“Old man,” he said, placing his hands upon Brown’s shoulders, “in ten minutes I’ll be on the road, and gone like that spark.  We won’t see each other agin; but, before I go, take a fool’s advice:  sell out all you’ve got, take your wife with you, and quit the country.  It ain’t no place for you, nor her.  Tell her she must go; make her go, if she won’t.  Don’t whine because you can’t be a saint, and she ain’t an angel.  Be a man—­and treat her like a woman.  Don’t be a damn fool.  Good-by.”

He tore himself from Brown’s grasp, and leaped down the stairs like a deer.  At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler and backed him against the wall.  “Saddle my horse in two minutes, or I’ll—­” The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.

“The missis said you was to have the buggy,” stammered the man.

“Damn the buggy!”

The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.

“Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?” said the man, who, like all his class, admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really concerned in his welfare.

“Stand aside!”

The man fell back.  With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was into the road.  In another moment, to the man’s half-awakened eyes, he was but a moving cloud of dust in the distance, toward which a star just loosed from its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.

But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles away, heard a voice, pure as a skylark’s, singing afield.  They who were asleep turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth and love and olden days.  Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers, already at work, ceased their labors and leaned upon their picks, to listen to a romantic vagabond ambling away against the rosy sunrise.

HIGH-WATER MARK

When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness was patent.  Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay, were all hard facts.  So were the few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness.  And if you choose to indulge your fancy—­although the flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring—­the wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters, and made the dead certainty of the returning tide a gloomy reflection which no present sunshine could dissipate.  The greener meadowland seemed oppressed with this idea, and made no positive attempt at vegetation until the work of reclamation should be complete.  In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry bushes one might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled and soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.