THE MEETING ON THE MOUNT.
"What is this? Am I mad? Have I seen a spirit? Oh, Clarence, what is it?" cried Corona, in a tumult of emotion in which her life seemed throbbing away as she clung to her uncle for support.
"Try to compose yourself, dear Cora," he answered, as he gently laid her down on the mossy rocks, and went and brought her water from the spring in his pocket cup.
She raised herself and drank it at his request, and then staring wildly at him, repeated her questions:
"Oh, what was it? Who was here just now? Or was it—or was it—was it—delusion?"
"For Heaven's sake, Cora, calm yourself. It was Regulas Rothsay who stood here a moment ago."
"Rule himself, and no delusion! But, oh! I knew it! I knew it all the time!" she exclaimed, still trembling violently.
"My darling Cora, try—"
"Where did he go? Where?" she cried, staggering to her feet and clinging to her uncle. "Where? Oh, take me to him!"
"Do you see that log cabin on the plateau above us, Cora, to the right?" he said, pointing in the direction of which he spoke.
Her eyes followed his index, and she saw a cottage of rough-hewn logs standing against the rocky steep at the back of the broad ledge above them.
"What do you mean? Is he up there? Is he up there?" she breathlessly demanded.
"Yes; he is in that hut. I saw him climb the rocks and enter it, and close the door. But, for Heaven's sake! compose yourself, my dear. You are shaking as with an ague, and your hands are cold as ice," said Clarence.
"In that hut, did you say? So near? So near?"
"Yes, dear Cora; but be calm."
"Take me there! Take me there! Oh, give me your arm, Uncle Clarence, and help me. My limbs fail now, when I need them more than ever before. Ah! and my heart fails, too!" she moaned, growing suddenly pale and fainter as she leaned heavily against her uncle.
"Cora, darling! Cora, rouse yourself, my girl! This weakness is not like you. Take courage; all will be well," said Mr. Clarence, caressingly, laying his hand on her head.
She sighed heavily as she asked:
"How will he receive me? Oh, how will he receive me? Will he have me now? But he must! Oh, he must! For I will never, never, never go down this mountain side again without him! I will perish on its rocks sooner! Oh, come, come! Help me to reach that hut, Clarence."
There was no resisting her wild and passionate appeal. Clarence put his arm around her waist, to sustain her more effectually, as he said:
"Now lean on me, Cora, and step carefully, for the path is almost hidden, and very rugged."
"Oh, Clarence, did he recognize me? did he, Clarence? did he?" she eagerly inquired.
"Yes, Cora, he did," gravely answered the young uncle.
"And turned and went away! And turned and went away! Went away and left me without one word!" she wailed, in doubt and distress.
"Cora, my dear, pray control yourself," said Clarence, uneasily.
"Did he speak to you?" she suddenly inquired.
"Did you speak to him?"
"No; for he was gone in an instant, before I recovered from my astonishment at his appearance."
"How did he look?—how did he look when he recognized me? In anger?"
"No, Corona; but in much sorrow, pity, and tenderness," gravely replied Clarence.
"Then, why did he leave me? Oh, why did he turn away from me?"
"My dear, he had every reason to think that his sudden appearance had frightened you, and that his presence grieved and distressed you."
"Why, oh, why should he have thought so?" she demanded, with increasing agitation.
"My dear girl, you were frightened. I might say appalled. You saw him suddenly, and with a half-smothered scream threw your hands to your eyes as if to shut out the sight, and then sank to the ground. Now what could the man think but that you feared and hated the sight of him?"
"Just as he thought before! Just as he thought before!"
"And he turned sorrowfully away and walked up to his cabin on the mount, entered, and shut the door. I saw him do it."
"Just as he did before! Just as he did before! Oh, Rule! what a fatality! That appearances should always be false and disastrous between us!" she moaned.
"Not in this case, Cora. At least not from this hour. Come, we are on the ledge now!" said Clarence, as he helped his niece, who with one more high step stood on the top of the plateau, her back to one of the most glorious prairie scenes in nature, her face to a rocky, pine-dotted precipice, against which stood a double log cabin, with a door in the middle and a window on each side.
"There is the hut! Now, shall I take you there, or shall I wait here and let you go alone?" he inquired, as they stood side by side gazing on the hut.
She did not answer. Her eyes were riveted on the door of the cabin, while she leaned heavily on the arm of her uncle.
"I see how it is: you are weakening, losing courage. Let me support you to the door," said Clarence, putting his arm around her waist.
But she drew herself up suddenly.
"Oh, let me go alone, dear Uncle Clarence. My meeting with Rule should be face to face only," she replied, still trembling, but resolute.
"Are you sure you can do it?"
"Oh, yes, yes! My limbs shall no longer refuse their office!"
Clarence threw himself down at the foot of a pine tree to sit and await events.
He took out his watch and looked at the time.
"It is one o'clock," he said to himself. "At two sharp the trail will move, or ought to do so. Perhaps Neville might give us half an hour's grace, though. At any rate, I will wait here three-quarters of an hour, and if in that time I hear nothing from Rothsay or Cora, I shall go down the mountain to explain the situation to Neville."
So saying, Mr. Clarence took out his pipe, filled and lighted it, and smoked.
Corona, like a somnambulist or a blind woman, went slowly toward the log cabin, holding out her hands before her. She soon reached it, leaned for a moment against the log wall to recover her breath and her courage, and then knocked.
The door was instantly opened, and Regulas Rothsay stood on the threshold, still clothed in his hunter's suit of buckskin, but without the fur cap—the same Rule, unchanged except in habiliments and in the length of his untrimmed, tawny hair and beard.
In the instant of meeting she raised her eyes to his, and read in them the undying love of his heart.
With a cry of rapture, of infinite relief and infinite content, she sank upon his doorstep, clasped his knees, and laid her beautiful head down prone on his feet. Only for a second.
He instantly raised her in his arms, pressed her to his heart, kissed her, and kissed her again and again, bore her into the cabin, placed her in the only chair, and knelt down beside her.
She turned and threw her arms around his neck, and dropped her head upon his bosom.
And not a word was spoken between them. The emotions of both were too great for utterance, too great almost for endurance.
They were bathed in a flood of light from the noonday sun pouring its rays through the open door and windows of the cabin. It was the apotheosis of love.
Rule was the first to speak.
"You are welcome, oh, welcome, as life to the dead, my love! But I do not understand my blessedness—I do not," he said, dropping his head on her shoulders, while she still lay on his bosom, in a dream, a trance of perfect contentment.
"Oh, Rule, my husband, my lord, my king! I have come to you, unconsciously led by the Divine Providence! But I have come to you, to stay forever, if you will have me! I have come, never, never, never to leave you, unless you send me away!" she said.
"I send you away, dear? I send away my restored life from me? Ah, you know, you know how impossible that would be! But if I should try to tell you, dear, all that I feel at this moment, I should fail, and talk folly, for no human words can utter this, dear! But I am amazed—amazed to see you here with me, as the dead to the material world might be, on awaking amid the splendors of Paradise!"
"You wish to know how I came?"
"No! I do not! Amazed as I may be, I am content to know that you are here, dear—here! But," he said, looking around on the rudeness of his hut, "oh, what a place to receive you in! I left you in a palace, surrounded by all the splendors and luxuries of civilization! I receive you in a log cabin, bare of even the necessaries and comforts of life!" he added, gravely.
"But you left me a discarded, broken-hearted woman, and you receive me a restored and happy wife!" she exclaimed.
"But, oh, Cora! can you live with me here, here? Look around you, dear! Look on the home you would share!—the walls of logs, the chimney of rocks, the floor of stone, the cups and dishes of earthenware, pewter and iron, the—"
She interrupted him, passionately:
"But you are here, Rule! You! you! And the log hut is transfigured into a mansion of light! A mansion like the many in our Heavenly Father's House! Oh, Rule! you, you are all, all to me! life, joy, riches, splendor, all to me! Am I all to you, Rule?"
"All of earth and heaven, dear."
"Oh, happy I am! Oh, I thank God, I thank God for this happiness! Rule, we will never part again!—never for a single day! But be together, to-day and
'To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow,
To the last syllable of recorded time,'
and through the endless ages of eternity! Oh, Rule, how could we ever have mistaken our hearts? How could we ever have parted?"
"The mistake was mine only, dear. After what you told me on our marriage day, I lost all hope, all interest and ambition in life. I had toiled and striven and conquered, for the one dear prize; all my battle of life was fought for you; all my victories were won for you, and were laid at your feet. But when I found that all my love and hope had brought only grief and despair to you—then, dear, all my triumphs turned into Dead Sea fruit on my lips! Then I left all and came into the wilderness; left no trace behind me; effaced myself from your life, from the world, as effectually as I could do it; and so—believing it to be for your good and happiness—died to the world and died to you!"
"Oh, Rule! Miserable woman that I was! I wrecked your life! I wrecked your career!"
"No, dear, no; the mistake, I said, was mine! I should have trusted your heart. I should have given you the time you implored; I should not have fled in the madness of suddenly wounded affection."
"Oh, Rule? if you could have only looked back on me after you went away, only known the anguish your disappearance caused me and the inconsolable sorrow of the time that followed it."
"If I could have supposed it possible even, I would have hastened to you, from the uttermost parts of the earth!"
"And then they reported you dead, murdered by the Comanches, in the massacre of La Terrepeur, and sorrow was deepened to despair."
"Yes; I heard of that massacre. The report of my death must have arisen in this way: I had lived at La Terrepeur for many months, but had left and come to this place some days before the massacre. Some other unfortunate was murdered and burned in the deserted hut, whose bones were found in ashes. I did not return to contradict the report. I wished to be dead to the world, as I was dead to hope, dead to you, dead to myself!"
"Oh, Rule! in all that time how I longed, famished, fainted, died, for your presence! Yes, Rule; died daily."
"My own, dear Cora, how could I have mistaken you? Oh! if I had only known!"
"Ah, yes! if you had only known my heart, or I had only known your whereabouts! In either case we should have met before, and not lost four years out of our lives! But now, Rule," she said, with sudden animation—"now 'We meet to part no more,' as the hymn says. I will never, never, never, leave you for a day! I will be your very shadow!"
"My sunshine, rather, dear!"
"And are you content, Rule?"
"Infinitely."
"And happy?"
"Perfectly."
"Thank God! So am I. But why, oh, why when we met by the spring just now, why, when I was crazed with joy and fear at the sudden sight of you, why did you turn away and leave me?" she passionately demanded.
He looked at her serenely, incisively, and answered, calmly, quietly:
"Dear, because you shrank from me, threw your hands up before your eyes, as if to shut out the sight of me. Dear, your own sudden appearance before me at the spring, to which I had gone for my noonday draught of water, nearly overwhelmed me; but I readily recovered myself and understood it, connected it with the trail below, and concluded that you were on your way to Farthermost to join your brother, whom I had heard of as one of the officers of the new fort. Then, believing that my presence distressed you, I went away."
"Oh, Rule!"
After a little while Rothsay inquired:
"Was not that Mr. Clarence Rockharrt whom I saw with you by the spring?"
"Yes; Uncle Clarence. He helped me up to this ledge, and then he stayed outside while I came in here to look for you."
"Let us go and bring him in now, dear," said Rule.
And the two walked out together.
But no one was to be seen on the plateau; only, on the ground under the pine tree where Mr. Clarence had rested was a piece of white paper, kept in place by a small stone laid upon it.
Rule picked up the stone, and handed the paper to Cora.
It proved to be a leaf from Mr. Clarence's pocket tablets, and on it was written:
"I am going down the mountain to tell Captain Neville that my party will camp here to-night, and join him at the fort to-morrow, so that he may go on with his train at once, if he should see fit. Clarence."
"He saw you receive me; he knew it was all right; then he grew tired of waiting for me. He thought I had forgotten him, and so I had, and he left this paper and went down to the trail," Corona explained with a smile.
"Shall we go down and see your friends, Cora? Tell me what you wish, dear," said Rothsay.
Corona looked at her watch, and then replied:
"Courtesy would have required me to go down and take leave of Captain and Mrs. Neville before leaving them, but it is too late now. Their caravan is on the march by this time. They were to have resumed their route at two o'clock. It is after three now."
"We can go to Farthermost later, dear. It is but half a day's ride from here. Shall we go down the mountain and join Clarence? Is it your wish, Cora?"
"No, not yet. He is very well as he is. He can wait for us. Let us sit down here together. I have so much to tell, and so much to hear," said Corona.
"Yes, dear; and I also have 'so much to tell, and so much to hear,'" assented Rothsay, as they sat down at the foot of the young pine tree, with their backs to the rising cliffs and their faces to the descending mountain, the brook at its foot, and the vast, sunlit prairie, in its autumn coat of dry grass, rolling in smooth hills and hollows of gold and bronze off to the distant horizon.
"Tell me, dear, of all that has befallen you in these dark years that have parted us. Tell me of your grandparents. Do they still live?" inquired Rothsay.
"Ah, no!" replied Corona. And then she entered upon the family history of the last four years and four months, since Rule had disappeared, and told him of the sudden death of her dear old grandmother on the very day on which the false report of Rothsay's murder reached them.
She told him of her Uncle Fabian's marriage to Violet Wood a year later.
Of her widowed grandfather's second marriage to Mrs. Stillwater, whom Rothsay had known in his childhood as Miss Rose Flowers.
Of the recent death of this second wife, followed very soon after by that of the aged widower.
And finally she told him of her own resolution to follow her brother Sylvan to his post of duty at Fort Farthermost, to open a mission home school for Indian children, and to devote her life and fortune to their service; and of the good opportunity offered her by the kindness of Colonel Z. in procuring for her the escort of Captain and Mrs. Neville, who were on their way to Farthermost with a party of recruits.
"And Clarence? How came he to be of the company?" inquired Rothsay.
"Uncle Clarence could not agree with Uncle Fabian in business policy. So they dissolved partnership very amicably and with mutual satisfaction. This was after I had left Rockhold. Clarence gathered up his wealth, brought three devoted servants with him, and set out to follow me. At St. Louis he purchased wagons, tents, horses, mules, and every convenience for crossing the plains. He overtook and surprised us at Fort Leavenworth on the very day of our intended departure for Farthermost."
"Clarence came for your sake."
"Yes; and he has enjoyed the journey. On the free prairie he has been like a boy out of school—so buoyant, so joyous—the life of the whole company."
"What will he do now?"
"I think he will go on to Farthermost for this season. After this I do not know what he will do or where he will go."
"He will remain in this quarter, which offers a grand field for a man like Clarence Rockharrt," said Rothsay.
"I should think it might—in the future," replied Corona.
"In the near future. The tide of emigration is pouring into this section so fast that very soon the ground will be disputed with the Mexican government, and true men and brave men will be much wanted here."
"Yes," said Corona, indifferently, for she cared very little at this moment for public interests. "But tell me of yourself, Rule. I long to hear you talk of yourself."
Rothsay was no egotist. He never had been addicted to speaking of himself or of his feelings.
Now, at her urgent request, he told her in brief how he had renounced all his honors in the country for the sake of the woman for whose sake, also, he had first striven to win them and had won them.
"Dear," he said, "from the time you first noticed me, when you were a sweet child of seven summers and I a boy of twelve—yes, winters—for while all your years had been summers, dear—summers of love, shelter, comfort, luxury—all my years had been winters of loss, want, orphanage, and destitution—you were my help, support, inspiration. I longed to be worthy of your friendship, your interest, your sympathy. And for all these things I toiled, endured, and struggled."
"I know! Oh, I know!" said Corona, earnestly.
"Yes, dear, you know it all. For who but you were with me in the spirit through all the struggle, helping, supporting, encouraging, until you seemed to me my muse, my soul, my inner and purer and higher self. Dear, I wronged you when I connected your love with this world's pride. I wronged you bitterly, and I have suffered for it and made you suffer—"
"Oh, no, no, no, Rule! The fault was all my own! I am not so good and wise as you!" exclaimed Corona.
"Hush, dear! Hush! Hear me out!" said Rothsay, laying his hand gently on her head.
"Well, go on, but don't blame yourself. Oh, 'chevalier sans peur et sans reproche,'" said Corona, fervently.
He resumed very quietly:
"When I had reached a position in this world's honor to which I dared to invite you, then I laid my victory at your feet and prayed you to share it. And, Corona, when the bishop had blessed our nuptials, I dreamed that we were blessed indeed. You know, dear, what a miserable awakening I had from that dream on the evening of our wedding day."
"It was my fault! It was my fault! Oh, vain, foolish, infatuated woman that I was!" cried Corona.
"No, dear; you were not to blame. You were true, candid, natural through it all. Our betrothal, dear, was on your part the betrothal of friends. You did not know your own heart then. You went abroad with your grandparents, and, after two years of travel, you were thrown in the court circles of London, and exposed to all the splendors, temptations and fascinations of rank, culture and refinement, such as you had never met at home in your rural neighborhood. You were caught, dazzled, bewildered. You thought you loved the English duke who sought your hand—"
"But I never did, Rule. Oh, Heaven knows I never did. It was all self-delusion," broke in Corona.
"No; you never did. I saw that in the first instant that I met your eyes in the log cabin up yonder. You never did! It was a self-delusion. Yet you were under the influence of that self-delusion when I found you on our wedding evening in such a paroxysm of grief and despair that I—astonished and amazed at what I saw—shared your delusion and imagined that you loved this duke when you married me. What could I do, my own dear Cora, for whom I would have lived or died at bidding—what could I do but efface myself from your life?"
"Oh! you could have given me time—time to recover from my mental illness, since I had done no evil willingly. Since I had kept my troth as well as I could. Since I had vowed to love and serve you all the days of my life. You should have given me time, Rule, to recover my senses and keep my vow."
"Yes; I should have done so! But, you see, I did not know. How could I know? Oh, my dear Cora! It cost me little to lay down all the honors I had won, for they were worthless to me if not shared by you, for whom they were won. But it cost my life almost to resign you. Mine was 'not the flight of a felon' or a coward, but the retirement of one sick, sick unto death of the world and of all the glory of the world. Some men in my case might have sought relief in death, but I—I knew I must live until the Lord of life should himself relieve me of duty. So I left the city on the night of my wedding day, the night also before my inauguration day."
"Oh, Rule! and as if it required that supreme act of renunciation to tear the veil from my eyes and let me see you as you were, and see my own heart as it was—from that hour I knew how much, how deeply, how eternally I loved you!" said Corona.
Rothsay raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he resumed:
"I wrote two letters—one to you, explaining my motives for leaving, and advising you not to repeat to any one the subject or substance of our last interview, lest it should be misunderstood or misrepresented, and should do you unmerited injury with an evil-thinking world—"
"Yes, Rule. See! See! I have that letter yet!" exclaimed Corona, hastily unbuttoning the front of her bodice and pulling up the little black silk bag which she wore next her heart, suspended from the silken cord around her neck, and taking from it the old, yellow, broken paper which contained the last lines he had written to her.
"You kept that all this time, dear?" he inquired, gently taking the paper and looking at it.
"Yes. Why not? It was the last relic I possessed of you. And it has never left me. I never showed it to a human being, because you did not wish me to do so. But you said you had written two letters. To whom was the other? We never heard of it."
Rothsay looked at her in surprise for a moment and answered:
"The other letter? Why, of course it was my letter of resignation."
"Then it was never found! Never! If it had been, it would have saved much trouble. No one knew what had become of you, Rule. Not even I, except that you had left me on account of that last conversation between us, which you adjured me never to divulge. And oh! what amazement your disappearance caused! and what conjectures as to your fate! Many thought that you had been assassinated and your body sunk in the river. Oh, Rule! Many others thought that you had been abducted by some political enemy—as if any force could have carried you off, Rule!"
Rothsay laughed for the first time during the interview. Corona continued:
"Advertisements were placed in all the papers, offering large rewards for information that should lead to the discovery of your fate or whereabouts, living or dead. And, oh! how many impostors came forward to claim the money, with information that led to nothing at all. A sailor returning from Rio de Janeiro swore that you had shipped as a man before the mast and gone out with him, and that he had left you in the capital of Brazil. A fur trader from Alaska reported you killing seals in that territory. A returned miner swore that he had left you gold digging in California. A New Bedford sailor made his affidavit that he had seen you embark on a whaling ship for Baffin's Bay. These were the most hopeful reports. But there were others. There was never the body of an unknown man found anywhere that was not reported to be yours. Oh, Rule! think of the anguish all these rumors cost your friends!"
"Cost you, my poor Corona! I doubt if they cost any other human being a single pang."
"But all these rumors proved to be false, and your fate remained a mystery until it was apparently cleared up by the report of your murder by the Comanches in the massacre of La Terrepeur."
"A report as false as any of the others, as you see, yet with a better foundation in probability than any of those, as I have explained. But how my letter of resignation should have been lost I cannot conjecture. I posted it with my own hand," said Rothsay, reflectively.
"Why, letters are occasionally lost in the mail! But, Rule, how was it that you never heard of all the amazement and confusion that followed your flight, for the want of your letter to explain it?"
"Because, dear, from the time I left the State capital to this day I have never seen a newspaper or spoken to a civilized being."
"Rule!"
"It is true, dear! Look at me. Have I not degenerated into a savage?"
"No, no, no, Regulas Rothsay! you could never do that! Ah! how much nobler you look to me in that rude forest garb than ever in the fine dress of the drawing room! But tell me about your journey from the city into the wilderness, and of your life since."
"I have been trying to do so, Cora, but every time I try to begin my narrative by reverting to the hour of my flight, I seem spellbound to that hour and cannot escape from it. But I will try again," he said, and he began his story.
He told her, in brief, that on leaving the Rockhold house and going out upon the sidewalk, he found the streets still alight with illuminated houses and alive with the orgies of revelers who had come to the inauguration.
In moving through the crowd he was unrecognized, for who could suspect the black-coated figure passing alone along the street at midnight to be the governor-elect of the State, in whose honor the assembled multitudes were getting drunk?
His first intention had been to take a hack, drive to the railway depot, and board the first train going West. But the hacks were all engaged as sleeping berths by men who could not get accommodations in any of the houses of the overcrowded city.
So he set off to walk, and almost immediately came face to face with old Scythia, the friend of his childhood.
"Old Scythia!" exclaimed Corona, interrupting the narrative.
"Yes, dear; the old seeress of Raven Roost, as they used to call her. Of course, I never, even as a boy, believed in the supernatural powers of divination ascribed to her, but I must credit her with wonderful intuitions. She had divined the very crisis that had come, and in that hour of my agony and humiliation she exercised a strange power over me," said Rothsay; and then he took up the thread of his narrative again.
He told her that on leaving the State capital he had taken neither railway carriage nor river steamboat, but had tramped, with old Scythia by his side, all the way from the Cumberland Mountains to the Southwestern frontier.
The journey had taken them all the summer, for they traveled very slowly—sometimes walking no more than ten miles a day, sometimes sleeping on pallets made of leaves under the trees of the forest, sometimes reaching a pioneer's log hut, where they could get a hot supper and a night's lodging. Sometimes stopping over Sunday in some settlement where there was no church, and where Rule, though not an ordained minister, would on Christian principles hold a service and preach a sermon.
So they journeyed over the mountains, and through the valleys and forests, until at length, in the end of October, they arrived at the poorest, loneliest, and most forlorn of all the pioneer settlements they had seen.
This was La Terrepeur, on the borders of the Indian Reserve. It was a settlement of about twenty log huts, in a small valley shut in by densely wooded hills, and watered by a narrow brook. It was too near the country of the Comanches for safety, and too far from the nearest fort for protection. There was neither church nor school house within a hundred miles.
The travelers were hospitably received by the pioneers, and here, as the autumn was far advanced, and travel difficult, they determined to halt for the winter, at least, and in the spring to go farther south in search of Scythia's tribe, the Nez Percees, who had been moved away from their former hunting grounds.
They were feasted and lodged by the hutters that night. The next morning the men turned out in a body, felled trees and cleared a spot on the slope of a wooded hill, sawed logs and built two huts, one for Rothsay, and one for old Scythia. They were finished before night. And then the settlers had a house-warming, which was a breakdown dance to the music of the one fiddle in the settlement, and a supper of such eatables and drinkables as the place could afford.
But there was no furniture in these two primitive dwellings. So once more these wayfarers had each to sleep on a bed of leaves.
On the second day the man who owned the only mule and cart, and was the only expressman and carrier to the settlement, offered to go to the nearest post trader's station—a distance of fifty miles—and purchase anything that the strangers might need, if said strangers had the money to buy.
Rothsay had money in notes, hardly thought of, and never looked at, except when, on their long journey, he had to take out his pocket book to pay for accommodations at some log cabin, or to purchase a change of under clothing at some post trader's.
Also old Scythia had a pouch of silver and gold coin, saved from the money that had been regularly sent to her by Rule from the time when he first began to earn wages to the time when they set out for the wilderness in company.
Of this money they gave the frontier expressman all that he required to purchase the plainest furniture for the log cabins—bedding, cooking utensils, crockery ware, and some groceries.
"Yer can't buy bed or mattresses at the post trader's; but yer can buy ticking, and we can sew it up for yer, and the men will stuff with straw. There's plenty of straw," said one of the kindly women, speaking for all her neighbors.
And the expressman set out with his list.
In three days he was back again with a satisfactory supply. The women made the straw beds and pillows and hemmed the sheets. The men filled the ticks and "knocked together" a pine table and a few rude, three-legged stools. And so Rothsay and old Scythia were settled for the winter.
Rothsay took upon himself the office of teacher and preacher. Among the articles brought from the post trader's were a few Bibles, hymn books, and elementary school books, slates and pencils.
He began his labors by holding a religious service in his own cabin on the first Sabbath of his sojourn at La Terrepeur, which—perhaps for its rarity—was attended by the whole of the little community. And on the next day he opened his little school in his hut, where he taught the children all day, and where he slept at night. Old Scythia's cabin was kitchen and dining room.
All that autumn, winter and spring Rule labored among the pioneers of La Terrepeur. It was not true, as had been reported, that he was a missionary and schoolmaster to the Indians; for no one of the savages who occasionally came into the settlement could be induced to approach the "school."
It was in June that old Scythia became restless and anxious to find her tribe—the wandering Nez Percees.
Rothsay gave his school a vacation and set out with Scythia to find the valley where they were reported to be in camp.
"This valley below, Cora, dear," said Rothsay, interrupting the course of the narrative. "But when we reached it, the Nez Percees had disappeared. A lonely old hunter, who had built this hut, was the only human being in the place, and he was slowly dying, and he would have died alone but for the opportune arrival of old Scythia and myself. He told us that the Nez Percees had crossed the river about two weeks before, and were far on their migration west."
"Old Scythia sat down flat on the floor, drew up her knees, folded her hands upon them, dropped her head, and died as quietly as a tired child falls to sleep."
"Oh!" exclaimed Corona, "how sad it was."
"Yes; it was sad; age, fatigue and disappointment did their work. I buried her body under that pine tree where your Uncle Clarence sat down. The old hunter's struggle with dissolution was longer. He lingered five days. I waited on him until death relieved him, and then laid his body to rest beside old Scythia's. I was then preparing to return to La Terrepeur, when a wandering scout brought me the news of the massacre of the inhabitants and the destruction of the settlement. Since that time, dear Corona, I have lived alone on this mountain. That is all. Come, shall we go down and see your uncle?"
"Yes," said Corona.
And they arose and walked down into the valley.
They soon found the wagon camp of Clarence Rockharrt and his followers.
The horses and mules, which had been unharnessed, watered and fed, were now tethered to the scattered tree trunks, and were nosing about under the dried leaves in search of the tender herbage that was still springing in that genial soil beneath the shelter of the fallen foliage. The wagons had been drawn up under cover of the thicket and prepared as sleeping berths.
On the grass was spread a large white damask table cloth, and on that was arranged a neat tea service for three.
Martha was busy at a gypsy fire boiling coffee and broiling venison steaks.
"You are just in time, Rule. How do you do?" exclaimed Mr. Clarence, emerging from among the horses, and coming forward to shake hands with Rothsay as if they had been in the daily habit of meeting for the last four years.
The two men clasped hands cordially.
"I always had a secret conviction that you were living, Rule, and always secretly hoped to meet you again, 'somehow, somewhere;' and now my prescience is justified in our meeting to-day."
"Clarence," gravely replied Rothsay, "you ask me no questions, yet now I feel that you are entitled to some explanation of my strange flight and long sequestration. And I will give it to you to-morrow."
"My dear Rothsay, I have divined much of the mystery, but you may tell me what you like, when you like. And now supper is ready," said Clarence, heartily, as the four servants came up, each with a dish to set on the cloth, quite an unnecessary pageantry where one would have been enough, but that they all wanted to see the long-lost man. And with the warmth and freedom of their race they quickly set down their dishes and gathered around the stranger to give him a warm welcome, expressing loudly their surprise and delight in seeing him.
"Dough 'deed I doane wonner at nuffin' wot turns up in dis yere new country!" old Martha declared.
Then followed a gay and happy al fresco supper.
By the time it was over the sun had set, and the autumn evening air, even in that southern clime, was growing very chilly.
So the three friends arose from the table.
Rothsay and Corona turned to go up the hill. Clarence escorted them, carrying Corona's bag.
They parted at the door of the log cabin.
"I shall have our tent pitched at the foot of the mountain early to-morrow morning, and breakfast prepared. You will come down and join me," said Mr. Clarence, as he bade the reunited pair good night.
The wagon camp did not break up the next day, nor the day after that.
On the third day who should arrive but Lieut. Haught, absent on leave, and come to look up his relations. His meeting with them was a jubilee. His sister wept for joy; his brother-in-law and his uncle would have embraced him if they had expressed their emotions as continental Europeans do; even the negroes almost hugged and kissed him.
On Lieut. Haught's representations and at his persuasions the little camp broke up, and with Rothsay and Cora in company, marched off to Fort Farthermost, where they were cordially received by the commandant and the officers, and where the reunited pair commenced life anew.
My story opened with the marriage and mysterious separation of the newly married pair. It should close with their reunion.
The later life of my young hero belongs to history. It would require a pen more powerful than mine to pursue his career, which was as grand, heroic and romantic as that of any knight, prince, or paladin in the days of old.
His pure name and fame became identified with the rise and progress of a great State in that Southwestern wilderness. Soldier, statesman, patriot, benefactor, all in one, his memory will be honored as long as his country shall last. And yet, perhaps, the crowning glory of his character was his power of self-renunciation—proved in every act of his public life, but shown first, perhaps, when, to leave the life of one beloved woman free, he renounced not only the hand of his adored bride, but
"The kingdoms of the world and the glory."