The old fellow gulped, wheeled about to hide his eyes and leant forward with his face in his hands. Lyman slipped a bank note between his fingers and without saying a word went up stairs. At breakfast the next morning, which was the day of the reunion of the gallant home guard, old Jasper was full of life and hope, but that night when Lyman came home, he found him leaning on the gate, unable to find the latch. "I'm all right," he said.
"I believe you are," Lyman replied.
"Am, for a fact. I promised to come in good shape. Here, all right."
Lyman managed to get him to bed without disturbing anyone, but later at night he heard the women lashing him with their tongues. He knew that there was justice in the lashing and he dreaded lest they should cut at him for abetting the crime, but they did not, for at breakfast they smiled at him, doubtless not having discovered his complicity. The old man was heart-sick. "I want to see you," he said to Lyman, and leading him into the sitting-room, continued: "I have said it before, I know, but I want to say it now once for all that I'll never touch another drop as long as I live. Why, confound my old hide, don't I know exactly what it will do for me; and do you think I'll deliberately make a brute of myself? I won't, that's all. It's all right to bring the past back, that is, for a man who can do it, but it isn't for me, I tell you that. And I don't want to see those home guards any more. Why, if they had taken my advice, do you suppose they would have surrendered without firing a gun? They wouldn't. I argued with them and swore at them, but they stacked their guns; and then what could I do but surrender? That's neither here nor there, though—I'm never goin' to drink another drop. Oh, I've said it before—I know that, but it sticks, this time."
CHAPTER XXXI.
There Came a Check.
Lyman's book met with a favor that no one had ventured to forecast. It did not touch the public's fad-nerve; it was too close to the soil for that. It was so simple, with an art so sly, with a humor that, like an essence, so quietly stole the senses, that the reviewers did not arise in resentment against it. They had expected nothing and were surprised to find much. Worn out with heavy volumes from the pens of the learned and the pretentious, they seemed to find in this little book a rest, a refuge for reverie, cooled with running water and sheltered by leaves from the burning sun. And at night, when the author lay down to rest and to muse upon himself, his heart did not beat with the exultant throb of victory—it was full of a melancholy gratitude. One morning a letter startled him. It came from a great periodical and enclosed a check in payment for a serial story. It represented more money than he had ever hoped to possess; he called Warren, and handed him the piece of paper.
"I can hardly trust my eyes," he said. "What do you make of it?"