Both Buck and Slaughter were capable of committing crimes even deeper than that already on their conscience. Six years had not changed them for the better. On the contrary, they had become worse, both being distinguished as among the most dissolute members of the community.
A similar account might be given of the other four; though these, figuring in positions of greater respectability, kept their characters a little better disguised.
Two of their fathers were also dead—Randall, the judge, and Spence, the Episcopalian clergyman, while their sons, less respected than they, were not likely to succeed to their places.
Brandon’s father still lived, though drink was fast carrying him to the grave, and his son was congratulating himself on the proximity of an event that would make him sole master of himself as also of a cotton plantation.
The store-keeper, Grubbs, had gone, no one knew whither—not even the sheriff, loth to let him depart—leaving his son to build up a new fortune extracted out of the pockets of the Mississippi boatmen. The horse-dealer still stuck to his old courses—coping, swopping, swearing—likely to outlive them all.
Among the many changes observable in the settlements around Helena there was none more remarkable than that which had taken place in the fortunes of Jerry Rook. It was a complete transformation, alike mysterious, for no one could tell how it came, or whence the power that had produced it. It appeared not only in the person of Jerry himself, but in everything that appertained to him—his house, his grounds, his dogs, and his daughter; in short, all his belongings.
An old hunter no longer, clad in dirty buckskin, and dwelling in a hovel, but a respectable-looking citizen of the semi-planter type, habited in decent broadcloth, wearing clean linen, living in a neat farm-house, surrounded by fenced fields, and kept by black domestics.
The old scarred dog was no longer to be seen; but, in his place, some three or four hounds, lounging lazily about, and looking as if they had plenty to eat and nothing to do.
But, in the personnel of the establishment, there was, perhaps, no transformation more striking than that which had taken place in Jerry Rook’s daughter. There was no change in her beauty; that was still the same, only more womanly—more developed. But the sun-tanned, barefoot girl, in loose homespun frock, with unkempt hair sweeping over her shoulders, was now, six years after, scarce recognisable in the young lady in white muslin dress, fine thread stockings, and tresses plaited, perfumed, and kept from straying by the teeth of a tortoiseshell comb.
And this was Lena Rook, lovely as ever, and more than ever the theme of man’s admiration.