the candle, an entry which was as follows: "Advice to
Young Mothers, Brough & Bros." He made it with a grave countenance and a
business-like manner, and somehow, owing it may be to the small size of
the room, its low ceilings and many shadows, or the flickering of the
candle, his colossal height and breadth of body and tremendous look of
strength had never seemed so marked nor appeared so to overpower the
objects surrounding him.

Having completed the entry, he shut up the book and returned it to his
pocket with a relieved air.

"If a man ain't a young mother," he remarked, "I guess he can get the
good of it, if he gives himself time. And what she wants"--rather
hurriedly--"is to get as good a start as if she had a young mother."

And he sat down and pulled off his right boot in so absorbed a frame of
mind, that he aroused presently with a start to find that he was holding
it as if it had been made of much less tough material and required
handling tenderly.

CHAPTER VIII

He was on his way homeward early the next morning, and by noon his horse
had climbed the rising ground from which he could look down on the
Cross-roads and the post-office baking itself brown in the sun. Catching
sight of the latter edifice, he smiled a little and shook the bridle
against his steed's warm neck.

"Get along, Jake," he said. "I'm in a little more of a hurry to get home
than usual--seems that way anyhow."

The eagerness he felt was a new experience with him and stirred his sense
of humour even while it warmed his always easily moved heart. It had been
his wont during the last eight years to return from any absence readily
but never eagerly or with any touch of excited pleasure. Even at their
brightest aspect, with the added glow of fire and warmth and good cheer,
and contrast to winter's cold and appetite sharpened by it, the back
rooms had always suffered from the disadvantage of offering no prospect
of companionship or human interest to him. After the supper had been
disposed of and the newspapers read and the pipe smoked, there had only
been the fire to watch, and it was quite natural to brood as its blaze
died down and its logs changed to a bed of glowing cinders. Under such
circumstances it was easy to fall into a habit of brooding too much and
thinking of things which had better been forgotten. When there was no
fire, it had been lonelier still, and he had found the time hang heavily,
on his hands.

"But now," he