I will write again on my arrival at Pittsburgh. Adieu, and believe me your affectionate son.
No regrets, no weak reflections for this man with a warrior’s weapon on his arm—where no other burden might lie in all his years. His were to be the comforts of the trail, the rude associations with common men, the terrors of the desert and the mountain; his fireside only that of the camp. Yet he advanced to his future steadily, his head high, his eye on ahead—a splendid figure of a man.
He did not at first hear the gallop of hoofs on the street behind him as at last, a mile or more from the White House gate, he turned toward the river front. He was looking at the dull flood of the Potomac, now visible below him; but he paused, something appealing to the strange sixth sense of the hunter, and turned.
A rider, a mounted servant, was beckoning to him. Behind the horseman, driven at a stiff gait, came a carriage which seemed to have but a single occupant. Captain Lewis halted, gazed, then hastened forward, hat in his hand.
“Mrs. Alston!” he exclaimed, as the carriage came up. “Why are you here? Is there any news?”
“Yes, else I could not have come.”
“But why have you come? Tell me!”
He motioned the outrider aside, sprang into the vehicle and told the driver to draw a little apart from the more public street. Here he caught up the reins himself, and, ordering the driver to join the footman at the edge of the roadway they had left, turned to the woman at his side.
“Pardon me,” said he, and his voice was cold; “I thought I had cut all ties.”
“Knit them again for my sake, then, Meriwether Lewis! I have brought you a summons to return.”