Paul heard little of the casual talk that was going on. His elation clung to him like an abiding reality. The sunshine lay on the grass before the open door. The lambent air was full of the sounds peculiar to the boyhood which had seemed so far behind him and yet had returned. Hens were clucking as they scratched the earth and made feints at pecking food left uncovered for their chirping broods. Waddling ducks and snowy geese, with flapping wings, screamed one to another, and innumerable bird-notes far and near, accompanied by the rat-tat of the woodpecker, were heard. A donkey was braying. A peacock with plumage proudly spread stalked majestically across the grass, displaying every color of the rainbow in his dazzling robe.
Breakfast over, Hoag led Paul into the old-fashioned parlor and gave him a cigar. “I've got to ride out in the country,” he said, “an' so I may not see you again till after dark. I've been thinkin' of that proposition I sorter touched on last night. Thar ain't no reason why me'n you can't git on. We always did, in our dealin's back thar, an' I need a manager powerful bad. I paid t'other man a hundred a month an' his board throwed in, an' I'm willin' to start out with you on the same basis, subject to change if either of us ain't satisfied. It's the best an' easiest job in this county by long odds. What do you say? Is it a go?”
“I'm very glad to get it,” Paul answered. “I shall remain here in the mountains, and I want to be busy. I'll do my best to serve you.”
“Well, that's settled,” Hoag said, in a tone of relief. “Knock about as you like to-day, and tomorrow we'll ride around an' look the ground over.”
CHAPTER IV
PAUL'S first impulse, on finding himself alone, was to walk to Grayson and look up his old friends; but so new and vivifying was his freedom from the cares which had so long haunted him that he wanted to hug the sense of it to himself still longer in solitude. So, leaving the farm-house, he went to the summit of a little wooded hill back of the tannery and sat down in the shade of the trees. In his boundless joy he actually felt imponderable. He had an ethereal sense of being free from his body, of flying in the azure above the earth, floating upon the fleecy clouds. He noticed a windblown drift of fragrant pine-needles in the cleft of a rock close by, and creeping into the cool nook like a beast into its lair, he threw himself down and chuckled and laughed in sheer delight.
Ethel, little Ethel, who had once been his friend—who had prayed for him and wept with him in sorrow—was coming. That very day he was to see her again after all those years; but she would not look the same. She was no longer a child. She had changed as he had changed. Would she know him? Would she even remember him—the gawky farm-hand she had so sweetly befriended? No; it was likely that he and all that pertained to him had passed out of her mind. The memory of her, however, had been his constant companion; her pure, childish faith had been an ultimate factor in his redemption.
The morning hours passed. It was noon, and the climbing sun dropped its direct rays full upon him. He left the rocks and stood out in the open, unbaring his brow to the cooling breeze which swept up from the fields of grain and cotton. His eyes rested on the red road leading to the village. Wagons, pedestrians, droves of sheep and cattle driven by men on horses, were passing back and forth. Suddenly his heart sprang like a startled thing within him. Surely that was Hoag's open carriage, with Cato on the high seat in front. Yes, and of the two ladies who sat behind under sunshades the nearer one was Ethel. Paul turned cold from head to foot, and fell to trembling. How strange to see her, even at that distance, in the actual flesh, when for seven years she had been a dream! A blinding mist fell before his eyes, and when he had brushed it away the carriage had passed out of view behind the intervening trees. In great agitation he paced to and fro. How could he possibly command himself sufficiently to face her in a merely conventional way? He had met women and won their friendship in the West, and had felt at ease in good society. But this was different. Strange to say, he was now unable to see himself as other than the awkward, stammering lad clothed in the rags of the class to which he belonged.