"Soon after, I wrote Roger an invitation to spend the summer with us, Mary and Amy adding a feminine postscript, in which they expressed their valuation of one who had proved so noble a friend in my distress, and earnestly begging him to give them an opportunity of thanking him personally.
"To which he responded that he would 'do himself the honor' of paying his respects in person the following July—a visit which terminated in a wedding between my old friend and sister Amy. On their bridal day I gave them the deed to the Maple Dale plantation, which adjoined our own, and as I handed the astonished pair the papers I remarked that it was in fulfillment of the contract which Roger and I had made at Los Angeles, and they might charge it to 'Profit and Loss.'
"The newly-wedded pair left the plantation in charge of an overseer, and returned to Acapulco; but Roger resigned his position after a few months, and returned home to the quiet life of a planter.
"We enjoyed a long period of uninterrupted prosperity; but when the War of the Rebellion began, I raised a company and joined the Southern army. At the close of that terrible conflict all that was left me was my title and family, with the wreck of my once comfortable fortune.
"I shall hurry over the history of the struggling years that followed; how on returning from the war I found Mary and the children had fled to the city, and how I gathered them once more together on the farm, where the dear old homestead lay, a blackened ruin. But earnestly we tried to retrieve the lost years.
"The county in which I lived was 'reconstructed,' and from the bonds issued by the officers, and the taxes levied to run the costly, corrupt machine, there followed wide-spread financial distress.
"A treasurer had been appointed to finger our money. He was a hawk-nosed, black-haired little reprobate, named Toler, and the way he tolled all the grists which came to his tax-mill led us to believe that he was well named indeed. It was reported that he had once held the post of sutler in a regiment of Eastern troops. Whether that was true or not, he was undoubtedly the most subtle villain that ever sold scabby sheep or slipped a flag-stone into a sack of bacon. Finally, this 'patriotic' officer, having stuffed his 'grip-sack' with county funds, one dark night took an excursion for his health, considerately leaving the county, which he only refrained from stealing from the fact that it was not portable.
"The reckless extravagance of that class of men, cursed and abhorred by both parties, led eventually to wide-spread ruin and bankruptcy; but out of the wreck of my once comfortable fortune I saved a few thousands, and, hearing favorable reports from the fertile Kansas prairies, we turned our steps westward toward the setting sun. Fate seemed to lead me here; so I will begin the life-struggle over again on the spot where I lost my friends and the gold doubloons here, near the shadows of the Old Stone Corral."
When the colonel had finished the long and eventful history of his past life, a silence fell on the group—a silence tinged with sadness as they thought of the fate of Walraven and his wife; and as the camp-fire mingled its flickering light with the pale moonbeams, throwing an uncertain, wavering shimmer over the tangled vines and milk-white elder-blooms, a sense of their lone, isolated position slowly dawned upon them. They were far out on the verge of an untried, mysterious land, no evidences of civilization for miles around, and all the future, with its trials and struggles, looming grimly on the morrow. Is it any wonder that a feeling of dread, awe, and fear stole over the stoutest heart at the thought of the direful, tragic past haunting the spot with its painful memories, and the black veil of futurity hovering over them—hiding the joys and fears, the tears and graves, that lay beyond?