The Bondage of Ballinger | Page 9

softly:
"It will go on forever, dear, for thee is always a lover to me, and our
journey is in love. But," she added, roguishly, "thee has not exhausted
our country's resources, Thomas; thee has not bought all the books."
He laughed at this. "These books are not all my offending, Hannah. I
wish I could think they are, for I have been selfish and mindful only of
my own wishes. But I am going to begin again, and in earnest.
Hereafter for every book you shall have a forfeit. Better than this, I
shall buy no more books. From this moment I am emancipated from the
slavery that has made you suffer so much."
Still with that same patient, gentle smile she replied: "I would not ask
thee, dear, to do this for my happiness or thy wretchedness. We must
take our lives as they come to us. We may not wholly destroy the
impulse that is strong, or chafe under the desires we cannot kill. But we
may take our life more gently, dear. We may find a home where our
wandering may end and where we may enjoy in peace and rest the

things that are precious to us."
"May we not find such a home across the water, Hannah? How often
have we talked of the distant land where life is one long and pleasant
summer, where there are no cares, no troubles, and where everything
that we have left in the sunny country you loved so much is intensified
a hundred-fold,"
She shook her head. "Would such a land hold thee, Thomas? It seems
fair and pleasant now, as was the country we deserted, but would it last?
Should we not be wandering again, always wandering, in search of the
happiness that lies just beyond. Should we not find that we are
deceived in this as we have been deceived all these years. Is there any
happiness beyond the contentment of our own minds, dear?"
He said quietly, though his eyes still gazed far over the placid ocean:
"Shall we go back, Hannah, back through the desert and over the
mountains, away from all this summer and warmth and luxuriance of
nature?"
She looked at him, and the flush came to her face and the light to her
eyes. "Let us go back,"' she said.
"But," he urged, "the journey is long and difficult, nothing is ahead of
us to stimulate our hopes and excite our ambitions, and we are very
poor."
"Was the journey short and were we rich when we came, dear?"
"Our parents are dead, and our friends are scattered, Hannah. The years
have brought changes to our village as well as to us. We shall be
known to few, and all will be so different. Is it not a risk that we should
avoid?"
"Is it not our home, Thomas? Let us go back."
"And the temptations, Hannah?" He thought of what she had said and
he was wavering. "You know my weakness, dear, and it is a land of

books."
She laid her head on his shoulder and turned her face that he might not
see her smile. And she answered simply:
"Let us go back."

IF the sunlight had danced less merrily on the waves of the great lake
as they rolled in to the western shore, if the changing tints of gray, blue,
and green, far to the north, south, and east, had been less fascinating to
Thomas Ballinger and less restful to Hannah, perhaps they might not
have lingered in the smoky, grimy city with its rushing tide of
money-seekers and fortune-builders. They had come slowly across the
desert and mountains and prairie, and had stopped again to take breath
and acquire the means of journeying. And if Thomas could have looked
into the mysterious book which holds the future, and turned to the page
which bears his name, he would have seen that fate decreed that Ms
wanderings were over and that he had come at last to his inheritance,
poor, small, and uncertain though it might be.
But the one thing that never entered into Thomas's calculations was the
future, and he was accustomed to argue that the man who is ever
bothering his poor brain with problems of what may happen by and by
is wholly insensible to the delights of the present. It might have been
retorted by Hannah, or other members of the family entitled to speak,
that he who is absorbed in the joys of the present is laying up more than
his share of trouble for the future, but such replies he would have
dismissed not only as discourteous, but as entirely foreign to the
question. Yet in spite of his disinclination to consider the various
periods of time, Thomas acknowledged