She entered and he closed the door behind her.
She laughed as he pushed its bolt. They were
drenched to the skin, the pair.
“This is best,” said she with another
soft and happy laugh.
“This is best,” he repeated after her.
“Better even than in fair weather.”
HOME-COMING.
A week later they broke camp and set forth to climb
to the head of the pass.
Behind it—so Sir Oliver had learnt from
old Strongtharm—lay an almost flat table-land,
of pine-forest for the most part, through which for
maybe half a dozen miles their river ran roughly parallel
with another that came down from the north-west.
At one point (the old fellow declared) less than
a mile divided their waters.
“Seems,” he said, “as if Nature
all along intended ’em to jine, and then, at
the last moment, changed her mind.” He
explained the cause of their severance—an
outcropping ridge of rock, not above a mile in length;
but it served, deflecting the one stream to the southward,
the other to north of east, so that they reached the
ocean a good twenty leagues apart.
He showed a map and told Sir Oliver further that at
the narrowest point between the two rivers there dwelt
a couple of brothers, Dave and Andy M’Lauchlin,
with their households and long families, of whom all
the boys were expert log-drivers, like their fathers.
They were likewise expert boatmen, and for money,
no doubt, if Sir Oliver desired, would navigate the
upper reaches of either stream for him. Of these
reaches the old man could tell little save that their
currents ran moderately— “nothing
out of the way.” The M’Lauchlins
sent all their timber down to sea by the more northerly
stream. “Our river ’d be the better
by far, three-fourths of its way, but—”
with a jerk of his thumb—“the Gap,
yonder, makes it foolishness.”
Sir Oliver asked many questions, studying the map;
and ended by borrowing it.
He had it spread on his knee when Ruth came out of
the cabin for the last time, having said farewell
to her household gods.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“A map.” He folded it away hastily.
“And I am not to see it?”
“Some day. Some day, if the owner will
sell, you shall have it framed, with our travels marked
out upon it. But, just now, it holds a small
secret.”
She questioned him no further. “Come,”
she said, “reach your arm in at the window and
draw the bolt, and afterwards we will pull the shutter
and nail it. Are you going inside for a last
look around?”
He laughed. “Why? The knapsacks
are here, ready.”
“Our home!”
“I take the soul of it with me, taking you.”
It was prettily said. Yet perversely she remembered
how he had once spoken of Margaret Dance, saying,
“Let the dead bury their dead.”
