What was I to
do? There was only meself to give, so I give it free and hearty, and
here it is wid the Queen's head an it, done in Mr. Tarlton's office.
Ye'd better had had a dog, or a gun, or a ladder, or a horse, or a
saddle, or a quart o' brown brandy; but such as it is I give it ye--
I give it to the rose o' the valley and the star o' the wide wurruld."
In a loud voice he read the promissory note, and handed it to Ida. Men
laughed till there were tears in their eyes, and a keg of whisky was
opened; but somehow Ida did not laugh. She and Pierre had seen a serious
side to Macavoy's gift: the childlike manliness in it. It went home to
her woman's heart without a touch of ludicrousness, without a sound of
laughter.
III
After a time the interest in this wedding-gift declined at Fort Guidon,
and but three people remembered it with any singular distinctness--Ida,
Pierre, and Macavoy. Pierre was interested, for in his primitive mind he
knew that, however wild a promise, life is so wild in its events, there
comes the hour for redemption of all I O U's.
Meanwhile, weeks, months, and even a couple of years passed, Macavoy and
Pierre coming and going, sometimes together, sometimes not, in all manner
of words at war, in all manner of fact at peace. And Ida, out of the
bounty of her nature, gave the two vagabonds a place at her fireside
whenever they chose to come. Perhaps, where speech was not given, a gift
of divination entered into her instead, and she valued what others found
useless, and held aloof from what others found good.
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