Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio | Page 5

light brown, thick, wavy, and long. Both had the same aquiline nose, short upper-lip, bland, firm, but soft mouth, and well-formed chin. Her complexion was dark, and his fair--too fair for a man.
"Yes, mother, I have come; are you glad to see me?"
"Glad--very glad, but sorry." She had a good deal of the Spartan in her nature, and received her son with a sense of another failure, and failures were not popular with her. "I did not hear from you--was anxious about you; but now, when you come back to the nothing for you here, I know you found less elsewhere."
"Well, mother, I know I am a dreadful drag even on your patience, and I fear a burden besides, instead of a help. I need not say much to you; you, at least, understand me. It was a mistake to go away as I did, and I bring back all I carried away, with the result of some reflection. I can do as much here as anywhere. I hoped I could do something for you, and I, poor unweaned baby and booby, can do better for myself near you than elsewhere."
Not much was said. She was thoughtful, deep natured, tender, and highly strung, though not demonstrative, and these qualities in him were modified by the soft, sensuous, imaginative elements that came to him--all that he inherited, except his complexion, from his father.
His mother gave him supper, and he sat and inquired about home events, and gave her a pleasant account of their relatives in the lower part of the State. He said nothing of the discovery he had made among them--her own family relatives--that she had married beneath her, and had never been forgiven; and he fancied that he discovered some opening of old, old sorrows, dating back to her girlhood days, as he talked of her relatives. The two younger brothers came rattling in--George, a handsome, eager young threshing-machine, a bright, broad-browed boy, and Edward, older, with drooping head and thoughtful face, and with something of Bart's readiness at reply. George ran to him--
"Oh, Bart, I am so glad! and there is so much--a flock of turkeys--and a wolverine, and oh! so many pigeons and everything--more than you can shoot in all the fall!"
"Well, captain, we will let them all live, I guess, unless that wolverine comes around!"
"There is a real, true wolverine; several have seen him, and he screeches, and yells, and climbs trees, and everything!"
"There is something around," said Edward. "Theodore and Bill Johnson heard him, over in the woods, not a week ago."
"Likely enough," replied Bart; "but wolverines don't climb. There may be a panther. Now, Ed, what has been going on on the farm? Is the haying done?"
"Yes; and the wheat is all in, and most all the oats. The corn is splendid in the old elm lot, and then the Major has been chopping down your old sugar camp, where we worked when you came home from old Hewitt's."
"Oh, dear, that was the loveliest bit of woodland, in the bend of the creek, in all the magnificent woods; well?"
"He has nearly finished the Jenks house," resumed Edward, "and is now at Snow's, in Auburn. He said you would be home before now."
"What about his colts?"
"Oh, Arab runs about wild as ever, and he has Dolf with him."
"How many hands has he with him?"
"Four or five."
"Dr. Lyman asked about you," said George, "and wondered where you were. He said you would be back in three weeks, and that something must have happened."
"It would be lucky for the Doctor's patients," replied Bart, "if something should keep him away three days."
"I guess he wants you to go a-fishing with him. They had a great time down there the other day--he, and Mr. Young, and Sol Johnson. They undertook to put up a sail as Henry and you do, and it didn't work, and they came near upsetting; and' Sol and old man Young were scart, and old Young thought he would get drownded. Oh, it must have been fun!"
And so the boys chippered, chirped, and laughed on to a late bed-time, and then went to bed perfectly happy.
Then came inquiries about Henry, who had written not long before, and had wondered why he had not heard from Barton; and, at last, wearied and worn with his three hundred miles' walk, Bart bade his mother good-night, and went to his old room, to rest and sleep as the young, and healthful, and hopeful, without deep sorrows or the stings of conscience, may do. In the strange freaks of a half-sleeping fancy, in his dreams, he remembered to have heard the screech of a wild animal, and to have seen the face of Julia Markham, pale with the mingled expression of courage and fear.

CHAPTER II
.
THE BLUE CHAMBER.
In the morning