He met the amused glance of Louise, who was sitting on the gallery railing just beside him.
“My usefulness is past,” he said to her in an undertone. “You wanted me to influence the boys to thrift and industry, and now Tom’s taken such a turn to the right that you’ll have to hold him back. And Hanna is dead.”
His own words gave him a shock again. Hanna was dead—McGibbon was dead! That long bitterness was ended. He had hunted his enemy to death, but he had not drawn one drop of his blood, through all the fighting and chasing. It was hard to grasp that this long phase of his life was over, and the new phase would call for new adjustments.
“And now—what?” he said to Louise in a still lower tone. Tom and his father were still sorting over the contents of Hanna’s bag. “I’m neither a farmer nor a turpentine man. Do I go back to the cities now, with Rainbow Landing only a memory?”
Louise looked startled for a moment. She put out one hand almost instinctively, and Lockwood took it and squeezed it behind the screen of his chair. She glanced down at him caressingly, protectively.
“Do you think I’d let you go?” she whispered.
THE END