“Then I’m going there now,” was the answer. “I thank thee for the story. No, I don’t want the pistol. It was the devil tempted me to bring it, but it was only to force the truth from him, and it went off of itself.”
“You are somewhat premature,” said Colonel Carrington. “We haven’t quite done with you. As I said, I hold myself responsible for the peace of Carrington, and though I am inclined to believe it was an accident, you can’t ride twenty miles hungry at midnight. You came here without my invitation, and you have customs of your own, but you’ll certainly get lost and frozen on the prairie if you leave this house before to-morrow morning.”
They stood facing each other, a curious contrast, the pinched and bowed cobbler and the army officer, but there was the same stubborn pride in both; for with a quaint dignity, which in some measure covered its discourtesy, the former made answer in the tongue of the spinning country:
“I thank thee, but I take no favors from the rich. Thou and the others like thee have all the smooth things in this life, though even they cannot escape the bitterness that is hidden under them. Well, maybe thou’lt find a difference in the next. Good night to thee.”
He marched out, and we heard the door crash to.
“I dare say he is right,” the Colonel said, with a curious smile. “At times I almost hope we will. An interesting character, slightly mad, I think; heard of such people, but I never met them.”
This was evidently true, for the lot of Colonel Carrington had not been cast among the alleys of a spinning town where the heavens are blackened by factory smoke, and as the silver value changes in the East there is hunger among the operatives. In such places the mind of many a thinking man, worn keen as it were by poor living, sickened by foulness and monotony, makes fantastic efforts to reach 101 beyond its environment, and occasionally hurries its owner to the brink of what some call insanity, and perhaps is not so.
Then one lonely and pathetic figure, with bent head and shambling gait, grew smaller down the great white waste of prairie.
“I am very sorry for him,” Grace said, “but the poor old man will never reach Willow Lake on foot, even if he could find the way. He must have walked many miles already, and he will be frozen before morning. Some one must go after him.”
“If you will allow us, Miss Carrington, I think we had better take our leave and drive him there on our homeward way. I am sorry that all this happened under your roof,” I said. “Harry, we must hurry before we lose him;” and Colonel Carrington answered coldly.