One of the Irishmen next appeared, carrying Jack’s pillows and toys.
“Can you tell me where Mr. Hollis is?” demanded the judge, still seated.
“Mr. Hollis, surr? Yes, surr. Think he’s gone fishing, surr.”
“D—n him! He takes a nice time for it—when we’re sweating here,” muttered the judge, angrily.
But poor Hollis was fishing only in a figurative sense, and in bitter waters. He had sent for Paul—yes; but he could not stay to witness his return with Eve; (he had not the slightest doubt but that Eve would return with him). He shook hands with Paul upon his arrival, and made a number of jokes, as usual. But soon after the younger man’s canoe had started eastward in search of Eve, a second canoe, with Hollis paddling, stole quietly away, going in the opposite direction. Its occupant reached Port aux Pins, in due time. He remained there but a few hours.
A month later a letter came to Paul from a small town near the base of the Rocky Mountains. “You see, when I got back to Port aux Pins, it sort of came over me that I’d go west. People are more lively out here, and not so crowded. I’ve got hold of a capital thing in raisins, in southern California. If that fails, there is stock-raising, and plenty of other things; and the same old auctioneer line. I’ve left a trifle in the savings-bank for Jacky. Perhaps you’ll take charge of it for him? You’ll hear from me again soon.—C. HOLLIS.”
But Paul never heard from him; from that moment all trace of him was lost. Ferdie, if he had known Hollis, would have had a vision of him making his way year by year farther westward, always attired in the black coat and tall hat (which marked his dignity as a lawyer), whether voyaging in a prairie schooner, chopping wood at a camp, hunting elk, or searching for ore. But Paul had no such visions, he did not see human lives as tableaux-vivants. He was sincerely sorry that Hollis had vamosed in that way. But he understood it too.
The trifle turned out to be eight hundred dollars. It was regularly entered to little Jack’s account, and there was a pass-book with his full name, “John Frederick Bruce.” “Bruce,—that did it,” thought Paul; “he could give it to the child. Poor old Kit! it must have been all he had.”
Cicely’s generalship was excellent; in less than half an hour the three canoes were ready, and the judge, Porley and Jack, Eve, Cicely herself, with three of the men to row, took their places; the boats glided out from the shore, turning towards the west. Mrs. Mile bowed gravely to the judge, with an air of compunction; she knew what an impression she had made upon that poor old man; she was afraid that she had not done right! Mrs. Mile was left in charge of the camp to await the arrival of Paul Tennant.
The canoes were out all night. At dawn the little party found refuge on one of the North Shore steamers, and began the long voyage down the chain of lakes, stopping again at the beautiful city of Cleveland, thence by railway to New York, and from there southward by sea. On the ninth morning of their journey their ocean steamer turned her bows towards the distant land, a faint line on the right; by noon, she was making her way along a winding channel, which was indicated here and there in the water by buoys painted white, which looked like ducks; the Atlantic was very calm, its hue was emerald green; it was so clear that one could see the great jelly-fish floating down below. The judge, with his hands clasped on his cane’s head, stood looking eagerly at everything. His joy was deep, he felt himself an exile returning home. And oh! how beautiful home was! To him, this Southern coast was fair as Paradise; he welcomed the dark hue of the Southern trees, he welcomed the neglected fields, he even welcomed the broken-down old houses here and there. For at least they were not staring, they were not noisy; to the judge, the smart new houses of Port aux Pins—those with Mansard roofs—had seemed to shout and yell. Three negro fishermen, passing in a row-boat with a torn sail, were eminently worthy creatures; they were not the impudent, well-dressed mulattoes of the North, who elbowed him off the pavements, who read newspapers on steamers with the air of men of the world. When the winding channel—winding through water—came to an end at the mouth of an inlet, the white sand-hills on each hand were more beautiful to his eyes than the peaks of the Alps, or the soft outline of Italian mountains. “God bless my country!” was the old man’s fervent thought. But his “country” was limited; it was the territory which lies between the St. Mary’s River and the Savannah.