As Mostyn's train ascended the grade leading up to the hamlet of
Ridgeville, within a mile of which lay the little farm to which he was
going, he sat at an open window and viewed the scene with delight,
drawing into his lungs with a sense of restful content the crisp,
rarefied air. To the west, and marking the vicinity of Drake's farm,
the mountain loomed up in its blended coat of gray and green, growing
more and more indistinct as the range gradually extended into the
bluish haze of distance.

"I'm going to like it," he said, almost aloud, with the habit he had
of talking to himself when alone. "I feel as if I shall never want to
look inside a bank again. This is life, real, sensible life. I have,
after all, always had a yearning for genuine simplicity. It must have
come to me from my pioneer, Puritan ancestry. That man over there
plowing corn with his mule and ragged harness is happier than I ever
was down there in that God-forsaken turmoil. The habit of wanting to
beat other men in the expert turning over of capital is as dangerous,
once it clutches you, as morphine. I must call a halt. That last
narrow escape shall be a lesson. I am getting normal again, and I must
stay so. What are Alan Delbridge's operations to me? He has no nerves
nor imagination. He could have slept through that last tangle of mine
which came within an inch of laying me out stiff and stark. I wonder
how all the Drakes are, especially Dolly. She must be fully grown now.
Saunders says she is beautiful and as wise as Socrates. I suppose
there are a dozen mountain boys after her by this time. For a little
girl she was astonishingly mature in manner and thought. I ought not
to have talked to her as I did. I have never forgotten her face and
voice as I saw and heard them that last night. I see the wonderful