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18 But I was eased of some restraint, I thought, Not qualified by those amenities, And I should have to search the matter down; For I was young, and I was very keen. So I began to smoke a bad cigar That Plunket, in his love, had given me The night before; and as I smoked I watched The flying mirrors for a mile or so, Till to the changing glimpse, now sharp, now faint, They gave me of the woodland over west, A gleam of long-forgotten strenuous years Came back, when we were Red Men on the trail, With Morgan for the big chief Wocky-Bocky; But I soon yawned out of that and set myself To face again the loud monotonous ride That lay before me like a vista drawn Of bag-racks to the fabled end of things.

Yet that ride had an end, as all rides have; And the days that followed after took the road That all days take,—though never one of them Went by but I got some good thought of it For Captain Craig. Not that I pitied him, Or nursed a mordant hunger for his presence;