CHAPTER X.
"BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME."
Donald Morrison is back to the simple life of Marsden again. Five years
had changed him enormously. His figure had always promise of athletic
suppleness. It was now splendidly compact. He left the type of the
conventional farmer. He returned the picturesque embodiment of the far
West. Perhaps, in his long locks, wide sombrero, undressed leggings, and
prodigal display of shooting irons, there may have been a theatrical
suggestion of Buffalo Bill.
The village folk accepted him with intense admiration. Here was
something new to study. Had Donald not been to the great and wonderful
Far West, so much the more fascinating because nobody knew anything
about it? Had he not shot the buffalo roaming the plains? Had he not
mingled in that wild life which, without moral lamp-posts, allures
all the more because of a certain flavoring spice of deviltry? Every
farmer's son in Marsden, Gould, Stornaway, and Lake Megantic, envied
Donald that easy swaggering air, that frank, perhaps defiant outlook,
which the girls secretly adored.
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