Jack said nothing. He simply withdrew his hand and took a seat beside his father, against whom he leaned, his big brown eyes, under long lashes, studiously regarding the visitor. The boy was remarkably beautiful. His golden-brown hair was as fine as cobwebs; his forehead was high and broad; his features were regular; his limbs slender and well-shaped. An experienced physiognomist would have known that he possessed a sensitive, artistic temperament. Paul heard little of the casual talk that was going on. His elation clung to him like an abiding reality. The sunshine lay on the grass before the open door. The lambent air was full of the sounds peculiar to the boyhood which had seemed so far behind him and yet had returned. Hens were clucking as they scratched the earth and made feints at pecking food left uncovered for their chirping broods. Waddling ducks and snowy geese, with flapping wings, screamed one to another, and innumerable bird-notes far and near, accompanied by the rat-tat of the woodpecker, were heard. A donkey was braying. A peacock with plumage proudly spread stalked majestically across the grass, displaying every color of the rainbow in his dazzling robe. Breakfast over, Hoag led Paul into the old-fashioned parlor and gave him a cigar. “I've got to ride out in the country,” he said, “an' so I may not see you again till after dark. I've been thinkin' of that proposition I sorter touched on last night. Thar ain't no reason why me'n you can't git on. We always did, in our dealin's back thar, an' I need a manager powerful bad. I paid t'other man a hundred a month an' his board throwed in, an' I'm willin' to start out with you on the same basis, subject to change if either of us ain't satisfied. It's the best an' easiest job in this county by long odds. What do you say? Is it a go?” “I'm very glad to get it,” Paul answered. “I shall remain here in the mountains, and I want to be busy. I'll do my best to serve you.” “Well, that's settled,” Hoag said, in a tone of relief. “Knock about as you like to-day, and tomorrow we'll ride around an' look the ground over.” CHAPTER IV |PAUL'S first impulse, on finding himself alone, was to walk to Grayson and look up his old friends; but so new and vivifying was his freedom from the cares which had so long haunted him that he wanted to hug the sense of it to himself still longer in solitude. So, leaving the farm-house, he went to the summit of a little wooded hill back of the tannery and sat down in the shade of the trees. In his boundless joy he actually felt imponderable. He had an ethereal sense of being free from his body, of flying in the azure above the earth, floating upon the fleecy clouds. He noticed a windblown drift of fragrant pine-needles in the cleft of a rock close by, and creeping into the cool nook like a beast into its lair, he threw himself down and chuckled and laughed in sheer delight.