."

I understood. His proud heart rebelled at the thought of the pitying or
contemptuous eyes of his stay-at home neighbors. He who had gone forth
so triumphantly thirty years before could not endure the notion of going
back on borrowed money. Better to die among strangers like a soldier.

Father, stern old pioneer though he was, could not think of leaving his
wife's brother here, working like a Chinaman. "Dave has acted the fool,"
he privately said to me, "but we will help him. If you can spare a
little, we'll lend him enough to buy one of these fruit farms he's
talking about."

To this I agreed. Together we loaned him enough to make the first
payment on a small farm. He was deeply grateful for this and hope again
sprang up in his heart. "You won't regret it," he said brokenly. "This
will put me on my feet, and by and by perhaps we'll meet in the old
valley."--But we never did. I never saw him again.

I shall always insist that a true musician, a superb violinist was lost
to the world in David McClintock--but as he was born on the border and
always remained on the border, how could he find himself? His hungry
heart, his need of change, his search for the pot of gold beyond the
sunset, had carried him from one adventure to another and always farther
and farther from the things he most deeply craved. He might have been a
great singer, for he had a beautiful voice and a keen appreciation of
the finer elements of song.

It was hard for me to adjust myself to his sorrowful decline into old
age. I thought of him as he appeared to me when riding his threshing
machine up the coulee road. I recalled the long rifle with which he used
to carry off the prizes at the turkey shoots, and especially I
remembered him as he looked while playing the violin on that far off
Thanksgiving night in Lewis Valley.

I left California with the feeling that his life was almost ended, and
my heart was heavy with indignant pity for I must now remember him only
as a broken and discouraged man. The David of my idolatry, the laughing
giant of my boyhood world, could be found now, only in the mist which
hung above the hills and valleys of Neshonoc.

CHAPTER XXXV

The Homestead in the Valley

To my father the Golden Gate of San Francisco was grandly romantic. It
was associated in his mind with Bret Harte and the Goldseekers of Forty
Nine, as well as with Fremont and the Mexican War, hence one of his
expressed desires for many years had