He seized Donald’s hand, and his battered face filled with tenderness as he looked up at his friend. “Good luck, boy. Keep a stiff upper lip, an’ don’t forget that old John Barleycorn’s a bum second.” At the door he turned: “How ya fixed for kale, Donnie?”
Spike grinned as though pleased at the rebuff, and closed the door.
For some time after Spike’s departure Donald sat lost in meditation. The philosophy of the ex-pugilist, presented in the vernacular of the prize-ring, had affected him deeply. “Ya bin fightin’ an exhibition wid life, but from now on de fight is on de square,” Spike had said. True enough, he thought, life had been soft and easy with him. But now it was going to be “on de square.” His strong mouth set in a straight line, and involuntarily he squared his shoulders.
Donald left the hotel by the side door to avoid meeting several friends who had gathered in the lobby. He had an hour to wait for the sailing of the boat for Bangor. Unconsciously he walked towards the hill. An overwhelming sense of loneliness swept over him as he stood before his home, looming huge and white in the bright starlight of the winter night.
At the first sound of his master’s step on the pavement a big collie dog rushed forth and flung itself bodily on the young man, whimpering in sheer joy. Standing on hindlegs with paws on his chest, he tried to lick Donald’s face. The noise was apparently heard within the house, for a shade was raised and Donald’s mother peered out into the night. Silencing the dog’s joyous whines as best he could, Donald crouched low behind the hedge until the blind was lowered.
“Good-bye, old pal,” Donald whispered, his arms about the collie’s shaggy neck. The dog turned slowly and unwillingly toward the house.
In the meantime, within the house, John McLean and his wife were discussing the possible result of the father’s seeming severity.
“Donald is a great trial to us now, John,” said the mother, “but we must not forget the happiness he has brought us in the past.” She gazed long and lovingly at a photograph of her son as a child; then, with head bowed, her lips moved in silent prayer.
Upon his arrival at the wharf Donald found his baggage, destroyed the pass he had been in the habit of using, as his father was owner of the steamboat line, and bought a ticket to Bangor.