The Soldier of the Valley | Page 8

come at all. It was best, to have gone away, else I had never known the joy of the return, and I was pretty sure to stay, now that I was home, but if they fancied me dozing away my life at the store stove they were mistaken; not that I scorned the learned discussion there, but the frosts were coming soon to stir up sluggish blood, and when the guns were barking in the woods, and the hounds were baying along the ridges, I would be with them.
I looked right at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting speech. I knew it when our eyes met.

III
The gate latch clicked. From the road Henry Holmes called a last good-night, and Tim and I were alone. We sat in silence, watching through the window the old man's lantern as he swung away toward home. Then the light disappeared and without all was black. The village was asleep.
By the stove lay my hound, Captain, snoring gently. He had tried to keep awake, poor beast! For a time he had even struggled to hold one eye open and on his master, but at last, overcome by weariness, his head snuggled farther and farther down into his fore paws, and the tired tail ceased its rhythmic beating on the floor.
What is home without a dog! Captain is happy. He smiles gently as he sleeps, and it seems that in that strange dog-dreamland he and I are racing over the ridges again, through the nipping winds, on the trail of a fox or a rabbit. His master is home. He has wandered far to other hunting grounds, but now that the tang is in the air that foretells the frost and snow, he has come again to the dog that never misses a trail, the dog that never fails him.
The hound raised his head and half opened one eye. He was sure that I was really there, and the gleam of white teeth showed a broadening dog-smile. And once more we were away on the dreamland trail--Captain and I.
"He's been counting the days till you got home, Mark," said Tim, holding a burning match over my pipe. "It was a bit lonely here, while you were gone, so Captain and I used to discuss your doings a good deal after the rest of the place had gone to bed. And as for young Colonel, why he's heard so much of you from Captain there, I'm afraid he'll swallow you when he gets at you in the morning."
Young Colonel was the puppy the returning soldier had never seen. He had come long after I had gone away, and as yet I knew him only by his voice, for I had heard his dismal wails down in the barn. In the excitement of the evening I had forgotten him, but now I raised a warning finger and listened, thinking that I might catch the appealing cry. And is there any cry more appealing than that of a lonely puppy? There was not a sound outside, and I turned to Tim.
My brother lighted his pipe, and leaned back in his chair, and looked at me. I looked at him very, very hard. Then we both began to blow clouds of smoke in each other's faces. Hardly a word had Tim and I passed since that day in the field when I drew the long twig that sent me away and left him behind to keep our home. What a blessing a pipe is at a time like this! Tim says more by the vigor of his smoking than Perry Thomas could express in a year's oration. So we enshrouded our emotions in the gray cloud; but if he did not speak, I knew well what he would be saying, and the harder I puffed the easier did he divine what was uppermost in my mind. For we were brothers! This was the same room that for years had been our world; this the same carpet over which we had tumbled together at our mother's feet. There was the same cupboard that had been our mountain; here the same chairs that formed our ridges and our valleys. At the table by my side, by the light of this very lamp, we sat together not so very long ago, boys, spelling out with our father, letter by letter, word by word, the stories of the Bible. Here we had lived our little lives; here we were to live what was to come; and where life is as simple as it