And for the first time since many days a feeling of hearty joy caused the trail-seeker to quiver.
[1] See "The Tiger Slayer." Same publishers.
[CHAPTER III.]
A SAD MISTAKE.
Several days elapsed ere the two friends resumed their interrupted conversation.
They had continued their journey toward San Francisco without any incident worth noticing, owing to the skill of Valentine and Curumilla. Although this was the first time they had advanced so far from the regions they were accustomed to traverse, their sagacity made up so well for their want of knowledge that they avoided, with extreme good fortune, the dangers that menaced the success of their journey, and foresaw obstacles still remote, but which their knowledge of the desert caused them to guess, as it were, intuitively.
The two old friends observed, we may say studied, each other. After so long a separation they required to restore a community of ideas. That communion of thoughts and feelings which had existed so long between them might be eternally broken through the different media into which they had been thrown, and the circumstances that had modified their characters. Each of them rendered greater by events—having acquired the consciousness of his personal value and his intellectual power—had possibly the right no longer to admit, without previous discussion, certain theories which were formerly recognised without a contest.
Still the friendship between the two men was so lively, the confidence so entire, and the devotion so true, that, after a fortnight's travelling side by side—a fortnight during which they touched on the most varying subjects without once introducing the one they had so much interest in thoroughly discussing—they convinced themselves that they stood to each other precisely in the same position as before their separation.
Either through lassitude or deference, or perhaps the tacit recognition of his foster brother's superiority over him, during this fortnight, Don Louis, happy, perhaps, at having found once more the man who had been wont to think and act for him, had not once attempted to assume an independent position, but insensibly fell back under that moral guardianship which Valentine had so long exercised over him.