“At last came a year of unusual pressure; my remittance was delayed, but when sent was never acknowledged. From that hour out I never heard of her. How she came into my brother's family, you yourself know. What was her life there, she has told me! Not in any spirit of complaint,—nay, she acknowledges to many kindnesses and much trust. Even my cold sister-in-law showed traits for which I had not given her credit. I have already forgotten her wrongs towards myself, in requital of her conduct to this poor girl.”
“I'll spare you the scene with Henderson, Repton,” said he, after a long pause. “When the fellow told me that the girl was the same I had seen watching by another's sickbed, that she it was whose never-ceasing cares had soothed the last hours of one dearer than herself, I never gave another thought to him. I rushed out in search of her, to tell her myself the tidings.”
“How did she hear it?” asked Repton, eagerly.
“More calmly than I could tell it. Her first words were, 'Thank God for this, for I never could love that man I had called my father!'”
“She knows, then, every circumstance of her birth?”
“I told her everything. We know each other as well as though we had lived under the same roof for years. She is my own child in every sentiment and feeling. She is frank and fearless, Repton,—two qualities that will do well enough in the wild savannahs of the New World, but would be unmanageable gifts in the Old, and thither we are bound. I have written to Liverpool about a ship, and we shall sail on Saturday.”
“How warmly do I sympathize in this your good fortune, Martin!” said Repton. “She is a noble creature, and worthy of belonging to you.”
“I ask for nothing more, Repton,” said he, solemnly. “Fortune and station, such as they exist here, I have no mind for! I'm too old now to go to school about party tactics and politics; I'm too stubborn, besides, to yield up a single conviction for the sake of unity with a party,—so much for my unfitness for public life. As to private, I am rough and untrained; the forms of society so pleasant to others would be penalties to me. And then,” said he, rising, and drawing up his figure to its full height, “I love the forest and the prairie; I glory in the vastness of a landscape where the earth seems boundless as the sky, and where, if I hunt down a buffalo-ox, after twenty miles of a chase, I have neither a game-law nor a gamekeeper nor a charge of trespass hanging over me.”
“There's some one knocking at the door,” said Repton, as he arose and opened it.
“A thousand pardons for this interruption,” said Mas-singbred, in a low and eager voice, “but I cannot keep my promise to you; I cannot defer my journey to the West. I start to-night. Don't ask me the reasons. I 'll be free enough to give them if they justify me.”