Wild Adventures in Wild Places - Gordon Stables

One short week after this conversation took place my three heroes were—

”—Severed far and wide
By mountain, stream, and sea.”

And this just reminds me that my tale is wonderfully near its close, for, dear me! you know an author who has lost his heroes is just like a bird who has lost its eggs, there is not a bit of good in trying to sing any more. Besides, they have all gone in different directions, and I can’t be in three places at once; and even if I could, my presence would doubtless be deemed an intrusion, for I’ll warrant they are all happy enough.

But did the re-union ever take place, and did the bonfire blaze fierce on the hill-top? Both events came off, reader, I’m glad to tell you. And here they all are with happy beaming faces, seated around the table in the banquetting hall of the home of the Willoughbys: Fred, and Frank, and Chisholm O’Grahame, each with their wives by their side. Ay, and brave Captain Lyell, too, though he has got no wife by his side—his lot is to be a rover, his home is on the deep. And here is brawny Dugald McArthur and honest John Travers, the bold hunters of the backwoods.

And here is precisely the place to drop the curtain. Let it descend then, and slowly hide the happy scene.

Yet one word. My chief reward in having written these “Wild Adventures,” rests in a thought and in a hope. The thought is, that I may have sometimes interested and amused you; the hope, that we may—for stranger things have happened—meet again another day.