We reached the top of the ridge, and the valley lay beneath us. It was young and cheerful in its fresh green, with here a brown checkering of fallow, and there a white barn glistening in the sun, and orchards in the full glory of their blossom. Below us a stone mill grumbled over its unending task, and from the meadows came the blithe call of the killdee. It was all home to me from the fringing pines on the ridge-top, across the land to the mountains by the river, for on such a threshold one casts off fear. Danger might lurk about us in the shadows of the woods, but never out there in the broad day under the kindly eye of God. Nathan might gallop through tangled brush, but here even his mood changed and he walked sedately. Even the strange road was friendly to me, for it led into a friendly land. It descended the ridge, passed the mill, rose again over a hill; there at the crest I lost it, but only for a moment while it crossed the hollow and came into view on the easy slope beyond, going straight into the valley's heart and beckoning me on.
"It's all right now, Penelope," I cried, and I pointed to the two steeples of Malcolmville, and then led her eyes to the right to a long stone house, almost hidden in a clump of giant oaks. I could find it by our barn, for our barn would dominate any land. In the distance it seemed a mighty marble pile, lifting its white walls into the blue, and then ambitiously reaching higher with red-tipped cupolas. The Colosseum to-day is not half so large as our barn when placed in memory beside it. So there was pride in my voice as I spoke.
"Yon's our home, little 'un, and yon's our barn, and just the other side is the meadow and the creek where I'll take you fishing."
The splendid promise of fishing had little effect on Penelope's spirits. Such a prospect as I offered, such a home, a Babylonian palace beside the cabin in the clearing, with the added joys of the meadow and the creek, should have compensated in part, at least, for the temporary loss of her father, and I was much surprised that she gave no sign of pleasure. She made no answer even, and I had no evidence of her nearness to me but the two brown hands clasped before me and the brush of the ribbon against my neck. So we rode on in silence, save when I whistled, and I did not whistle very much, for my thoughts were too busy with the morning's adventure and forecasting the days to come. My mind was wonderfully clear about the future; the way seemed very easy. Thereafter I should listen to warnings. I had brought myself to unpleasant passes by a reckless disregard of warnings, and now if Mr. Pound told me to beware, or Stacy Shunk to look out, or Miss Spinner to remember Absalom, I should heed their admonitions, yet those unpleasant passes became in retrospect delightful adventures, and I congratulated myself that I was coming through them with so much credit. That I was conducting myself with credit, I had no doubt. My father could not have accepted the Professor's charge more confidently than I, nor could he have used more adroitness in persuading Penelope to leave the clearing. So I was sure of commendation when I brought her home. Home was such a bountiful place. My mother had impressed that on me very often. She had laid emphasis on my obligation to share my riches with others--generally when I had to carry heavy baskets down to the parsonage. To-day I was mindful of that injunction, and to take care of Penelope was a pleasant task, since for the present it meant simply to share with her from an inexhaustible store. Considering the future, I wandered into hazy and very muddled dreams. Did the Professor never return, I was quite willing to keep my promise and to care for his daughter always. This did not mean that I was contemplating matrimony at some remote time. Matrimony, to my youthful observation, was a prosaic state. It did not seem to me that my father and mother led an interesting life. If they were happy in it, then it was in a very strange way, for they only knew a dull routine of work and worry. Sometimes they laughed, and when they did it was hard to discover the sources of their mirth. How my father could find pleasure in Mr. Pound's sermons was a mystery, and when my mother declared that the meeting of the Ladies' Aid had been most enjoyable I was sure that she was pretending. No; the future held something better for me than such dull days. Somehow, somewhere, when I became a man I should live days like this day, I should live as now I rode, with every sense keyed to the joy of living, and Penelope's arms would encircle me and the blue ribbon would gently brush my neck.