nothing. As he had come off
unhurt in person and property, he could afford to be more generously
amused than if he had suffered damage in either. The more he thought of
the incident, the more he was disposed to be lenient with the boy,
whom he was aware of having baffled and subdued by his superior wit and
virtue in perhaps intolerable measure. He could not quite make out
that it was an act of bad faith; there was no reason to think that the
good-natured things the fellow had done, the constant little offices of
zeal and friendliness, were less sincere than this violent outbreak.

The letter from Lion's Head Farm brought back his three weeks there very
vividly, and made Westover wish he was going there for the summer. But
he was going over to France for an indefinite period of work in the only
air where he believed modern men were doing good things in the right
way. He W a sale in the winter, and he had sold pictures enough to
provide the means for this sojourn abroad; though his lion's Head
Mountain had not brought the two hundred and fifty or three hundred
dollars he had hoped for. It brought only a hundred and sixty; but the
time had almost come already when Westover thought it brought too much.
Now, the letter from Mrs. Durgin reminded him that he had never sent her
the photograph of the picture which he had promised her. He encased the
photograph at once, and wrote to her with many avowals of contrition for
his neglect, and strong regret that he was not soon to see the original
of the painting again. He paid a decent reverence to the bereavement
she had suffered, and he sent his regards to all, especially his comrade
Jeff, whom he advised to keep out of the apple-orchard.

Five years later Westover came home in the first week of a gasping
August, whose hot breath thickened round the Cunarder before she got
half-way up the harbor. He waited only to see his pictures through the
custom-house, and then he left for the mountains. The mountains meant
Lion's Head for him, and eight hours after he was dismounting from the
train at a station on the road which had been pushed through on a new
line within four miles of the farm. It was called Lion's Head House now,
as he read on the side of the mountain-wagon which he saw waiting at the
platform, and he knew at a glance that it was Jeff Durgin who was coming
forward to meet him and take his hand-bag.

The boy had been the prophecy of the man in even a disappointing degree.