CHAPTER XIV
A JOURNEY BEGINS
It was a five-hour trip. He dined aboard the train with little desire for food, the July evening being oppressive, and a thunder storm brewing over the Hudson. It burst in the vicinity of Fishkill with a lively display of lightning, deluging the Catskills with rain. And when he changed to a train on the Mohawk division the cooler air was agreeably noticeable.
He changed trains again at Orangeville, and here the night breeze was delightful and the scent of rain-soaked meadows came through the open car window.
It was nearly ten o’clock and already, ahead, he caught sight of the lights of Neeland’s Mills. Always the homecoming was a keen delight to him; and now, as he stepped off the train, the old familiar odours were in his nostrils—the unique composite perfume of the native place which never can be duplicated elsewhere.
All the sweet and aromatic and homely smells of earth and land and water came to him with his first deep-drawn breath. The rank growth of wild flowers and weeds were part of it—the flat atmosphere of the mill pond, always redolent of water weed and lily pads, tinctured it; distant fields of buckwheat added heavier perfume.
Neither in the quaint brick feed mill nor in the lumber mill were there any lights, but in his own home, almost buried among tall trees and vines, the light streamed from the sitting-room windows. 158
From the dark yard two or three dogs barked at him, then barked again in a different key, voicing an excited welcome; and he opened the picket gate and went up the path surrounded by demonstrative setters and pointers, leaping and wagging about him and making a vast amount of noise on the vine-covered verandah as he opened the door, let himself into the house, and shut them out.