_Barbara and Dan at Home._
After wishing Godspeed to her venturesome husband, Barbara, with Andy’s
Dan, was returning to their little homestead. Barbara sat upright in
the wagon, now and then glancing backward over her shoulder toward
the railroad station they had just left behind. This act she quickly
excused by an attempt to arrange the shawl which she held tightly
clasped about her. No tears were in her eyes when she bade farewell
to her husband. Believing it to be her wifely duty to sustain him in
the extraordinary undertaking he was engaging in, she had strengthened
her courage to meet the final parting. From the neighbors’ gossip she
had come to understand that the chances were many that he might never
return to her alive, and she had said to him: “Do not stay to starve
in the mountains. Come away home, mun; there is nae place better than
Glengarry to dee in.” And he promised her to return.
Andy’s Dan, faithful in his simple devotion to his brother, had
understood only in a vague sort of way the cause for his leaving home
and the reasons which made it necessary to sell the stock of the farm,
which for years he had loved as his only companions. They were gone,
taken from him, and so was his brother and protector. For weeks after
Andy’s departure he would be seen each evening at sunset, leaning over
the pair of horse bars at the back of the house, gazing absently toward
the western horizon. In that silence, too sacred to be disturbed, the
expression upon his soulful face answered all questions of the curious.
Time wore slowly along at the farm on the “Nole.” Barbara each day
went industriously about her housework, and just as if her husband had
been home and the care of the dairy was still necessary, she washed
and rubbed to a polish the milk pans, and stood them on edge upon the
bench at the side of the woodshed, to glisten in the sun. At evening
time, Andy’s Dan would regularly take from its hiding-place on the
sill under the slanting roof of the milk-shed the crooked staff, and
whistling for his faithful collie dog, go down the lane to the pasture,
calling to the imaginary herd of cattle feeding upon the sloping
hills, then sadly return with the one lone cow reserved by Andy for
the faithful watchers left at home. The Summer advanced, and he mowed
the grass and weeds from the dooryards and dug down to the roots of
the pesky burdocks growing about the fences which inclosed the unused
farm-yards. Then as Autumn approached, poor Andy’s Dan silently awaited
the return of his beloved brother to commence again at harvest time the
duties of the husbandman.
[Illustration]