"There," he said, "is the receipt for the next year's house rent, and before that time is out I shall send you the money, if I am prospered, to pay for another year. I have taken from the savings-bank enough to carry me to Colorado and keep me a little while after I get there; and the bank book, with the rest of the five hundred dollars, I have transferred to you. If I have any luck you shall never want,—you and Olive. You'll be better off without me. I think I've always been an aggravation to you, Martha,—only an aggravation."
He went back again into his room, and came out with a valise packed full.
"I think I'll go away now," he said. "The train starts in an hour, and there is no need of my troubling you any longer."
Then he had taken Olive into his arms, and she had felt some sudden kisses on her cheek, some hot tears on her face; but he had said nothing to her, only the one sentence, gasped out like a groan,— "Father's little one! father's little one!"
Olive shivered and then grew hot again, as she remembered it; and remembered how wistfully he had looked afterwards at his wife, reading no encouragement in her sharp, contemptuous face.
"I guess you'll see Colorado about as much as I shall," said Martha Haygarth, sneeringly. "Your courage may last fifty miles."
He did not answer. He just shut the door behind him and went out into the night,—and she had never seen him since, never heard his voice since that last cry,—"Father's little one!"
She felt the thick-coming tears blinding her eyes, but she brushed them resolutely away, and looked up at the Old South clock just before her.
Almost five. The sun had set nearly half an hour ago, and the night was falling fast. How long a time she had spent in walking the short distance since she came into Washington Street! How late home she should be! She quickened her steps almost to a run, went to the clothing store, where she had to wait a little while for her work to be looked over and paid for, and heard the clocks strike six just as she reached the corner of Essex Street, on her homeward way. The dense, hurrying crowd jostled and pressed her, and she turned the corner. She would find more room on the Avenue, she thought.
She had not noticed that two young men were following her closely. They would have been gentlemen if they had obeyed the laws of God and man. As it was, there was about them the look which nothing expresses so well as the word "fast." Their very features had become coarse and lowered in tone by the lives they led; and yet they were the descendants of men whose names were honored in the State, and made glorious by traditions of true Christian knighthood.