“I had no idea you could be like this,” she said, toward the close.
“Then it’s as well you should know.”
It ended in a breach. He came no more to the house. Hildegarde passed him in the street with lowered eyes.
And Bella had gone home.
The spring went creeping by.
Now June was gone. Even July. Still no news.
“You see,” said Hildegarde dully, “father isn’t coming back.”
August was waning—not even a letter. And from that other more terrible North, no syllable of the tidings, that to reach those two waiting in California, must come round by the old world, and all across the new.
“He is dead,” Hildegarde said to herself, and it was not of Nathaniel Mar that she was thinking.
The boys had generously sent their father both money and advice. He was recommended to use the sight draft on the Alaska Commercial Company, for the purpose of buying his home passage by the very next ship.