“HERE’S LUCK”

By evening the country knew the whole extraordinary story and only a legal formality was necessary officially to clear Anson Dyker of the stigma and peril which he had known for fifteen years. His rash flight in boyish panic so long ago had taken him to South America, and when he had wandered back, the courage to go and give himself up was lacking.

He told Tom these things as they hiked down to Mead’s whence they rode to West Hurley station and caught the train into Kingston. Here they waited for the West Shore train to Catskill.

He had been all over the country since the murder, worked in a mining camp in the West, in a lumber camp in Michigan. He had been as far as the islands of the south Pacific in his lonely wanderings. The recurrent resolve to return and give himself up had ebbed away as the crime became a dead letter.

He felt that he was another man living in another world. The rash boy he remembered grew dim, and finally disappeared altogether. Then had come the war giving him the opportunity he craved—concealment in the roar of battle, safety. And in the end he had braved the danger of recognition and gone to work on the old mountain which he remembered as a favorite haunt of his innocent boyhood.

Tom could not discover that Anson bore any resentment against Ganley because the latter had not given himself up and cleared his comrade. He seemed to have a forbearance, a largeness of charity, which was divine. Perhaps his rough, wandering, adventurous life had made him big, to use one of Audry’s favorite words. So possibly Tom was right in his rather awkwardly expressed theory that the vast outdoors, and the hazard and adventure, are the best teachers. Whalen, victim of injustice, had a kind of seasoned goodness and tolerance about him which you may not learn from books on character building....

They alighted from the train at Catskill, and scanned the river for a glimpse of the faithful Goodfellow. But she had been brought ashore and was under official guard while a morbid throng crowded about staring at her and trying to look into her little cabin. Tom glimpsed her from a distance and it touched him to think of the gallant little Goodfellow under arrest.

None of the good people thereabouts knew who the rough looking man was who accompanied Tom Slade through an unfrequented street, and the two were soon upon the familiar road leading to Temple Camp. Poor Tom was in mortal fear lest the monster of the law intervene to spoil his program. But no one interfered with them.

And so in a little while they came in sight of the little crystal spring by the wayside where hikers from Temple Camp often paused for a cooling drink. Just as before, Tom could see the wall which seemed respectfully to step aside so as to allow the spring to make its kindly presence known to the thirsty wayfarer.

And just exactly as before, upon one of the hospitable stone projections which served as seats, Tom and Anson Dyker beheld a wizened little old man sitting like a funny statue, his two aged hands resting upon an outlandish cane. It seemed as if he had been sitting there all this time; that he was real and Overlook Mountain but a dream.

“Out for a stroll, Pop?” Tom asked.

“You’re the one I met here,” said old Caleb, with that crisp style of announcement which had always amused Tom.

“You tell ’em I am,” said Tom.

“I’m the one told you this was good water; I live in that camp now.”

“Still walking, I see.”

“Man came to camp wanted to take my picture.”

“Get out! Look here, Pop, I liked this water so well that I brought a friend of mine here to try it.”

“The Ashokan Reservoir is poison,” old Caleb said.

Tom was just about to present Anson in a mock way of introduction, when the whole matter passed out of his hands. He could not have described what happened. He had an uncomfortable feeling of being an outsider. He saw Anson in a new light, infinitely gentle, with an unutterable joy welling up within him. He saw him sitting sideways on the wall, arm around the poor old shoulders. He heard him saying, “It’s just me, granp’, don’t you know me? It’s Anse.”

He was slow in understanding, but he understood. He showed no emotion, but rather an accustomed familiarity with his grandson which went to Tom’s heart. But his old withered hands trembled and with one of them he adjusted his old octagon-shaped steel spectacles and looked straight at his grandson. It was so unusual for him to look at any one individually that the act seemed filled with pathos. Tom wondered how they were going to explain everything to make it comprehensible to his mind.

Fortunately it was not necessary to explain. Old Caleb was of an age and condition where reasons are not necessary, where only facts count. He did not even ask where Anson came from or how he and Tom had met. But he clung to him as a child clings, as if he feared he might run away. And when he had struggled through the first shock he scrutinized his grandson in a sternly critical way, and seeming reassured of his identity he released one hand and took a fresh hold with the other. Old Caleb did not pour out his soul, but he hung on. And in the alternate clutching of those two withered hands there was all the pathos of reunion. Anson smiled at Tom and submitted. The fugitive was caught and held at last....

“So that’s your name, is it—Anse?” said Tom. “Well then, Anse, you see where I’m sitting down, here on the ground? This is just the way I sat talking with Pop two months ago. And I told him that wherever you were I was going to drink your health in good, pure, innocent, spring water.; Didn’t I, Pop?”

“I was in a movie,” said old Caleb; “I got two dollars, Anse. You didn’t happen to see that play?”

“So now,” said Tom, winking at Anson, “so now I’m going to drink to your health again. Down with the Ashokan Reservoir! May it dry up—only it never does.”

And just as before, how long ago it seemed, Tom kneeled down, made a cup of his two hands, and took a long drink of the innocent, cool, refreshing water.