r presents for her--long after I'd
lost all clear notion of ever going back home again, I kep' 'em--from
first to last I kep' 'em--I can't hardly say why; unless it was that I'd
got so used to keeping of them that I hadn't the heart to let 'em go.
Not, mind ye, but what they mightn't now and then have set me thinking
of father and Mary at home--at times, you know, when I changed 'em from
one bag to another, or took and blew the dust off of 'em, for to keep
'em as nice as I could. But the older I got, the worse I got at calling
anything to mind in a clear way about Mary and the old country. There
seemed to be a sort of fog rolling up betwixt us now. I couldn't see her
face clear, in my own mind, no longer. It come upon me once or twice in
dreams, when I nodded alone over my fire after a tough day's march--it
come upon me at such times so clear, that it startled me up, all in a
cold sweat, wild and puzzled with not knowing at first whether the stars
was shimmering down at me in father's paddock at Dibbledean, or in the
lonesome places over the sea, hundreds of miles away from any living
soul. But that was only dreams, you know. Waking, I was all astray now,
whenever I fell a-thinking about father or her. The longer I tramped it
over the lonesome places, the thicker that fog got which seemed to have
rose up in my mind between me and them I'd left at home. At last, it
come to darken in altogether, and never lifted no more, that I can
remember, till I crossed the seas again and got back to my own country."

"But how did you ever think of coming back, after all those years?"
asked Mrs. Peckover.

"Well, I got a good heap of money, for once in a way, with digging for
gold in California," he answered; "and my mate that I worked with, he
says to me one day:--'I don't see my way to how we are to spend our
money, now we've got it, if we stop here. What can we treat ourselves to
in this place, excepting bad brandy and cards? Let's go over to the old
country, where there ain't nothing we want that we can't get for our
money; and, when it's all gone, let's turn tail again, and work for
more.' He wrought upon me, like that, till I went back with him. We
quarreled aboard ship; and when we got into port, he went his way and I
went mine. Not, mind ye, that I started off at once for the old place as
soon as I was ashore. That fog in my mind, I told you of, seemed to lift
a little when I heard my own language, and saw my own country-people