Years passed--many years. Their life ran on in its old groove.
John toiled from early morning to sunset, as before--and yet not quite
as before. There was a difference, and Captain Tangye would, no doubt,
have perceived it long before had not Death one day come on him in an
east wind and closed his activities with a snap, much as he had so
often closed his telescope.
For a year or two after Zeke's departure, John went on enlarging his
garden-bounds, though more languidly. Then followed four or five years
during which his conquests seemed to stand still. And then little by
little, the brambles and wild growth rallied. Perhaps--who knows?--the
assaulted wilderness had found its Joan of Arc. At any rate, it stood
up to him at length, and pressed in upon him and drove him back. Year
by year, on one excuse or another, an outpost, a foot or two, would
be abandoned and left to be reclaimed by the weeds. They were the
assailants now. And there came a time when they had him at bay, a
beaten man, in a patch of not more than fifty square feet, the centre
of his former domain. "Time, not Corydon," had conquered him.
He was working here one afternoon when a boy came up the lower path
from the ferry, and put a telegram into his hands. He read it over,
thought for a while, and turned to climb the old track towards the
summer-house, but brambles choked it completely, and he had to fetch a
circuit and strike the grass walk at the head of the slope.
He had not entered the summer-house for years, but he found Hester
knitting there as usual; and put the telegram into her hands.
"Zeke is drowned." He paused and added--he could not help it--"You'll
not need to be looking out to sea any more."
Hester made as if to answer him, but rose instead and laid a hand on
his breast. It was a thin hand, and roughened with housework. With the
other she pointed to where the view had lain seaward. He turned. There
was no longer any view. The brambles hid it, and must have hidden it
for many years.
"Then what have you been thinkin' of all these days?"