thought, “and take my luncheon there among the hemlocks.”
The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade’s friend and college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade’s eyes the rumor of his return.
Skerrett’s Point was a mile below the Foundry. Our hero did his mile under three minutes. How many seconds under, I will not say. I do not wish to make other fellows unhappy.
The Point was a favorite spot of Wade’s. Many a twilight of last summer, tired with his fagging at the Works to make good the evil of Whiffler’s rule, he had lain there on the rocks under the hemlocks, breathing the spicy methyl they poured into the air. After his day’s hard fight, in the dust and heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he used to take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until the murmur and fragrance of the woods, the cool wind, and the soothing loiter of the shining stream had purged him from the fevers of his task.
To this old haunt he skated, and kindling a little fire, as an old campaigner loves to do, he sat down and lunched heartily on Mrs. Purtett’s cold leg, — cannibal thought! — on the cold leg of Mrs. Purtett’s yesterday’s turkey. Then lighting his weed, — dear ally of the lonely, — the Superintendent began to think of his foreman’s bliss, and to long for something similar on his own plane.
“I hope the wish is father to its fulfilment,” he
