He lingered on the threshold, holding his beautiful wife by the hand.
"Father! sister! brave Martin Fulmer! come and see me in my poor man's home, and I will bless you from my heart for your presence. Come! come,—but not to tempt me with the offer of wealth; that word spoken, and we are strangers forever. For my oath is sworn, by the name of my mother, never to touch one dollar of the Van Huyden estate, and that oath is written up yonder!"
With these words, Carl Raphael, son of Gulian Van Huyden, and heir of One Hundred Million Dollars, took Mary by the hand, and passed from the banquet-hall, and from the house in which, twenty-one years before, his mother died.
[EPILOGUE.]
ON THE OCEAN,—BY THE RIVER SHORE,—IN THE VATICAN,—ON THE PRAIRIE.
My task is almost done. This work was commenced in January, 1848,—it is now June, 1852. Four years that have been of awful moment to the great world, and that, to many of you my readers, have brought change, affliction—have stripped you of those whose life was a part of your life, and made your pathway rich only in graves. Four years! As I am about to lay aside the pen, and shut the pages of this book, those four years start up before me, in living shape; they wear familiar faces; they speak with voices that never shall be heard on earth again.
Before the curtain falls, let us take a glance at the characters of our history.
Harry Royalton. He did not die under his brother's hands, but returned to Hill Royal, where he drank, and gambled, and talked "secession," until a kindly bullet, from the pistol of an antagonist in a duel, relieved him of the woes of this life.