EHEU FUGACES!
Sim Muzzy's tale, when he bethought himself to tell it to us, was a
lively one in its own way, although it did not, of course, compare
with our African adventures. The press-gang that set upon us in
Havana had rushed him away to a Spanish ship, where he was kicked
about and cruelly abused, until, at peril of his life, he dropped
overboard in the dark and swam to an American schooner, whose
captain, hearing his story, took him on board and hid him in the
chain-locker until they were well on their way to Boston. Thence Sim
had set out on foot for Topham, where he had hired himself once
again to tend the store and had led a dog's life ever since.
That Sim was right about Uncle Seth's bank accounts and his will,
which left all to me, I learned before sunset that very day. The
sums were not large in themselves, and taken all together they were
small enough compared with the golden dreams my poor uncle had lived
in; but they assured Faith and me of comfort at least; and when that
evening I called upon the new storekeeper and found him so eager to
escape from a town where his short measures and petty deceits had
made him unpopular and discontented, that he was not in the mood to
haggle over the bargain, I bought back the store on the spot.
"There'll be happier days ahead, Sim," said I when I came out.
"O Joe, I'm sure of that," he replied, his face bright with smiles;
for he had overheard considerable of our discussion.
Within the week the papers were signed, and before a fortnight was
up Faith and I went out, arm-in-arm, on the old hill road and saw
the men break ground for the new house that we were to build.
Whether any of the others, unknown to Faith and me, had made their
way ashore on the night of the wreck, we never learned; but it was
virtually impossible that they should have done so without revealing
themselves to those of us who had ranged all that bleak coast the
next morning. For honest Gideon North we mourned as for one of the
dearest of friends, and of the rest we thought sometimes in the
years that followed. But none of them, except our own Abe, ever came
to Topham, nor did I ever go back to the sea.
Three letters at long intervals brought us news of Arnold Lamont;
and to the address that he gave in the first we sent with our reply
a draft for the sum that he had so generously lent us when on that
wild South American shore we four had set out to begin life anew.
They were good letters, and there was no note of complaint in them;
yet as I read them and thought of the Arnold Lamont whom I had known
so long and, all things considered, so intimately, I could not but
feel that in the cities of South America and, later, of Europe he
failed, whatever compensations there may have been, to find anything
like the peace and quiet happiness that he once had found in our New
England town of Topham.
The week before the walls of our new house were raised, Faith and I
drove together along a road that I had tramped on an autumn
afternoon, to the farm where Abe Guptil had lived in the days that
now seemed so long ago. We carried with us certain papers, which
changed hands in the kitchen where Abe and his little family had
slept the night when I was their guest; and so it happened that,
when Abe returned from his voyage and came to see me at the store
full of honest joy at my good fortune, I sent him off to his own old
home with the assurance that the terms by which he was to buy it
were such that he need never fear again to lose it.
As the town of Topham has grown around us, Faith and I have grown
into the town and with it; and although the black Fantee, Paul, who
remained the most faithful of servants, was a nine days' wonder in
the village, there now are few people left, I imagine, who know all
the wild, well-nigh unbelievable, yet absolutely true, story of the
year when we first met. A royal fortune may have been lost with Seth
Upham and Neil Gleazen in Gleazen's mad quest, but I can say in all
sincerity that from his quest I gained a fortune far beyond my
deserts.
THE END
[Illustration: THE COURSE OF THE BRIG ADVENTURE]
McGrath-Sherrill Press, Boston
End of Project Gutenberg's The Great Quest, by Charles Boardman Hawes