“I suppose,” he remarked, as, a little later, he accompanied his guests to the door, “I suppose that before this time to-morrow, Mr. Cameron will have already arrived at the camp?”
“Yes,” Houston replied, “we expect him over on the evening train, with Van Dorn.”
As Houston and Rutherford took leave of Jack, there was something in his manner, something in the long, lingering hand-clasp which seemed more like a farewell than like a simple good-night, at which they silently wondered.
Could they have looked in upon him an hour later, they would have understood the cause. Silently he moved about the room, gathering together the few little keepsakes among his possessions which he most prized. These he placed in a small gripsack which he carefully locked, saying to himself, as he looked around the room with a sigh, “Mike can have the rest.”
Then going to the window, he stood looking out upon the calm, moonlit scene, which for many years had been the only home he had known.
“This is my last night here,” he soliloquized, “my work here is done. After to-morrow, Everard Houston will need me no longer, everything in which I can render him assistance is now done, and his friends will afford him all needed protection. Lyle has found her own, her future is provided for. The wrongs which I have witnessed for years in silence, will be righted without any assistance of mine. There is nothing more for me to do, and to-morrow I will start forth on the old, wandering life again.”
His head dropped lower; he was thinking deeply.
“He said the old home was open, and would always be what it had been in the past. Home! What would that not mean now, after all these years! But that was long ago. I am dead to them now,––dead and forgotten. They will be happy with their new-found daughter, and Everard will be to them as a son, their happiness will be complete, and I will not mar it by any reminders of the wretched past.”
He glanced upward at the surrounding peaks.
“To-morrow I go forth again into the mountains,––those towers of refuge and strength,––and in their soothing solitudes I shall once more find peace!”