“People generally, Colonel, will approve the course of my relations,” Treherne argued. “It will seem the proper thing as long as I am--am--occasionally--absent.”
“Well, you are all here, now, in one piece,” declared the old man, wagging his head with vehement emphasis.
“It will seem very generous of Tom Treherne to offer, to desire to maintain me at his own expense at a high-priced private sanatorium, since I have no means of my own.”
He paused, a bitter look of repulsion on his face. All these years--these long years, the men of his own age, the compeers of his youth, had been at work restoring their shattered fortunes, after the terrible cataclysm of war that had wrecked the financial interests as well as the face of the southern country, achieving eminence and distinction in their varied lines of effort, life signifying somewhat of attainment even to those of meanest ability, while he was gone to waste, destroyed by his own gallant exploit; the blow of the sabre, the jeering accolade of Fate, when he had triumphantly led his troop to the capture of a strong battery, had consigned him to forty years of idleness, helplessness, imprisonment, in effect. “Be brave, loyal, and fortunate,” quotha.
He was silently revolving these reflections so long that Colonel Kenwynton, puffing his pipe with gusto, declared:
“I’ll make Tom Treherne’s liberality look like thirty cents before I am done with him. He can’t choke you off and hide you out because he is afraid you might be troublesome to _him_ in the future,--dispose of you for good and all,--not while I am alive. Why, damme, man, you commanded a troop in my regiment.”
“If he should once more lay hands on me I could never get away from him and his precautions and anxieties, and considerations for the safety of the public and open-handed generosity. And, Colonel, you might not know where he had stowed me away next time.”
“Hoh,” snorted the Colonel, “I never lose sight of you longer than between breakfast and dinner. I’d be on his track with every detective in the State before dark. Why, Hugh, I’m a moneyed man. I’d take advantage of your absence to mortgage that little tract of land out yonder bare of all encumbrance, and I’d spend the last nickel of it making publicity for Tom Treherne. _He_ isn’t going to spend any money except for his own objects. Now, boots and saddles! Time for you to be on the march!”