[Illustration]
Thereafter at station after station, a tall, gaunt man may have been
seen handling baggage, running errands, caring for the cattle, doing
any sort of work, no matter how humble, that lay to his hand, making
his way slowly, wearily but steadily on toward the South.
Seth, working his way home to Celia.
He slept in baggage cars, on cattle trains. He swung to steps of
trains moved off and clung there between brief stations. He stopped
over at small towns and earned his bread at odd jobs, bread and
sufficient money sometimes to move on steadily for a day or two.
Strange weathers burned and bit him. He walked heavily in the path of
the wind overhung by pale clouds. He slept under the stars out in the
open.
It was days before he passed the plains, the place of the sleepless
winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry
pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its
dirge of death and decay.
It was weeks before he reached Kansas City, the city of hills, with
lights hung high and lights hung low. Here he found a place as
brakeman and worked his way into Missouri.
Here it was as if an ocean steamer had suddenly stopped the whir of
its wheels at the approach of the pilot come out from shore to tug it
in.
The wind had stopped blowing.
The position was only temporary. Another brakeman taking his place,
Seth walked.
He was not sorry to walk in this quiet land. How tenderly green the
shrubbery was, how beautiful! Mingled with the darker green of the
cedar and pine, the brown green of the cone.
How sweet the slow green trees! Not windswept! Not torn by the wild,
wet fingers of the wind, not lashed with hot and scathing fingers gone
dry with drought, but still and peaceful.
A sleepy world of streams it was, a sleepy world of streams and sweet
green trees among whose leaflets gentle zephyrs breathed scarcely
perceptible sighs of pure contentment.
Patiently, contentedly, he walked mile after mile through this
beautiful Missouri which was so like home, among these tall, sighing
trees, under the protection of their great still umbrella-like heads,
thinking of his dream Celia, whom he was so soon to see.
The absence of the wind had left his brain clear. Since it was so
short a time until his dream was to become a reality, no longing or
heartache served to set his brain afire with the agony of despair.
Calmly he walked in the white straight rain among the tender trees,
his tired brain clear, thinking of her.
How would she receive him?
Surely, in spite of his empty-handedness, she would greet him lovingly
because of their long separation and the death of the child. Surely
she would receive him lovingly because of the endless days that had
divided them. Those days! Those days! But he refused to let his mind
dwell on the deadly length of them. It might sadden again.
In the world, he reasoned, there were those two only, Celia and
himself. Should they not cling together?
True, he would arrive empty-handed, but he could make a living for her
and himself in the old town. He was not without friends there. There
were those who had loved him in the olden time. They would give him
work. They would help him build up his lost fortunes. He would spend
his life in retrieving, in compensating to Celia for the foolish years
that he had spent dreaming dreams.
In St. Louis he remained for weeks, working about the station in the
effort to earn enough for his ride to Cincinnati. At length he
succeeded, but on an emigrant train.
He rode for a day, looking out the window at the landscape swimming by
rather than at his wild-eyed companions, crowded together like sheep.
At the end of the day he arrived at Cincinnati.
And then Seth came into--into God's country.