He tramped slowly yet sturdily. He had set for himself exactly the sort of pace which a shrewd mind had ordained that his well-worn bones and muscles could keep up for a tramp of many miles. He kept to the pace.
He was a prodigal of a new variety. He had been on the verge of success. The least said about the quality of that success the better; yet success it would have been. And at the very threshold the man had turned himself about and beat that most ignominious and most glorious retreat of humanity, the retreat of the sinner from the strongholds and fleshpots of sin.
John Dunn could not have told why he had turned about. It was as if some power outside himself, yet projected by himself, had exerted a compelling force before which he was helpless. The day before he had not even dreamed of taking this course. He had been with comrades, enjoying to the full that glimpse of the verge of ill-wrought success.
The man had risen before dawn with his new resolve upon him. He had risen and set forth. He had the clothes he wore, and a little money in his pocket. Secure as he had been of the golden shower, he had lost recklessly at cards the night before. His clothes were unbefitting his manner of return. As soon as the shops were opened he stopped and made a purchase and sale. He emerged from the shop clad in the rough garb of a countryman, with not so much money in his pocket.
He was hardly past middle age; but he looked old with the keen light of the spring morning in his face.
Suddenly he was aware of a soft, padding movement behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a small mongrel dog, brown and thin, with hide glistening in the sun. The dog looked up at him as if he were a god. He was so pathetically humble and beseeching and worshipful that the man started. His own unworthiness of anything like that, even in the understanding of a poor little mongrel dog, smote him fully for the first time. In the eyes of the dog he saw himself, and was shamed to the core.
The dog lay down and rolled in the spring grass, four little paws waving imploringly. The man spoke kindly, and the dog rose. He leaped to the man's caressing hand. John remembered a dog of his childhood, and he immediately named this stranger. “Hullo, Rover,” said he. The dog acted as if he had always followed the call of love and mastery by that name.
John Dunn's face was happier as he walked on with the dog at heel. He thought of the superstition of his boyhood — “It is good luck to have a dog follow one.”
The man and the dog progressed until high noon. Then they stopped in a place of sheer beauty. The man, gazing about, had a dazed feeling that it was unreal. The man and the dog sat beside a clear brook flowing, with breaks to the light like facets of brown jewels, over a bed of smooth pebbles. The brook flowed through a meadow-land, and its banks were blue with violets.
John Dunn had stopped at a country grocery and bought crackers and cheese. He divided with the dog. Then both ate, the dog with nose buried in violets. Then the man hollowed a hand and drank of the brook, which was sweet and cold. The dog crept close to the gently flowing water and lapped, too. Then the man lay back among the violets, the dog snuggled close, and both slept.
After an hour they woke and resumed their march. High purpose had so strengthened in the soul of the man that he felt almost intoxicated by it. Every now and then he broke from his even pace and almost leaped along. At such times the dog would scurry ahead and return with lithe bounds, barking.
They went on until near sunset. It was true country now, a rolling farming land, with small villages pricked out by white church-spires, then farm-houses on the outskirts. John Dunn began to think about a place for the night. As with all wayfarers, his mind turned instinctively to a barn or a haystack. He had not enough money to pay for a lodging. He began to scrutinize the wayside. He saw no straw-stacks. He approached a large, white farm-house, with well-kept outbuildings. He decided that this could be no place for him. It had too prosperous a look.
As he passed the cow-barn a man with milk-pails crossed the yard to the house. He had closed the doors upon the rows of switching tails of sleek Jerseys and Holsteins. Everything was being made snug for the peaceful night.
John Dunn, as he came opposite the gate in the trim white fence which inclosed the front yard of the farm-house, was arrested by a woman's voice, shrill, tense, yet sweet.
“Good evening,” came the words, as if addressed to a well-known neighbor.
A tall, thin, elderly woman, with a strange, unquenchable youth in her eager blue eyes, was standing at the gate.