“You? What have you got to mind?”
“What have I got to mind? All that my father will say when we get back, though I don’t worry about that so much.”
“What, then?”
“I’ve got to meet my mother.”
“Well, but she won’t say anything unkind to you.”
“No,” said Cyril sadly, “not a word; but she’ll look at me as I often seem to see her looking at me now, and asking me how I could behave so cruelly to her. It half killed her, father says, for my boat was missing for a fortnight. One of the fishermen had taken it away, and she thought I had gone out in her, and was drowned.”
Perry was silent, and soon after the boys had to separate, and ride in single file about the middle of the little line, Captain Norton and two of his friends forming the rearguard, in case of attack.
But though the return journey was very slow, on account of the weakness of the injured part of the little caravan, and there was every opportunity for the Indians to fall upon them had they been so disposed, they went on, day after day, unmolested, and their nights were undisturbed.
Those long narrow shelves of rock at the sides of the defiles seemed as if they would never end, but the clear crisp mountain air was wonderful in its curative effects; and while Perry was quite well again, and Cyril had about forgotten his injury, Colonel Campion and John Manning, though both thin of face, and generally a good deal pulled down, were strong enough to walk down—at the close of the last day’s journey—the long slope which led to Captain Norton’s house on its platform high above the sea.
“Where’s Cyril?” said Perry suddenly to Captain Norton. “I haven’t seen him these two hours.”