At his words the young man caught fire. He had expected criticisms, objections. The sergeant’s approval released the dreams of years. All the hopes, desires, ambitions, that for the past six years he had cherished, buried and revived again, he now poured forth into the sergeant’s sympathetic ear.
“You’ll do, my boy! You will make it go! By Jove, you will!” cried his friend, when Paul, somewhat shamefacedly and apologetically ceased his outpourings. “And remember, whenever you strike a stiff grade you have one man to back you with all he has.”
The sergeant had not forgotten his promise to McConnell, but as he thought of it he knew at once how impossible it was of fulfilment. The boy saw his way clearly. Nothing that McConnell could offer could avail to turn him from that way. What lay in it of peril or of pain, who could say, but press the path he would at all costs and at all hazards.
Thus it came that on a morning in that most glorious season of the Canadian year, the Indian summer, Paul set forth on his great adventure. It had been decided in family conclave that he would make the journey more cheaply, an important consideration for him, by horseback than by train, and more especially that the warm-hearted Irishman had insisted that he should take with him the cow-pony on which he had ridden the range for the past six months.
“It would be a shame to part yez,” he declared, “an’ next summer, please God, you can ride him back where there’ll be a job waitin’ ye, so there will.”
Long and vigorously Paul protested, but in vain.
“Tush!” said Ma McConnell to Paul in an aside, brushing away his protests. “Why not let the poor man pleasure himself in givin’ the beast till ye? An’ what’s a pony or less to McConnell?”
So provisioned and furnished till his dunnage bag and saddle bags were like to burst with their gifts, Paul stood ready to take his departure. They all made light of the leaving. In a few months he would be back again, and besides, as Ma McConnell declared, what was to hinder them taking a bit of a jaunt to the city themselves during the winter? Indeed, they had long planned such a trip, and as for Molly, Pa was just sayin’ how she ought to get a chance at her schoolin’ and her music for a bit. So he might be on the lookout for them any day.
“Molly, where are ye thin? Och, the poor child! Ye’ll jist excuse her. It’s broken hearted she is at the leavin’.”
“Say good-bye to her for me,” said Paul. “And good-bye, Mrs. McConnell. You have been awfully good to me. I shall never forget you.”