CHAPTER XXVI.
CONCLUSION—IN THE GARDEN.
Through the dark the train came with a stuttering roar. I turned to shake hands with Peters, but he had stepped from the platform to hold his horse.
"Good-bye," he shouted. "This horse has seen the train every day since he was born, but he'll run away if I don't hold him. But it runs in his family to be afraid of the railroad. His brother was killed by a train. Wish you well, and if you ever come this way again, stop off."
He was a skinflint and a rascal, but he had shortened a dreary day, and at parting I regretted that I had not told him of my acquaintance with his kinsman in the South.
With a change of cars, at daylight, I could reach Memphis late in the afternoon, in time to continue my journey by boat to Bolanyo. I lay back, with my hat pulled down over my face, and strove to compose myself to sleep, and I dozed, but awoke at the solemn words of a judge, rumbling with the rhythm of the train. Sometimes I argued that I was a fool to trust myself to the humor of an excitable people; but soon I discovered that this speculation was forced, that my mind refused to treat it seriously, that my hope stood, not at the bar, under the protection of the law, but in the Senator's garden. And from this height, in the redolent air, I could not force myself down to muse upon a long season in a cell, waiting for the court to convene.
Daylight came. I got off at a station, to step on board another train. I counted my money and found that I might have enough, upon reaching Memphis, to buy a suit of cheap clothes. But the most strenuous denial must be practiced; I could not afford food nor even a newspaper.
It was nearly four o'clock when the train arrived at Memphis. I hastened to the landing and learned that a boat would leave within half an hour and that fifty cents would secure a deck passage to Bolanyo. I was fitted out by a riverside clothier, and, after a quick "snack" of fish on a houseboat, I stepped on board the steamer that had brought the Senator and me with "Magnolia Land" up the river. I stood at the bow, and my heart leaped at the sight of the first green tinge in the woods. How soft and delicious was the atmosphere, after the raw wind of the prairies and the lake. How gently the sun went down, without a shiver, without a breath too cool.
I saw the lights of Bolanyo. And I felt about for something to touch—something to brace me against the surging of an overpowering emotion. I tried to picture the jail; I strove to recall the yell of the mob, the awful night, the tread of merciless feet; but I saw a blossom nodding in the sweet air; I heard a voice that filled my soul with trembling melody.