The next day being Tuesday, preparations for leaving the fort were commenced by the colonel and his family.
They fixed the ensuing Monday for their departure.
Mrs. Moseley, in the midst of her packing, found time to write to her friend, Augusta Walling, announcing their return to the East, and asking her to find a large furnished house suitable to their large family and moderate income, somewhere in an inexpensive suburb of New York, and to have it ready for them to enter on their arrival, to save the cost of going to a hotel with their numerous party.
Every one was happy except Judy, who was grieving to go away without having heard from her missing brother, even though she was going where she would be sure to meet her betrothed.
With distressful anxiety she watched for the one remaining mail that would come in before they would leave the fort.
Thursday, the next mail day, came and brought her letters from Ran, telling her of the progress of his business and the passing of his time, and that he had at length secured apartments in the same building with his cousins, and had left his hotel to establish himself there until he should sail for England.
Judy was satisfied so far as her lover was concerned; but she was so bitterly disappointed and distressed at not getting any news of her brother by this last mail that she felt as if her last hope for him had died out, almost as if she might mourn him as dead, and she went away to her own tiny room to have her cry out by herself.
Then she wrote a long letter addressed to her brother, in which she explained to him the necessity of leaving the fort with the colonel’s family, and begging him to write to her or come and see her.
This she placed in the adjutant’s hands, begging him to give it to Mike if he should come to the fort.
By Friday night all the preparations for departure were completed. It had been a heavy week’s work to get ready a family of fifteen for a removal and a long journey, but the task was finished at last, and the colonel said: