Ger had a skittery colt to shoe that day, and I had promised to help him; so I kept watch through the stable window, as I groomed the horses, for the arrival of the colt with its owner. I worked hastily, since I had two horses to finish in the time I usually spent on one; but something about the horse Father had ridden gave me pause. On its rump, near the root of the tail, were five small, round white spots, like saddle—or harness-marks, but nowhere that any harness might wear them. Four were arranged in a curved line, and the fifth was a little space away from the other four, and at a lower angle: like the four fingertips and thumb of a hand. It would have had to be a very big hand, because my fingers, when I tried it, did not begin to reach. As I laid my hand flat on the horse’s croup, the animal shivered under the touch and threw its head up nervously. I saw the white of its eye flash as it looked back at me; and it seemed to be in such real fear—it had been quiet and well-mannered till then—that I spent several minutes soothing it.
The skittish colt arrived a little before mid-morning, and I spent a couple of hours hanging on to its headstall and humming tunes in its ear, or holding up the foot diagonal to the one Ger was working on so that it would have too much to do maintaining its balance to cause more trouble.
Father emerged from the house a little before noon, and stood on the front step breathing the air and looking around him as if he had been gone a decade instead of a few months, or as if he were treasuring up the scene against future hardship. As I watched him walk towards the shop I thought that he had recovered remarkably well after only one night’s rest; and as he came close enough for me to see him clearly the change seemed more than remarkable. I was distracted from the colt, who promptly lunged forwards; Ger yelled, “Here, hold on now!” and dropped the foot he had picked up. When I glanced guiltily back at him I saw him first notice my father, and the bewilderment I had just felt showed clear on his face.
Father had not just recovered from a tiring journey; he seemed to have lost fifteen or twenty years from his age. Deep lines on his face had been smoothed out, and the squint he had developed as his sight began to fail him was gone, and his gaze was sharp and clear. Even his white hair looked thicker, and he walked with the suppleness of a much younger man.
He smiled at us as though he noticed nothing strange in our staring, and said, “Forgive me for disturbing you. I hope you don’t mind if I spend my first day home just wandering around and getting in my family’s way; I promise you I will be back to work tomorrow.” We of course assured him he was free to do just as he liked, and he walked out again. There was a pause, while the colt flicked his ears back and forth and suspected us of inventing new atrocities to wreak upon him. “He looks very well, doesn’t he?” I said at last, timidly. Ger nodded, picked up a now-cold horse-shoe in the tongs, and put it back in the fire. As we watched the iron turn rosy, he said, “I wonder what’s in those saddle -bags?” The mystery was not alluded to again. We finished the Colt, and I took him, stepping high in his new shoes and flinging the fast-melting snow around him so that he could shy and dance at the shadows, to the stable and tied him up to await his master’s return.
It was after supper that Father finally told his story. We were all sitting around the fire in the front room, trying a little too hard to look peaceful and busy, when Father looked up from his study of the flames; He was the only unoccupied one among us, and the only one who seemed to feel no tension. He smiled around at us, and said: “You have been very patient, and I thank you. I will try to tell you my story now, though the end of it will seem very strange to you.” His smile faded. “It seems very strange to me, now, too, as I sit warm and safe among my family.” He paused a long time, and the sorrow we had seen in him the night before closed around him again. The rich smell of the rose was almost visible; I fancied it lent a rosy edge Co the shadows cast by the firelight. Then Father began the story.
* * *
There was pitifully little to tell about his business in the city, he said. The trip south was easy, lasting about seven weeks. He had gone straight to his friend’s house upon arrival in town, Frewen had been pleased to see him, and had treated him very well; but despite the man’s and his family’s kindness, he felt, and he knew he looked, out of place. He had forgotten how to live in the city. The ship had arrived about a week before he had, and its cargo was being held in one of Frewen’s warehouses. It would have seemed a very small cargo to him in the days of his prosperity; but with Frewen’s help he sold it for a good profit and was able to pay the captain and crew what was owed them, and have a bit lef t over. The captain, a man named Brothers, was shocked at the change in his master’s estate, and was eager to set sail again—the Merlyn needed no more than the usual repairs any ten-year-old wooden ship would need after five years at sea—and try and begin to recoup their losses; but Father had demurred. He told Brothers that it was too tall a hill for him to begin to climb again at his age, and while his new life was not so grand as the old had been, still it was a good life, and his family was together.
“It’s a curious thing,” he said to us musingly; “after the first wrench of having to walk through the town that I had been used to driving in behind a coachman and four, I found I little minded the change. I seem to have developed a taste for country living. I hope I have not been unfair to you, children.”
I saw Hope, who was not in Father’s line of vision, look down at her slim hands, which were red and rough with work; but she smiled, if a little wryly, and said nothing.
The Merlyn was still a sound ship, if not so large and splendid as the ones they were building now, and he set out looking for a buyer for her. He was lucky, and found a purchaser almost immediately, a young captain who sailed for Frewen, who was ready to invest in a small ship of his own. Father had been in town for about a month at that point, and began to think of returning home. He could find out nothing of the White Raven, nor of the other ships whose whereabouts had been uncertain and “presumed lost” when we left the city over two years ago. He did hear that ten of the crewmen from the Stalwart and the Windfleet had arrived home, only about six months ago; and one of the survivors was the third mate who had brought us the story of the little fleet’s disaster.
The money he had from the sale of the Merlyn made him think of buying a horse and risking the trip north. It had been an easy winter so far, and he was more and more restless, lingering without purpose in the city, eating at Frewen’s table and trespassing on his hospitality, when he knew he did not belong. At last he went to Tom Black’s stable; and Tom welcomed him and sold him a plain-looking, dependable horse that would be good for the trip, and also be able to earn its keep in Blue Hill. Tom asked after Greatheart, and was very interested, and not at all offended, to hear about the horse’s fame as a puller.