As it was somewhere near a thousand miles to the place where we had left Elam, we didn’t say anything about going after him. We passed it off in some way, and followed the old man into the carriage. We didn’t go to sleep at all that night, for the general was anxious to hear where we had been, and what we had been doing, since Tom went away. When day broke I went on the porch and looked around. There was a splendid plantation; everything was in apple-pie order, and a host of servants ready to do his bidding, and what Tom could make by running away from a home like that, I didn’t see. I expressed as much to him when he came out there later.
“Because I was a fool,” said he. “Nobody could make anything by running away from a home like this, but I tell you it has opened my eyes. I feel as if I had got among friends from whom I have long been separated.”
That day I made the acquaintance of “Our Fellows,” who rode down to see us, and I tell you I found them good fellows, every one. Tom Mason was getting up on a par with Sandy Todd now, for with this exception he was head and shoulders above every one of them. His sleeping in the open air for almost a year had done wonders for him.
We haven’t been to the plains yet to settle up with Uncle Ezra and to see Elam, but we are going as soon as spring opens. After that Tom will settle down as he used to be before, only he will have the management of the plantation. I have been hunting on several occasions with “Our Fellows,” and if you could see Tom when he was toasting his shins in front of our camp-fire and telling his stories, you would say that none of his adventures ever had so great an effect on him as those that befell him in Texas.
THE END.
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