food. He was half way to the candy-shop when he overcame the evil one with a sweet tooth; he turned back toward the Bridge, but seeing a crowd in one of the newspaper offices, stepped in. His ear caught the click of a telegraph instrument. He forgot the crowd gazing at new aeroplane models, and found himself again on Park Row. The ten-thousands faded from before his sight, the yapping of newsies died away, there was no dust and no yawning: he saw a green valley and heard the birds; he saw Henty in chaps astride of a pony; and a shanty loomed up. The blood of Grandpa Nelson bubbled in his veins; he was a proud son of Adam, doing business direct with Nature. There was no car to catch on the morrow, and no hash-house to patronize. His horses neighed to him, and he heard the sizzle of frying ham in a clean frying-pan.
The telegraph instrument continued to click in the young book-keeper's ears. He looked once more on the throng around him: it was the evening throng—tired, nervous, hateful. Men climbed in the cars ahead of pale, helpless girls; an old lady clung to the unwilling arm of a convict-faced son; and a little newsboy cried brokenheartedly in the gutter. Tiny girls wrestled with bundles of papers; a bald magnate cursed his chauffeur for refusing to run down a dog and save time; and a policeman chased half a dozen naked urchins who were puddling in City Hall Fountain. When one is tired these things jar on him. The telegraph still ticked in Evan's ear; the valleys still stretched before his imagination. He was aware, now, of a discord in the music of his dreaming: it was the noise around him, the shouting, the brutal rush. He turned toward Broadway.
Evan had made up his mind. He wired Henty that he would go to British Columbia. He asked A. P. to reply by day-message to Twenty-third Street.
About noon next day the answer came: "Meet me in Buffalo in two days, if possible. I will be staying at my cousin's, — Forest Avenue. If necessary I can wait a week for you."
But it was not necessary. Evan had no difficulty in getting away from his position. The cashier was disappointed, but he did his best to hide it; Evan heard him remark to the assistant cashier:
"When we do land a good man he gets offered more elsewhere. If I wasn't afraid of the boss I'd raise Nelson to twenty-five dollars rather than lose him."