“An’ didn’t you never git no note, nor message, nor word of any kind?” asked David.

“No.”

“Nor hain’t ever heard a word about her f’m that day to this?”

“No.”

“Nor hain’t ever tried to?”

“No,” said John.  “What would have been the use?”

“Prov’dence seemed to ’ve made a putty clean sweep in your matters that spring, didn’t it?”

“It seemed so to me,” said John.

Nothing more was said for a minute or two.  Mr. Harum appeared to have abandoned the pursuit of the subject of his questions.  At last he said: 

“You ben here most five years.”

“Very nearly,” John replied.

“Ben putty contented, on the hull?”

“I have grown to be,” said John.  “Indeed, it’s hard to realize at times that I haven’t always lived in Homeville.  I remember my former life as if it were something I have read in a book.  There was a John Lenox in it, but he seems to me sometimes more like a character in a story than myself.”

“An’ yet,” said David, turning toward him, “if you was to go back to it, this last five years ’d git to be that way to ye a good deal quicker.  Don’t ye think so?”

“Perhaps so,” replied John.  “Yes,” he added thoughtfully, “it is possible.”

“I guess on the hull, though,” remarked Mr. Harum, “you done better up here in the country ’n you might some ’ers else—­”

“Oh, yes,” said John sincerely, “thanks to you, I have indeed, and—­”

“—­an’—­ne’ mind about me—­you got quite a little bunch o’ money together now.  I was thinkin’ ’t mebbe you might feel ’t you needn’t to stay here no longer if you didn’t want to.”

The young man turned to the speaker inquiringly, but Mr. Harum’s face was straight to the front, and betrayed nothing.

“It wouldn’t be no more ‘n natural,” he went on, “an’ mebbe it would be best for ye.  You’re too good a man to spend all your days workin’ fer Dave Harum, an’ I’ve had it in my mind fer some time—­somethin’ like that pork deal—­to make you a little independent in case anythin’ should happen, an’—­gen’ally.  I couldn’t give ye no money ’cause you wouldn’t ‘a’ took it even if I’d wanted to, but now you got it, why——­”

“I feel very much as if you had given it to me,” protested the young man.

David put up his hand.  “No, no,” he said, “all ’t I did was to propose the thing to ye, an’ to put up a little money fer two three days.  I didn’t take no chances, an’ it’s all right, an’ it’s your’n, an’ it makes ye to a certain extent independent of Homeville.”

“I don’t quite see it so,” said John.

“Wa’al,” said David, turning to him, “if you’d had as much five years ago you wouldn’t ‘a’ come here, would ye?”

John was silent.

“What I was leadin’ up to,” resumed Mr. Harum after a moment, “is this:  I ben thinkin’ about it fer some time, but I haven’t wanted to speak to ye about it before.  In fact, I might ‘a’ put it off some longer if things wa’n’t as they are, but the fact o’ the matter is that I’m goin’ to take down my sign.”