Somehow the man he had
left, when he went South, appeared now to have been waiting for him on
his return, and while his plans, nicely arranged, seemed feasible the
actual readjustment struck him as lurid and impossible. The fact was
that his experience of life in Pine Cone made him now shrink from
contact with the outside world as one of its loyal natives might have
done. It could no more survive in the garish light of a city day than
little Nella-Rose could have. That conclusion reached, Truedale was
comforted. He could not lure his recent past to this environment, but so
long as it lay safe and ready to welcome him when he should return, he
could be content. So he relegated it with a resigned sigh, as he might
have done the memory of a dear, absent friend, to the time when he could
call it forth to some purpose.
It was well he could do this, for with the coming of Brace Kendall upon
the scene all romantic sensation was excluded as though by an icy-clear,
north wind. Brace was at the New York station--Brace with the armour of
familiarity and unbounded friendliness. "Old Top!" he called Truedale,
and shook hands with him so vigorously that the last remnant of thought
that clung to the distant mountains was freed from the present.
"Well, of all the miracles! Why, Con, I bet you tip the scales at a
hundred and sixty. And look at your paw! Why, it's callous and actually
horny! And the colour you've got! Lord, man! you're made over.
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