They didn't even acknowledge me on the road at last; they called
me poor-spirited, a thin-blooded nobleman's cub--a Separationist
traitor--and left me to superintend niggers and save money. Mrs. Mac,
good Separationist though she was, as became the wife of her husband,
had the word "home" forever on her lips. She had once visited the
Rooksbys at Horton; she had treasured up a host of tiny things, parts
of my forgotten boyhood, and she talked of them and talked of them until
that past seemed a wholly desirable time, and the present a dull thing!

Journeying in search of romance--and that, after all, is our business in
this world--is much like trying to eaten the horizon. It lies a little
distance before us, and a little _distance behind--about as far as the
eye can carry._ One, discovers that one has passed through it just as
one passed what is to-day our horizon--One looks back and says. "Why
there it is." One looks forward and says the same. It lies either in
the old days when we used to, or in _the new days when we shall_. I look
back upon those days of mine, and little things remain, come back to me,
assume an atmosphere, take significance, go to the making of a _temps
jadis_. Probably, when I look back upon what is the dull, arid waste of
to-day, it will be much the same.

I could almost wish to take again one of the long, uninteresting night
rides from the Vale to Spanish Town, or to listen once more to one of
old Macdonald's interminable harangues on the folly of Mr. Canning's
policy, or the virtues of Scotch thrift. "Jack, lad," he used to bellow
in his curious squeak of a voice, "a gentleman you may be of guid Scots
blood. But ye're a puir body's son for a' that." He was set on my making
money and turning honest pennies. I think he really liked me.

It was with that idea that he introduced me to Ramon, "an esteemed
Spanish merchant of Kingston and Spanish Town." Ramon had seemed
mysterious when I had seen him in company with Carlos and Castro but
re-introduced in the homely atmosphere of the Macdonalds, he had become
merely a saturnine, tall, dusky-featured, gold-spectacled Spaniard, and
very good company. I learnt nearly all my Spanish from him. The only
mystery about him was the extravagantly cheap rate at which he sold
his things under the flagstaff in front of Admiral Rowley's house, the
King's House, as it was called. The admiral himself was said to have
extensive dealings with Ramon; he had at least the