"Mr. Graham!" exclaimed Walter. "Why, he, I thought, was your bail."
"So he was," returned the father, "but he wished me to come away for all that. He would rather lose all his fortune, he said, than know I was in prison, and sent there on his testimony. So he urged me to leave, contriving a way for me to do so, and even carrying me himself, that stormy night, many miles from Deerwood. I dreaded the State prison. I believe I would rather have been hung, and I yielded to his importunities on one condition only. I knew his father would be very indignant, and that people would censure him severely, too, if it were known he was in my secret, and, as I would not have him blamed, I made him promise to me solemnly that he would never tell that he first suggested my going and then helped me away. He has kept his promise, and it is well. I have ample means, now, for paying him all I owe, and many a time I have thought to send it to him, but I have been dead to all my friends so long that I decided to remain so. I wrote to him from Texas, asking for you all, and learning from him of Ellen's death, and of your birth. You were a feeble child, he said, and probably would not live. I had never seen you, my son, and when I heard that my darling was gone,—my mother, too,—and that my father and best friend still believed me guilty, I felt a growing coldness toward you all. I would never write home again, I said. I would forget that I ever had a home, and for a time I kept this resolution, plunging into vices of every kind,—swearing, gambling, drinking——"
"Oh father,—father!" said Walter, with a shudder. "You do not tell me true."
"It's all true, my boy, and more," returned the father, "but I was overtaken at last, by a terrible sickness, the result of dissipation in New Orleans. A sister of charity saved my life, and opened my heart to better things. Her face was like Ellen's, and it carried me back to other days, until I wept like a little child over my past folly. From that sick bed, I arose a different man, and then for years I watched the Northern papers to see if they contained anything like what we have just read. But they did not, and I said I cannot go home yet. I sometimes saw Mr. Graham's name, and knew that he was living, but whether you were dead or alive I could not even guess. Here, in California, where I have been for the last ten years, I have never met a single person from the vicinity of Deerwood. At first I worked among the mines, amassing money so fast as even to astonish myself. At length, weary of the labor, I left the mines and came to the city, where I am known as Captain Murdock, the title having been first given to me in sport by some of my mining friends. Latterly I have thought of going home, for it is so long since the robbery, that I had no fears of being arrested, and I was about making up my mind to do so, when chance threw you in my way, and it now remains for you to say when we both shall start."
"At once,—at once," said Walter, who had listened intently to the story, giving vent to an occasional exclamation of surprise. "We will go in the very next steamer. I shall not have a chance to write, but it will be just as well. I wish to see if grandpa or Mr. Graham will recognize you."
Mr. Marshall had no objections to testing the recollections of his father, and he readily consented to go, saying to his friends that as New England was his birthplace he intended accompanying his young friend home.
"I can write the truth back to them," he thought, "and save myself much annoyance."
Thus it was arranged, and the next steamer for New York which left the harbor of San Francisco, bore on its deck the father and his son, both eager and expectant and anxious to be at the end of the voyage.
[CHAPTER XVI.—THANKSGIVING DAY AT DEERWOOD.]
The dinner table was nicely arranged in the "best room" of the farm-house, and Jessie Graham, with a happy look on her bright face, flitted in and out, arranging the dishes a little more to her taste, smoothing the snowy cloth, pausing a moment before the fire blazing so cheerfully upon the hearth, and then glancing from the window, across the frozen fields to the hillside where a new grave had been made since the last Thanksgiving Day.