Chapter III.

It is doubtful if Ardoch Lenzie ever realised to the full how much he owed to the sympathy and understanding of his wife, Catherine, during the terrible weeks that followed Mr. McWhin's visit. At first he was completely broken, alternating periods of black despair with fits of violent rage. It was incredible to him (in whom the tradition and pride of family was implanted deeper than any religion) that his ancestral home should be taken from him, that everything he had worked for had perished. He would sit for hours brooding in the library, his eyes vacant, his strong hands idle before him, then suddenly seizing hat and stick, he would set off down the road, scarcely knowing where he walked, but with some vague idea in his mind of coming face to face with the wizened little man who had brought about his ruin.

But Mr. McWhin was far away in London, and when Ardoch returned, haggard, muddy and utterly worn out, it was Catherine who awaited him, scolding him gently as she helped him off with his boots and poured him a drink; bringing him back to reason with brave and consoling words.

“Ardoch,” she said one day, “have you ever thought that there is a certain type of man who always strives to maintain the balance of things. The man who brings order and peace and culture, the man who clings to the soil and enriches it with his work. The man who thinks more often of those about him than of himself?”

“I have known such men—in the past,” Ardoch replied.

“The Lenzies were like that,” Catherine continued, choosing to ignore the hint of bitterness in his tone.

“They were—“Ardoch retorted, “but there is no future for them in a country where human beings are herded like cattle, where the grass is withered before it can seed, and a trickster can—”

Catherine rose and laid a hand over his mouth; “there are still places left in the world where life may be worth living,” she said gently.

She said no more at that moment, but later in the evening she brought out a wooden box in which she kept odds and ends of sewing, trinkets, old letters and the like. Some of the letters in this box were written in a flowing, full-bellied script, decorated with quaintly scribbled drawings in page 46 page 47 the margins; and Catherine, rather ostentatiously opening one of these, presently laughed outright.

“What is it?” Ardoch demanded a trifle irritably from the other side of the room.

Catherine glanced sidelong, “only one of my brother's old letters—you always thought them rather silly.”

“Aye, and I still do.”

“But Ardoch, he has such fun—he always seems to be laughing.”

“There's more to life than just having fun. As the master of a ship he shows a deplorable lack of dignity, to my mind!”

Catherine pouted and was silent, presently she chuckled again, “Oh, do look, here's a picture of him being chased by a chief of the Ma-ories, I think they're called.”

Ardoch leaned forward and lit a long churchwarden pipe at a candle. Then he rose, and crossing the room, stood behind Catherine's chair looking over her shoulder.

“What's that?” he demanded, suddenly pointing with the stem of his pipe.

“That? That's a bird, I think, but it's very queer, isn't it? Charles calls it a K-I-W-I; how do you suppose you pronounce that?”

“I don't know. Where does he find these things?”

“In New Zealand. He has made four or five trips there now. The first was to the Otago settlement seven years ago: he says it's a wonderful country where it's always summer, and al the first Otago settlers are farming their own land and doing famously.”

Ardoch turned the letters idly while Catherine watched him covertly with a new-found happiness in her heart. A month ago he would scarcely have glanced up at her remarks about the drawings, far less have crossed the room to look at them. He had been a self-centred, rather austere, and wholly independent man, but the recent turn of events had struck at the very roots of his being, cast him all adrift from the settled habit of his life, and brought him nearer to her, perhaps, than he had been since the day they were married, five years ago.

Presently he selected a letter from the pile and laid it in Catherine's lap. “Will you read one to me?” he asked, and leaning against the mantlepiece, it seemed to him that as Catherine's gentle voice read from that flowing script, the script that swelled and bellied like topsails in trade wind latitudes, that the oak-panelled walls of the room faded and gave way to a vast expanse of ocean. There was a green island where gulls screamed and fought over the carcases of whales and try-pots flared and stank in the dusk of a summer evening. There was a deep winding river with new grass spronting along its banks; sunny pastures sheltered by tall bush trees and distant blue mountains. A vigorous life went pulsing through the pages. Stories untold of adventure and hardship and glorious triumph.

For a long time after Catherine finished reading Ardoch puffed at his pipe in moody silence. He said no more that night, but on other evenings that followed more of the letters were read and when the reading of them was done he began to ask tentative questions concerning them. How far was it to New Zealand? How much would it cost to go there? Where was Captain Barcle, who had written the letters and presumbaly knew all about the country, now?

Then one day he made a trip to the port of Greenock.