CHAPTER VII

B

I

ARRY O'CAROLAN, outwardly the most seriously affected by the toll of war, was in reality

the only Norcrossian undisturbed by the gathering of the storm clouds in the hitherto peaceful New England village. Perhaps this was because he instinctively realized that the worst that could befall him had happened, and his agony of suspense was ended. At all events, the world looked good to him, and the peace which came to his once-troubled spirit expressed itself in his ever-present smile and contagious optimism. His quick intelligence enabled him to expand even as the flowers in the Stewart garden; but the development came so gradually that those around him scarcely realized how great the change until it had actually taken place, accepting without comment or surprise the evidences of the transition.

Except for the war, Barry would have remained a hunter of big game, his inward craving satisfied by communion with the vastness of Nature around him; now, in his new environment, he found in human companionship a stimulus previously denied him, and an intellectual comradeship in the books to which Mrs. Stewart

introduced him, which forced him to apply as well as to absorb. What Barry O'Carolan had lacked in comradeship in the wilderness had been made up to him in the acute development of his mental faculties in matching them against the cunning of the beasts upon the mastery of which his livelihood depended. Guidance and opportunity alone were needed to bring his real self to the surface. Mrs. Stewart and Lola both enjoyed his unrestrained happiness, and marveled at occasional outbursts which showed an unconsciously developing poetic phase. In short, Barry had lost his leg but found his soul. His new friends gave full credit to the flowers for that.

II

One morning, as was frequently their habit, all three were working together in the garden, transplanting some of the younger rose bushes to form a richer mass of color. There was always a running conversation, started or encouraged by Mrs. Stewart or Lola, in which Barry's part was quaint and optimistic, but frequently unexpected.

"Do you miss the old life, Barry?" Lola asked him; "do you ever long to get back to your cabin in the hills where other people can't disturb you?"

"For a long time I thought I did," he admitted; "then I came to know I couldn't stand the solitude." "That is what I should find most grateful," Lola declared.

"I used to think so myself, Miss Lola; that was why I stuck to big game huntin' nobody to interfere

with my thoughts, nothin' to break the silence of the mountains but the echoes. But that was before I went up in an areoplane."

Barry always pronounced this last word with the two letters transposed. His listeners failed to grasp the significance of his expression.

"You never know how terrifyin' solitude is 'til you get up in the air,” he explained, . . "it is so empty and lonesome and still. Why, it doesn't even breathe!" Both his hearers were surprised.

"I thought an aeroplane was the noisiest place in the world," Mrs. Stewart commented.

"The engine? sure," Barry admitted; "but I mean the air itself. The whir of the motor and the roar of the exhaust make a terrific racket, of course, but this becomes so monotonous that you get used to it... it's the solitude that really catches you. Even when you're goin' a hundred miles an hour it seems like you were standin' plumb still . . you don't go by anythin', . . just keep your bearin's by a river, or a railroad, or somethin' like that."

Barry stopped work for a moment and leaned against his spade, his eyes looking off into the distance beyond. "I used to think the desert was the lonesomest place in the world," he continued, "but it's not a patch on the air. Sometimes it's nothin' but clouds, oceans of 'em, and it seems as if the wheels were runnin' along on the cloud-bank. At first the beauty of it gets you, then it turns to loneliness and makes you shiver."

Barry paused again. Then he turned to Mrs. Stewart.

"Do you believe that the soul goes up into that silence, Mis' Stewart, when we die?"

"That is what the Bible teaches us," she assured him. "Isn't it a blessed thought to you, Barry?"

He hesitated lest he hurt her feelings. Barry had lived among these people long enough now to realize how insistent was their New England conscience upon a literal acceptance of the Bible.

"I'm not sure," he finally admitted. "I have a feelin' my soul would shiver all over just as I did if it went up into that awful solitude . . . Do you think it would be goin' against the Bible if I said I'd rather have my soul stay down here in the warm earth with my body and these roots and flowers? I think I'd rather do that if it don't make you folks unhappy to have me say so."

"I don't suppose it makes much difference what we want, Barry," Mrs. Stewart replied kindly. "The good Lord knows best what to do with our souls, and all our planning won't change it. But whatever it is ..." she smiled up into his face in her motherly way, which always brought a lump in his throat, . . "whatever it is, Barry, you may be perfectly sure that there will be no shivering and no lonesomeness."

"Of course you're right, Mis' Stewart," Barry stammered, abashed that he had exposed so intimate a thought. "You folks know how much I love these flowers, and it sort of pleased me to think that some day p'raps I could be a part of 'em. Flowers are different from people, they just give you all there is of themselves without your askin.' I suppose that's their way of sayin' ‘thank you? for keepin' the weeds from chokin'

'em. P'raps, . . ." Barry had a sudden inspiration

...

.. "p'raps people would do that if they were treated the same way. There sure are a lot of human weeds in this world, and it would be a tough job to get rid of 'em."

"I presume, Barry, if it hadn't been for your accident, you would have made aviation your work," Mrs. Stewart remarked.

“No . . . maʼam!" was the emphatic response.

Noting the surprise on the faces of both, Barry explained.

"I suppose I ought to be ashamed, but I never went up in a plane without bein' scared. You see I did a good bit of flyin', and I know the danger. I never shied at goin' up, for that was my job, and I always did the best I knew how, but never again for me. . . from choice."

As Barry moved away to bring a barrow-load of new soil, Mrs. Stewart turned to Lola.

"What Barry just said confirms what you have told me about the boys over there. His frank admission of fear is peculiarly enlightening. The spirit of adventure which at first sustained him disappeared when he learned by experience how real the dangers were, yet he met them without hesitation whenever duty called him."

"Truly, it was splendid!" Lola's face lighted as the conversation recalled those gloriously terrible days. "Some of the boys were fatalists, others risked their lives almost needlessly through the sheer thrill of danger, but there were many who, like Barry, faced death