“Never mind, my dear Mark! never mind! You take this to heart far more than necessary. Now, I dare say that one of your hot-blooded, fire-eating Mississippians, treated as I have been, would call somebody out, and do something desperate; but I really do not feel obliged to do anything of the sort.”
“I am a Mississippian—do you consider me a very hot-blooded person? Am I not rather a miserable poltroon, to see my friend and guest outraged and insulted as you have been?”
“Well, that is as fine a piece of self-accusation as I have met with since reading the formula of confession in a Roman Catholic missal. You could not help it, Mark—you could not affront age or womanhood, in my defence or your own,” said Lauderdale; and he resumed his packing.
In a very few minutes it was completed, and then he came to announce his departure to Mark, and to take leave of him.
“I have nothing to say to you, dear Lincoln—nothing whatever, except once more to entreat your pardon for what has passed, and to wish you well with all my heart.”
He could not seek to change his guest’s purpose—could not ask him to remain; how could he do so, indeed? He wished to order the carriage, but Lincoln positively refused to avail himself of it, saying that he would walk to the next village, and send for his trunks. Mark impressed upon him the use of his own riding-horse, and Lincoln, to avoid wounding him, accepted it.
The young men then went down stairs; Lincoln entered the parlour, to bid adieu to his hostess, and Mark left the house to order the horses, for he was resolved to accompany his friend.
In a few minutes they were in their saddles, and on the road leading to C——, a muddy, miserable town, about five miles down the river.
Here the friends finally separated, but not until Lincoln’s trunks had been sent for, and had arrived, and Lincoln himself had entered the stage that passed through the village that night, and was to convey him to the steamboat landing on the Mississippi, by which route he preferred to return north. They took leave with mutual assurance of remembrances, and promises of frequent correspondence.
It was late at night when Mark Sutherland returned to his home, and he immediately went to his room.