With a tendency toward becoming a drunkard when he left home, John Appleton had not developed into one, either during his long experience as a soldier, or later in western Mexico. There was nothing unexplainable in this. Certain men of a certain quality, worried and hampered, are liable to resort to stimulants; the same sort of men, unhampered, need no stimulants at all. To such as these pure air and nature are stimulants sufficient. Whoever heard of a drunken pioneer and facer of natural difficulties, from Natty Bumpo of imagination to Kit Carson of reality? John Appleman as a soldier did not drink. As a half idler in Guaymas he tried, casually, _mescal_ and _aguardiente_ and all Mexican intoxicants, but cast them aside as things unnecessary. More years passed, and finally fear of Mrs. Appleman became to an extent attenuated, while the scent of the clover-blossoms gained intensity. And one morning in April, of the good year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four, John Appleman said to himself: "I am going home to take the consequences. The old lady"--thus honestly he spoke to himself--"can't be any worse than this hunger in me. I am going to Michigan." So he started from Guaymas. He had very little money. The straightening up of affairs showed him to possess only about four hundred dollars to the good, but he started gallantly, shirking in his mind the meeting, but overpowered by the homing instinct, the instinct which leads the carrier-pigeon to its cot. Meanwhile there had been living and change upon the farm. Mother and daughter, left together, existed comfortably for some years, with the aid of the one hired man. The war over, the wife waited patiently the return of the husband from whom no letter had come for a long time, but who she knew was still alive, learning this from returning members of his company, who had told of his good services. She had learned later of his companionship with the Confederate group under Shelby; but as time passed and no word came, doubt grew upon her. She wrote to some of the leaders of that wild campaign, and learned from their kindly answers that her husband had been lost from them somewhere in Mexico. Both she and her daughter finally decided that he must have met death. In 1867 Mrs. Appleman put on mourning, and she and Jane, the daughter, settled down into the management of their own affairs.