“Mother,” said March, after a short pause that had succeeded an unusually long burst, “do you know it’s only a few months since I left you to go to this trip to the mountains?”
“I know it well, my son,” replied the widow, smiling at the question.
“And do you know,” he continued, “that it seems to me more like five years? When I think of all that I’ve heard and all that I’ve done, and all that I’ve seen, it seems to me as if it had took—as if it must have took—five years to have heard and done and seen it all in?”
“And yet,” said the widow musingly, “you failed to see the Wild Man o’ the West after all.”
“Mother, I’ll be angry with you if you say that again.”
“Well, I won’t,” she replied, taking his hand in hers and stroking it. “Tell me again, March, about Dick of the Cave and his little girl. I like to hear about them; they were so kind to you, and that Dick, from your account, seems to be such a fine fellow: tell me all about them over again.”
“I will, mother,” said March, clearing his throat, and commencing in a tone that showed clearly his intention of going on indefinitely.
Widow Marston’s cottage had a pretty, comfortable-looking flower garden behind it. In front the windows looked out upon a portion of the native woods which had been left standing when the spot for the settlement was cleared. In the back garden there was a bower which the widow’s brother, the blacksmith, had erected, and the creepers on which had been planted by the widow’s own hand when she was Mary West, the belle of the settlement. In this bower, which was a capacious one, sat a number of sedate, quiet, jolly, conversable fellows, nearly all of whom smoked, and one of whom sketched. They were our friends Redhand, Bounce, Big Waller, Gibault, Hawkswing, and Bertram.
It is observable among men who travel long in company together in a wild country, that, when they return again to civilised, or to semi-civilised life, they feel a strong inclination to draw closer together, either from the force of habit, or sympathy, or both. On reaching Pine Point the trappers, after visiting their friends and old chums, drew together again as if by a species of electrical attraction. In whatever manner they chanced to spend their days, they—for the first week at least—found themselves trending gradually each evening a little before sunset to a common centre.
Widow Marston was always at home. March Marston was always with his mother—deep in his long-winded yarns. The bower was always invitingly open in the back garden; hence the bower was the regular rendezvous of the trappers. It was a splendid evening that on which we now see them assembled there. The sun was just about to set in a flood of golden clouds. Birds, wildfowl, and frogs held an uproarious concert in wood and swamp, and the autumnal foliage glowed richly in the slanting beams as it hung motionless in the still atmosphere.