The letter from Lion’s Head Farm brought back his three weeks there very vividly, and made Westover wish he was going there for the summer.  But he was going over to France for an indefinite period of work in the only air where he believed modern men were doing good things in the right way.  He W a sale in the winter, and he had sold pictures enough to provide the means for this sojourn abroad; though his lion’s Head Mountain had not brought the two hundred and fifty or three hundred dollars he had hoped for.  It brought only a hundred and sixty; but the time had almost come already when Westover thought it brought too much.  Now, the letter from Mrs. Durgin reminded him that he had never sent her the photograph of the picture which he had promised her.  He encased the photograph at once, and wrote to her with many avowals of contrition for his neglect, and strong regret that he was not soon to see the original of the painting again.  He paid a decent reverence to the bereavement she had suffered, and he sent his regards to all, especially his comrade Jeff, whom he advised to keep out of the apple-orchard.

Five years later Westover came home in the first week of a gasping August, whose hot breath thickened round the Cunarder before she got half-way up the harbor.  He waited only to see his pictures through the custom-house, and then he left for the mountains.  The mountains meant Lion’s Head for him, and eight hours after he was dismounting from the train at a station on the road which had been pushed through on a new line within four miles of the farm.  It was called Lion’s Head House now, as he read on the side of the mountain-wagon which he saw waiting at the platform, and he knew at a glance that it was Jeff Durgin who was coming forward to meet him and take his hand-bag.

The boy had been the prophecy of the man in even a disappointing degree.  Westover had fancied him growing up to the height of his father and brother, but Jeff Durgin’s stalwart frame was notable for strength rather than height.  He could not have been taller than his mother, whose stature was above the standard of her sex, but he was massive without being bulky.  His chest was deep, his square shoulders broad, his powerful legs bore him with a backward bulge of the calves that showed through his shapely trousers; he caught up the trunks and threw them into the baggage-wagon with a swelling of the muscles on his short, thick arms which pulled his coat-sleeves from his heavy wrists and broad, short hands.

He had given one of these to Westover to shake when they met, but with something conditional in his welcome, and with a look which was not so much furtive as latent.  The thatch of yellow hair he used to wear was now cropped close to his skull, which was a sort of dun-color; and it had some drops of sweat along the lighter edge where his hat had shaded his forehead.  He put his hat on the seat between himself and Westover, and drove away from the station bareheaded, to cool himself