Chapter 23 - Page 2

always came back to him clearly when he called them up in thought. He called them up often during these days in which he was pondering as to what it was best to decide to do.

"It's the boy who brings her back so," he told himself. "Good Lord, how near she seems! The grass has been growing over her for many a year, and I'm an old fellow, but she looks just as she did then."

The world beyond the mountains did not allure him. It was easier to sit and see the sun rise and set within the purple boundary than to face life where it was less simple, and perhaps less kindly. It was from a much less advanced and concentrated civilisation he had fled in his youth, and the years which had passed had not made him more fitted to combat with what was more complex.

"Trading for butter and eggs over the counter of a country store, and discussing Doty's corn crop and Hayworth's pigs hasn't done anything particular towards fitting me to shine in society," he said. "It suits me well enough, but it's not what's wanted at a ball or a cabinet minister's reception." And he shook his head. "I'd rather stay where I am--a darned sight."

But the murmuring voices went on near him, and little bursts of laughter rang out, or two figures wandered about the garden, and his thoughts always came back to one point--a point where the sun seemed to shine on things and surround them with a dazzling radiance.

"Yes, it's all very well for me," he concluded more than once. "It's well enough for me to sit down and spend the rest of my life looking at the mountains and watching summer change into winter; but they are only beginning it all--just beginning."

So one night he left his chair and went out and walked between them in the moonlight, a hand resting on a shoulder of each.

"See," he said, "I want you two to help me to make up my mind."

"About going away?" asked Rupert, looking round at him quickly.

"Yes. Do you know we may have a pretty hard time? We've no money. We should have to live scant enough, and, unless we had luck, we might come back here worse off than we left."

"But we should have tried, and we should have been on the other side of the mountains," said Sheba.

"So we should," said Tom, reflectively. "And there's a good deal in seeing the other side of the mountains when people are young."

Sheba put her hand on his and looked at him with a glowing face.

"Uncle Tom," she said, "oh, let us go!"

"Uncle Tom," said Rupert, "I must go!"

The line showed itself between his black brows again, though it was not a frown. He put his hand in his pocket and held it out, open, with a solitary twenty-dollar bill lying in it.

"That's all