Out in the highroad, a homing instinct guided his leaden feet in the direction of Hampton. And he plodded dazedly the interminable four miles that separated him from his desolate farm.
As he turned in at his own gate, he was aware of a poignant dread that pierced his numbness. And he knew it for a dread of entering the house and of finding no one to welcome him. Setting his teeth he went forward, unlocked the door and stamped into the silent kitchen.
Upon the table he dumped the paper-swathed cup he had been carrying unnoticed under his arm. Beside it he threw the little purse full of gold pieces and the wad of prize ribbons. Stepping back, his foot struck something. He looked down and saw it was a gay-colored rubber ball he had bought, months ago, for Chum--the dog"s favorite plaything.
His face twisting, Link s.n.a.t.c.hed up the ball and went out onto the steps to throw it far out of sight; that it might no more remind him of the pet who had so often coaxed him to toss it for retrieval.
Ferris hurled the ball far out into the garden. As the missile left his hand an exultant bark re-echoed through the silence of the sunset.
Chum, who had been trotting demurely up the walk, sprang gleefully in pursuit of the ball, and presently came galloping back to the dazedly incredulous Link, with the many-colored sphere of rubber between his jaws.
Chum had had no trouble at all in catching his master"s trail and following it home. He would have overtaken the slow-slouching Ferris, had he been able to slip out of the clubhouse sooner. And now it pleased him to be welcomed by this evident invitation to a game of ball.
Link gave a gulping cry and buried both hands in the collie"s ruff, staring down at the dancing dog in an agony of rapture. Then, all at once, his muscles tensed, and his newly flushed face went green-white again.
"I--I guess we got to play it square, Chum!" he muttered aloud, with something like a groan. "I was blattin" to "em, up there, how you"d made a white man of me. An" a reg"lar white man don"t keep what ain"t his own prop"ty. Come along, Chummie!"
His jaw very tense, his back painfully stiff, Link strode heavily down the lane and out into the highroad. Chum, always eager for a walk with his G.o.d, frisked about him in delight.
He had traversed the bulk of the distance to Craigswold, the dog beside him, when he remembered that he had left his horse and buggy at the livery stable there in the morning. Well, that would save his aching feet a four-mile walk home. In the meantime--
He and Chum stepped to the roadside to avoid a fast-traveling little motor car which was bearing down on them from the direction of Craigswold.
The car did not pa.s.s them. Instead, it came to a gear-racking halt close beside Ferris. Link, glancing up in dull lack of interest, beheld Gault and the latter"s daughter staring down at him.
"Chum came home," said Ferris, scowling at them. "He trailed me. Don"t lick him fer it! He"s only a dog, an" he didn"t know no better. I was bringin" him back to you."
The girl looked sharply at her father. Gault fidgeted uneasily, as he had done once or twice that afternoon in the clubhouse. And he avoided his daughter"s gaze. So she turned her level eyes on Link.
"Mr. Ferris," she said very quietly, "do you mean to say, when this dog came back to you, you were actually going to return him to us, instead of hiding him somewhere till the search was over?"
"I"m here, ain"t I?" countered Ferris defiantly.
"But why?" she insisted. "WHY?"
"Because I"m a fool, I s"pose," he growled. "I guess Chum wouldn"t care much "bout livin" with a thief. Take him up there with you on the seat.
Don"t let him fall out. An""--his voice scaling a half octave in its pain--"keep him to home after this. I ain"t no measly angel. I can"t swear I"d have the grit to fetch him back another time."
He stopped, to note a curious phenomenon. There were actually tears in the girl"s big grave eyes. Link wondered why. Then she said:
"Cavalier isn"t my father"s dog. He is mine. My father gave him to me when he bought him, last spring. Colonel Marden seemed to have forgotten that to-day. And I didn"t want to start a squabble by reminding him of it. After all, it"s my father"s affair, and mine.
n.o.body else"s. My father got me another collie last spring to take Cavalier"s place. A collie I"m ever so fond of. So I don"t need Cavalier. I don"t want him. I tried to find you to tell you so. But you had gone. So I got my father to drive me to your place. We"d have started sooner, but Cavalier got away. And we waited to look for him--to bring him along."
"Bring him along?" mutteringly echoed the blankbrained Link. "What fer?"
"Why," laughed the girl, "because your house is where he belongs and where he is going to live. Just as he has been living all summer."
Ferris caught his breath in a choked wheeze of unbelieving ecstasy.
"Gawd!" he breathed. "GAWD!"
Then, he stammered brokenly
"They--they don"t seem no right words to--to thank you in, Ma"am. But maybe you und"stand what I"d want to say if I could?"
"Yes," she said gently. "I think I understand. I understood from the minute I saw you and the dog together. That"s why I decided I didn"t want him. That"s why I--"
"An" you"ll get that thousand dollars!" cried Link, his fingers buried rapturously in Chum"s fur. "Ev"ry cent of it. I--"
"I think," interrupted the girl, winking very fast. "I think I"ve got what I wanted, already. My father doesn"t want the money either. Do you, Dad?"
"Oh, for heaven"s sake, stop rubbing it in!" fumed Gault. "Come on home! It"s getting cold. I ought to thank the Lord for not having you anywhere near me in Wall Street, girl! You"d send me under the hammer in a week."
He kicked the accelerator, and the little car whizzed off in the twilight.
"Chum," observed Ferris, gaping after it. "Chum, I guess the good Lord built that gal the same day He built YOU. If He did--well, He sure done one grand day"s work!"
CHAPTER IV.
The Choice
Luck had come at last to the Ferris farm. Link"s cash went into improvements on the place, instead of going into the deteriorating of his inner man. And he worked the better. A sulky man is ever p.r.o.ne to be an inefficient man. And Link no longer sulked.
All this-combined with a wholesale boom in local agriculture, and especially in truck gardening--had wrought wonders in Link"s farm and in Link"s bank account. Within three years of Ferris"s meeting with Chum the place"s last mortgage was wiped out and a score of needed repairs and improvements were installed. Also the man had a small but steadily growing sum to his credit in a Paterson savings bank.
Life on the farm was mighty pleasant, nowadays. Work was hard, of course, but it was bringing results that made it more than worth while.
Ferris and his dog were living on the fat of the land. And they were happy.
Then came the interruption that had been inevitable from the very first.
A taciturn and eternally dead-broke man, in a rural region, need not fear intrusion on his privacy. Convivial folk make detours round him, as if he were a mud puddle. Thriftier and more respectable neighbors eye him askance or eye him not at all.
But when a meed of permanent success comes to such a man he need no longer be lonely unless he so wills. Which is not cynicism, but common sense. The convivial element will still fight shy of him. But he is welcomed into the circle of the respectable.
So it was with Link Ferris. Of old he had been known as a shiftless and harddrinking mountaineer with a sour farm that was plastered with mortgages. Now, he had cleared off his mortgages and had cleaned up his farm; and he and his home exuded an increasing prosperity.
People, meeting him in the nearby village of Hampton or at church, began to treat him with a consideration that the long-aloof farmer found bewildering.
Yet he liked it rather than not; being at heart a gregarious soul. And with gruff friendliness he met the advances of well-to-do neighbors who in old days had scarce favored him with a nod.
The gradual change from the isolated life of former years did not make any sort of a hit with Chum. The collie had been well content to wander through the day"s work at his master"s heels; to bring in the sheep and the cattle from pasture; to guard the farm from intruders--human or otherwise.
In the evenings it had been sweet to lounge at Link"s feet, on the little white porch, in the summer dusk; or to lie in drowsy content in front of the glowing kitchen stove on icy nights when the gale screeched through the naked boughs of the dooryard trees and the snow scratched hungrily at the window panes.
Now, the dog"s sensitive brain was aware of a subtle alteration. He did not object very much to the occasional visits at the house of other farmers and townsfolk during the erstwhile quiet evenings, although he had been happier in the years of peaceful seclusion.
But he grieved at his master"s increasingly frequent absences from home. Nowadays, once or twice a week, Link was wont to dress himself in his best as soon as the day"s work was done, and fare forth to Hampton for the evening.