The Great Quest Part 53

EHEU FUGACES!

Sim Muzzy's tale, when he bethought himself to tell it to us, was a lively one in its own way, although it did not, of course, compare with our African adventures. The press-gang that set upon us in Havana had rushed him away to a Spanish s.h.i.+p, where he was kicked about and cruelly abused, until, at peril of his life, he dropped overboard in the dark and swam to an American schooner, whose captain, hearing his story, took him on board and hid him in the chain-locker until they were well on their way to Boston. Thence Sim had set out on foot for Topham, where he had hired himself once again to tend the store and had led a dog's life ever since.

That Sim was right about Uncle Seth's bank accounts and his will, which left all to me, I learned before sunset that very day. The sums were not large in themselves, and taken all together they were small enough compared with the golden dreams my poor uncle had lived in; but they a.s.sured Faith and me of comfort at least; and when that evening I called upon the new storekeeper and found him so eager to escape from a town where his short measures and petty deceits had made him unpopular and discontented, that he was not in the mood to haggle over the bargain, I bought back the store on the spot.

"There'll be happier days ahead, Sim," said I when I came out.

"O Joe, I'm sure of that," he replied, his face bright with smiles; for he had overheard considerable of our discussion.

Within the week the papers were signed, and before a fortnight was up Faith and I went out, arm-in-arm, on the old hill road and saw the men break ground for the new house that we were to build.

Whether any of the others, unknown to Faith and me, had made their way ash.o.r.e on the night of the wreck, we never learned; but it was virtually impossible that they should have done so without revealing themselves to those of us who had ranged all that bleak coast the next morning. For honest Gideon North we mourned as for one of the dearest of friends, and of the rest we thought sometimes in the years that followed. But none of them, except our own Abe, ever came to Topham, nor did I ever go back to the sea.

Three letters at long intervals brought us news of Arnold Lamont; and to the address that he gave in the first we sent with our reply a draft for the sum that he had so generously lent us when on that wild South American sh.o.r.e we four had set out to begin life anew.

They were good letters, and there was no note of complaint in them; yet as I read them and thought of the Arnold Lamont whom I had known so long and, all things considered, so intimately, I could not but feel that in the cities of South America and, later, of Europe he failed, whatever compensations there may have been, to find anything like the peace and quiet happiness that he once had found in our New England town of Topham.

The week before the walls of our new house were raised, Faith and I drove together along a road that I had tramped on an autumn afternoon, to the farm where Abe Guptil had lived in the days that now seemed so long ago. We carried with us certain papers, which changed hands in the kitchen where Abe and his little family had slept the night when I was their guest; and so it happened that, when Abe returned from his voyage and came to see me at the store full of honest joy at my good fortune, I sent him off to his own old home with the a.s.surance that the terms by which he was to buy it were such that he need never fear again to lose it.

As the town of Topham has grown around us, Faith and I have grown into the town and with it; and although the black Fantee, Paul, who remained the most faithful of servants, was a nine days' wonder in the village, there now are few people left, I imagine, who know all the wild, well-nigh unbelievable, yet absolutely true, story of the year when we first met. A royal fortune may have been lost with Seth Upham and Neil Gleazen in Gleazen's mad quest, but I can say in all sincerity that from his quest I gained a fortune far beyond my deserts.

THE END