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There was a chuckle of sheer joy, so abrupt and unexpected that it rose with a clatter and a cackle of delight, and culminated in a yell of pleasurable derision.

Now everybody knew that the horses bought in that wild country would, unless restrained, return every spring to “their old grass,” as it was called,–to the places where they had formerly lived. When this annual hegira took place in large numbers, some permanent losses were sure to ensue. The settlers at Blue Lick had experienced this disaster, and had accepted it as partly the result of their own lack of precaution during the homing fancy of the horses. But since the herders manifested so little of the suavity that graces commercial intercourse, and as some of the horses had been seen in their cow-pens, it was a happy thought to feather the arrow with this taunt.

“And who do you suppose will promise to carry such a message to those desperate, misguided men, riding hither an’ thither, searching this wild and woeful wilderness for hundreds o’ head o’ cattle lost like needles in a hayrick, and eat by wolves an’ painters by this time?” demanded “X” derisively.

“I promise, I promise!–and with hearty good will, too!” declared Emsden. “And I’ll tell ’em that we are coming down soon armed to the teeth to guard our pack-train, and fight our way through any resistance to its passage through the country on the open trading-path. And I’ll acquaint the commandant of Fort Prince George of the threats of the herders against the Blue Lick Stationers, and warn him how he attempts to interfere with the liberties of the king’s loyal subjects in their peaceful vocations.”

Thus Emsden gayly volunteered for the mission.

The next morning old Richard Mivane, thinking of it, shook his head over the fire,–and not only once, but shook it again, which was a great deal of trouble for him to take. Having thus exerted his altruistic interest to the utmost, Richard Mivane relapsed into his normal placidity. He leaned back in his arm-chair, the only one at the station, fingering his gold-lined silver snuffbox, with its chain and ladle, his eyes dwelling calmly on the fire, and his thoughts busy with far away and long ago.

He was old enough now to enter into the past as a sort of heritage, a promised land which memory had glozed with a glamour that can never shine upon the uncertain aspects of the future. The burning sense of regret, the anguish of nostalgia, the relinquishment of an accustomed sphere, its prospects and ideals, the revolt against the uncouth and rude conditions of the new status, the gradual reluctant naturalization to a new world,–these were forgotten save as the picturesque elements of sorrow and despair that balanced the joys, the interest, the devil-may-care joviality, the adventure, the strange wild companionship,–all that made the tale worth rehearsing in the flare and the flicker of the fireside glow.

The rains had come. The dark slate-tinted clouds hung low over the station, but every log house, freshly dight with whitewash of the marly clay, after the Indian method, still shone in the shadow as if the sun were upon it. The turf was green, despite the passing of many feet, and where a slight depression held water, a few ducks, Carolina bred, were quacking and paddling about; now and then these were counted with great interest, for they had a trick of taking to the woods with others of their kind, and relapsing to savagery,–truly distressing to the domestic poultry prospects of the station. The doors of the Mivane cabin were all ajar,–the one at the rear opening into a shed-room, unfloored, which gave a vista into more sheds, merely roofed spaces, inclosed at either end. A loom was in the shed-room, and at it was seated on the bench in front, as a lady sits at an organ, the mistress of the house, fair but faded, in a cap and a short gown and red quilted petticoat, giving some instruction, touching an intricate weave, to a negro woman, neatly arrayed in homespun, with a gayly turbaned head, evidently an expert herself, from the bland and smiling manner and many self-sufficient and capable nods with which she perceived and appropriated the knotty points of the discourse.