The storm was over. The clouds were breaking up and dispersing, revealing patches of cerulean sky between the rifts, while, in the west, brilliant rays from the declining sun streamed in upon the hero of the day through the carriage window as he was driven out of the city toward the home of Squire Talford.
Glancing through the opposite glass he saw a radiant rainbow spanning the eastern sky, its vivid colors reflected in a second and almost as perfect as an arch. His young heart was strangely thrilled by the sight.
Was it a bow of promise to him he asked himself. Did it portend a future that would be brighter than the last four years had been, of release from a hard and cruel task-master, of a broader outlook and the opportunity to indulge the aspirations of a heart that had long been hungering for education, culture, and intellectual advancement?
Yes, he was almost sure of it, for, clasped close in his brown hands, he held the fat wallet which would at least be the stepping-stone toward the achievement of the one great desire of his heart—a college course at Harvard; and his eyes grew bright, the color came back to his cheeks and lips, and his spirits were lighter than they had been for many a long month. Then his eyes fell upon the beautiful cameo, which had been presented to him by “the prettiest girl he had ever seen,” and which he had mechanically slipped upon his little finger. But he laughed outright, as the incongruity between the costly and exquisite jewel and the hard, brown hand it graced, and the mean apparel in which he was clad, flashed upon him.
“I wish I knew her name,” he mused, as he studied the beautiful design. “What lovely eyes she had! What wonderful hair—bright as the gold of this ring. I shall always keep it. It shall be my talisman, my mascot, and sometime, when I have won a worthy position for myself in the world, I will try to find her and tell her what encouragement, what a spur both her words and gift were to me. I shall never forget what she said. Ah! if I might hope to win, by and by, the love of some one as beautiful as she! But, of course, she did not mean anything like that,” he concluded, with a sigh and deprecatory shrug of his shoulders.
When the carriage drove to the door of Squire Talford’s stately mansion, and the proud owner, who was sitting upon the veranda, saw his “bound boy” alight from it, his brow contracted with displeasure, and an angry gleam burned in his cold gray eyes.
“Well, sir, where have you been, and how does it happen that you return in such style?” he demanded, in sharp, curt tones.
Clifford Faxon colored a vivid crimson, more at the sarcastic tone than at the peremptory words. But in a respectful manner he related what had occurred, although he made as light as possible of his own agency in the matter, except in so far as it was necessary to explain that, after his unusual exertions in the hay-field and his almost herculean efforts to remove the fallen tree from the track before the arrival of the express, he was so prostrated that he had to be taken aboard the train and carried to New Haven, when some of the passengers had insisted upon sending him home in the carriage.
“Humph!” ejaculated the squire, as he concluded, and eying him sharply from beneath his heavy brows, “and was that the extent of their gratitude?”
“No, sir,” replied the youth, flushing again and glancing at the wallet in his hand. “They made up a purse for me.”