“That thought will cheer the darkest hours that can come and now, till we meet again, we must say goodbye,” he said huskily.
She could make no response. He placed his arms around her, pressed her close to his heart for a moment,—one long wistful kiss, and he was gone.
He rode slowly back to Hambright. The eastern horizon was fringed with the light of dawn when he reached the town. The more he had thought of his position and the way the General had treated him in attempting to settle his fate by a fiat of his own will without a hearing, the more it roused his wrath, and nerved him for the struggle. They were to measure wills in a contest’ that on his part had life for its stake.
“I ’ll give the old warrior the fight of his career!” he muttered as he snapped his square jaw together with the grip of a vise. “My brains, and every power with which nature has endowed me against his will and his money. And for the dastard who has slandered me there will be a reckoning.”
He was fighting in the dark but deep down in him he had a soldier’s love for a fight. His soul rose to meet the challenge of this hidden foe armed in the steel of a proud heritage of courage. He went to bed and slept soundly for six hours.
CHAPTER XVI—THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
GASTON awoke next morning at half past ten o’clock with a dull headache, and a sense of hopeless depression. His anger had cooled and left him the pitiful consciousness of his loss. He slowly and mechanically dressed.
When he buttoned his coat he felt something hard press against his heart. It was the ring. He sat down on his bed and drew it from his pocket. To his surprise he found coiled inside it and tied by a tiny ribbon a ringlet of her hair. She had taken off the ring in her mother’s presence and promised her to register and mail it in Atlanta. She had bound this little piece of herself with it. He kissed it tenderly.