1868.]
DALLAS GALBRAITH.
you don't know his history.
There is
no sham about him." “I understand.” Mr. Galbraith spoke nervously, with an unusual repressed ex citement in his thin face. “ But I should like to have taken the boy by the hand. I hope you will be kind to him, Pritch ard ?H
“ N0 fear. Well, good-bye. That is a new specimen of acacia in your bou quet. Oh, many thanks! Good-bye. Come, Galbraith.” As Dallas sprang into the buggy and they drove away, the spare military figure on horseback was the last that he saw. It seemed to typify the life and kindred on which he had turned his back. We see ourselves and our neigh bors as we are but two or three times in life, and then with electric, irrevocable insight. This old graybeard, with his delicate fingers and sad, sensitive eyes,
that would look on the wealth and edu cation for which Dallas schemed with long-used indifference, was a something which the young man never could be come. He sat silent beside Dr. Pritch ard until they had driven a mile or two, and then, stooping, began to finger the package of tools without which the Pro fessor never traveled. “ You like your trade, Galbraith? Not sorry to give civilization the good-bye for a while, eh ?” “I suppose a man cannot serve two
masters P” “ Not such a man as you.” “ Then I like my trade.” He took up the flowers which the Doctor had let fall. He was sure that Honora had cut them for her uncle, and touched them with a blush like a boy, as
though their leaves had been her cheeks and hair. She might belong to the same
593
Doctor Pritchard drew up his horse: “ There is the Galbraith homestead. Take your last look at it. You are a branch of that stock, I believe?” “ More of kin than of kind,” said Dallas, under his breath. But the Doctor caught the words: “ Oh, of course. But a man’s no less a man on account of difference of rank. That is a noble old house. It sits upon the mountain like a crown.” He waited to allow the horse to breathe, for the pull up the hill had been hard. Now, the domestic instinct was strong in Dallas, however wanting in sentiment alism women would have thought him. He had given to even his prison cell a home look. He could not forget that the solemn mountain-landscapes and the house yonder in their midst were his home——had been the birth-place of his ancestors for generations. He alone was cast out--a vagabond upon the earth. Doctor Pritchard broke the si lence with words that oddly jarred upon him. He put his hand on Dallas’ knee, and said, earnestly: “I heard you promise to come back here in a year, Galbraith; and I meant, as your friend, when we were alone, to
protest against it. What can you have in common with these people? Why would you give up your work when it was just begun?” “ There is something in common be tween us,” said Dallas, but vaguely, for a moving object on the road before them had caught his eye: a low phaeton, with two figures in it. At the sight of one of them, his heart stood still. “ There are reasons why I should come back there are reasons,” he repeated, slowly, looking at it. “I do not ask your confidence, of
world as her uncle, but, if he came back,
course,” testily: “I only give you prac
she would come into his, he thought, with quiet assurance. After a while he pulled one or two of the blossoms to pieces to find out to what class and order they belonged, and when they all drooped in the heat, he threw them away. Dallas never had a keepsake in
tical, common-sense counsel.
his life. ' Crossing a ridge of the lower hills, Vo|.. l.—75
You have
told me your story: you say there is no way for you to prove your innocence, and I tell you your only chance is to
devote yourself to-day to your profes sion, and to rid yourself of every vestige
of your past life—make yourself new aims and a new world. There is no hope for you there,” motioning to the
