FullReads

“You’ve had a plenty, sir, seemin’ to me,” answered up the landlady, while the company tittered.

“And is this the way”–Billy stood up very dignified–“is this the way to welcome home a man who bled for his country? Is this your gratitude to a man who’s spent ten o’ the best years of his life in slavery while you’ve been diggin’ taties?” I can’t tell you why potatoes ran so much in the poor fellow’s head; but they did, and he seemed to see the hoeing of them almost in the light of a personal injury. He spat on the floor. “And as for you, madam, these here boots of mine have tramped thousands of miles, and I shake off their dust upon you,” he says.

“I wish you’d confine yourself to that, with your dirty habits!” the landlady answered up again, but Billy marched out with great dignity which was only spoiled by his mistaking the shadow across the doorway for a raised step. He didn’t forget to slam the door after him; but he did forget to take leave of Harry Cornish, who had walked so far out of his way in pure friendliness.

For the first mile or so, what with his anger and the fresh air, Billy had a to-do to keep his pins and fix his mind on the road. But by-and-by his brain cleared a bit, and when he reached the hill over Ardevora, and saw the lights of the town below him, his mood changed, and he sat down on the turf of the slope with tears in his eyes.

“There you be,” said he, talking to the lights, “and here be I; and somewheres down amongst you is the dear maid I’ve come to marry. Not much welcome for me in Ardevora, I b’law, though I do love every stone of her streets. But there’s one there that didn’ forget me in my captivity, and won’t despise me in these here rags. I wish I’d seen Abe’s face when I jumped aboard the boat. Poor old Abe!–but all’s fair in love and war, I reckon. He can’t be here till to-morrow at earliest, so let’s have a pipe o’ baccy on it.”

He lit up and sucked away at his pipe, still considering the lights in the valley. Somehow they put him in mind of Abe, and how in the old days he and Abe used to come on them shining just so on their way home on Saturday nights from Bessie’s Cove. Poor old mate!–first of all he pictured Abe’s chap-fallen face, and chuckled; then he began to wonder if Abe would call it fair play. But all was fair in love and war: he kept saying this over to himself, and then lit another pipe to think it out.

Well, he couldn’t; and so, after a third pipe, he pulled an old French cloak out of his knapsack and wrapped himself in it and huddled himself to sleep there on the slope of the hillside.

When he woke up the sun was shining and the smoke coming up towards him from the chimneys, and all about him the larks a-singing just as they’d carried on every fine morning since he’d left Ardevora. And somehow, though he had dropped asleep in a puzzle of mind, he woke up with not a doubt to trouble him. He hunted out a crust from his knapsack and made his breakfast, and then he lit his pipe again and turned towards Penzance. He was going to play fair.

On he went in this frame of mind, feeling like a man almost too virtuous to go to church, until by-and-by he came in sight of Nancledrea and the inn he’d left in such a hurry over night. And who should be sitting in the porchway, and looking into the bottom of a pint pot, but Abe Cummins!