Here was the thing he had seen in his dreams when he stood on wooded hills and thought in the terms of the future. Here it stood vivid and actual before the eyes that had visioned it.
With a groan he turned into the road homeward on a hired horse. He still meant to fight, and unless the Bud Hawkins property had escaped him, he would still have to be accounted with—but great prizes had slipped away.
At the gate of his house, his heart rose into his throat. The power of his emotion almost stifled him. Never had his love for Glory flickered. Never had he thought or dreamed of anything else or any one else so dearly and so constantly as of her.
He stood at the fence with half-closed eyes for a 288 moment, steadying himself against the surges of up-welling emotion, then, raising his eyes, he saw that the windows and the door were nailed up. The chimney stood dead and smokeless.
Panic clutched at his throat as with a physical grasp. Before him trooped a hundred associations unaccountably dear. They were all memories of little things, mostly foolish little things that went into the sacred intimacy of his life with Glory.
Now there was no Glory there.
He rode at the best speed left in his tired horse over to old Cappeze’s house, and, as he dismounted, saw the lawyer, greatly aged and broken, standing in the door.
One glance at that face confirmed all the fears with which he had been battling. It was a face as stern as those on the frieze of the prophets. In it there was no ghost of the old welcome, no hope of any relenting. This old man saw in him an enemy.
“Where is Glory?” demanded Spurrier as he hurried up to the doorstep, and the other looked accusingly back into his eyes and answered in cold and bitterly clipped syllables.
“Wherever she is, sir, it’s her wish to be there alone.” Suddenly the old eyes flamed and the old voice rose thin and passionate. “If I burned in hell for it to the end of eternity, I would give you no other word of her.”