Adventure Magazine Cover — page 165: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Fenceless Meadows own oar—if there’s man in you it’ll come out.” For a minute young De Witt stood look- ing at Dowser, then said: “Thank you, sir. I reckon I’ll not bother you for a while.” Then he turned away. A few days after young De Witt’s visit Nance sat sewing beneath the trees in front of the house. It was the Fall of the year and the still air was fragrant with the scent of the fields, where the last cutting of hay stood in the shock. The only sound that reached her was the occasional rattle of a buck-rake wheel, or the far-off voice of a man who spoke to his team. Suddenly, hearing a footstep near by, she started, and looking up, saw a man coming through the gate between the two tall cottonwoods. Rising, she held out her hand. “Mr. Lowrie, it’s fine to see you,” she cried. “Thank you, Miss Dowser. I’ve come to look at the farm, as you told me to.”’ Nance called her father. He was down at the stackyard, and she ran in to get her hat. They walked to the yard together. ‘Tell me where you’ve been, Mr. Lowrie, please. Quick, I want to hear,” she cried. “Oh,” he laughed, ‘‘that’s a big order all of a sudden. Let’s see. I went back to Liverpool with the old Tekoa, didn’t I? Yes. Well, I left her and took a trip with a Rennie boat to Natal and Delagoa, Chinde and those little fever-holes up the East African coast, you know. Then went to Mobile with a Drum Line tramp. Then was lucky—-skipper of the Roxburgh for a vovage. JI was with the county ships be- fore, you know; before you picked me out of the water that time off Stiff. I took her to the colonies and made a fast run too. By the way, where’s the ancy Nan?” “Somewhere between the Cape and the Horn, I guess,” answered Nance. “‘She’s bound for the Cape and I suppose will be coming home with coal, from Newcastle. Isn’t it a shame to load a clipper with such a horrid cargo?” | They were at the stackyard gate, standing aside to let a buck-rake pass. As they stood there Dowser came around a stack and held out his hand to Lowrie. ‘‘Where did you blow in from?” he asked. “T left my ship in Frisco, sir. Doctor’s orders.. Got ascrew loose somewhere. The doc said it was probably started that time we spent a week in the Tekoa’s boat off the 157 Horn—too much exposure. I had a couple of them overhaul me from truck to keelson. They told me to stick ashore for a while in a warm climate. I thought I’d come and look your farm over on the way, sir.”’ Lowrie stayed a while on the farm; learn- ing to drive a team and to milk a cow; row- ing about in the bottoms with Nance while she fished, and listened to his tales of the sea. One day, when old De Witt was short of help, he accompanied Nelson to the Upland farm, where Clyde at once became deeply interested in him. The old man took a liking to him. ‘Never seed a feller pitch so much hay in a day; an’ I’ve seed a many,” he said. To young De Witt, asking questions of the world outside, he spoke of Singapore and Rio Grande, Taltal and Teneriffe—places of which Clyde had never heard. Nance, delighted to see him again, plied him with questions of the sea and the ports. ““T haven’t seen the sea for three years,” she said. Lowrie smiled at her, saying: “Tt’ll always be there, Miss Dowser; and always the same.”’ “Oh!” she would say, “I want to go to sea again.” And Lowrie would reply— “The sea’s no place for a woman—not really.” She laughed at him. “You and Moses ought to be brothers,” she said. Moses, bent with age, his beard quite white, seventy and looking eighty, but still active and imperious, and rarely troubled now with rheumatism, scowled when he saw Lowrie arrive. Nelson liked him. “TI was to have been a sailor, too,” he would say, as they walked together from the barns, “‘I had two brothers once, and both of them was drowned at sea. My father, he was drowned at sea. I was to go to sea too; but mv old mother, she cried it out of me. ‘Let’s go to America, Peter,’ she says, ‘an’ forget the cold sea.’ That’s how I come to America, sir. It’s fine to travel and see things: but my old mother, she cried me awav from the sea.”’ One day Lowrie knocked at the door of Dowser’s room, and Dowser, sitting looking at the pictures of the old Nanette, and of the Fancy Nan, of Nance and of her mother, called to him to come in. C@ DOOK S C@