"It is Mr. Jamison, Jack, is it not? But I need not ask, for no man, but you Mr. Jamison, would be thus met by my husband."
We were soon seated before that tent in that sweet intercourse which arises only between genuine friends. It was difficult to realize that years had elapsed since I had last seen Jack. He was the same open hearted, genial and dignified man. Shortly afterward, the dog got up lazily, and trotting toward the little ravine, met a gray bearded negro—the Jim Madison who so disturbed me on the Licking river. His pleasure at seeing me seated with Felden and his wife, seemed unbounded. When I repeated to him what I had told his master of my location in the logging camp, he said, in a tone that showed the thing was a matter of course:
"Well! Mars Jack, I'll jes' take de boat an' go to de camp an' fotch Mr. Jamison's things over."
Jack laughed, "Yes, Jim, your hospitality has only run ahead of mine. Jamison must come and make his home with us in 'Big Rock Camp.'"
Before night I was in possession of Jim's tent and he had fixed his cot in a corner of the kitchen. We spent the next few days fishing, walking and talking. The late afternoons and evenings were delightful. Jack sang gloriously to the guitar, and his wife could discourse charming music from that most inharmonious of instruments, the banjo. She had a rich contralto voice and sang with what is higher than all art—exquisite tenderness and deep feeling.
Jack was usually as gay as I had ever known him, but occasionally his face had a tinge of intense sadness, which he evidently struggled to suppress. This expression was never shown in his wife's sight. With her he was a rolicking, joyous man, and every act and word showed him a loving, an idolatrous husband. But when her back was turned he occasionally regarded her with a look of such pain that my heart went out toward him and ached for him.
About a week after my arrival Jack and I were fishing at some distance from the camp, our low conversation had flagged, when he suddenly said: "Mr. Jamison, you must have thought me a brute all of these years."
I quickly responded, "No, Jack! I never doubted you had good reasons for your silence, and nothing would have tempted me here had I dreamed I would meet you."
"I am so glad you came! I have wanted to see you more than you can think." His voice was exquisitely modulated while saying this.
"I wish now to tell you every thing. Rita wishes me to do so. Your great discretion will teach you how far you must hereafter be reticent in her presence. The one great object of my life is to save her pain—to make her happy."