Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/330

246 old home-like ways and let fashion rule in the valley. Now this hope was doomed, the old place must go. Very sad it made me to look back for the last time at the dear old building under whose roof I had spent some of the happiest days of my life, and know that I would never see it again. As the car rushed away across the plains a mist for a moment blotted out the towering mountains, the blue sky, and the brown faces of my comrade-guides; with a lump in my throat I waved a last farewell. Life is opening out. I may see many lands and make many friends, but as long as it shall last I will carry with me an imperishable memory of that happy home among the mountains, memories of good friends and true, of brave deeds quietly done—days of exultation and triumph, days of sorrow and failure. Love, freedom, and peace, with beauty unutterable brooding on the star-lit heights and the winding valleys; dear home of hopes and dreams, may fate some day bring me back again to wander in well-remembered ways, but now