“It will be only three days to Chicago from here, and then one night at a hotel to rest and clean up, and the next day we are there––in Leauvite––think of it! We’re an hour late by the schedule, so better think of something else. We’ll reach an eating station soon. Get ready, for there will be a rush, and we’ll not have a chance for a good meal again for no one knows how long. Maybe you’re not hungry, but I could eat a mule. I like this, do you know, traveling in comfort! To think of me––going home to save Peter’s bank!” He chuckled to himself a moment; then resumed: “And that’s equivalent to saving the man’s life. Well, it’s a poor way for a man to go through life, 440 able to see no way but his own way. It narrows his vision and shortens his reach––for, see, let him find his way closed to him, and whoop! he’s at an end.”
Again Larry sat and watched her, as he silently chuckled over his present situation. Again he reached out and patted her hand, and again she smiled at him, but he knew where her thoughts were. Harry King had been gone but a short time when Madam Manovska, in spite of Amalia’s watchfulness, wandered away for the last time. On this occasion she did not go toward the fall, but went along the trail toward the plains below. It was nearly evening when she eluded Amalia and left the cabin. Frantically they searched for her all night, riding through the darkness, carrying torches and calling in all directions, as far as they supposed her feet could have carried her, but did not find her until early morning, lying peacefully under a little scrub pine, far down the trail. By her side lay her husband’s worn coat, with the lining torn away, and a small heap of ashes and charred papers. She had been destroying the documents he had guarded so long. She would not leave them to witness against him. Tenderly they took her up and carried her back to the cabin and laid her in her bunk, but she only babbled of “Paul,” telling happily that she had seen him, and that he was coming up the trail after her, and that now they would live on the mountain in peace and go no more to Poland––and quickly after that she dropped to sleep again and never woke. She was with “Paul” at last. Then Amalia dressed her in the black silk Larry had brought her, and they carried her down the trail and laid her in a grave beside that of her husband, and there Larry read the prayers of the English church over the 441 two lonely graves, while Amalia knelt at his side. When they went down the trail to take the train, after receiving Betty’s letter, they marked the place with a cross which Larry had made.
Truth to tell, as they sat in the car, facing each other, Larry himself was sad, although he tried to keep Amalia’s thoughts cheerful. At last she woke to the thought that it was only for her he maintained that forced light-heartedness, and the realization came to her that he also had cause for sorrow on leaving the spot where he had so long lived in peace, to go to a friend in trouble. The thought helped her, and she began to converse with Larry instead of sitting silently, wrapped in her own griefs. Because her heart was with Harry King,––filled with anxiety for him,––she talked mostly of him, and that pleased Larry well; for he, too, had need to speak of Harry.
“Now there is a character for you, as fine and sweet as a woman and strong, too! I’ve seen enough of men to know the best of them when I find them. I saw it in him the moment I got him up to my cabin and laid him in my bunk. He––he––minded me of one that’s gone.” His voice dropped to the undertone of reminiscence. “Of one that’s long gone––long gone.”
“Could you tell me about it, a little––just a very little?” Amalia leaned toward him pleadingly. It was the first time she had ever asked of Larry Kildene or Harry King a question that might seem like seeking to know a thing purposely kept from her. But her intuitive nature told her the time had now come when Larry longed to speak of himself, and the loneliness of his soul pleaded for him.
“It’s little indeed I can tell you, for it’s little he ever told 442 me,––but it came to me––more than once––more than once––that he might be my own son.”
Amalia recoiled with a shock of surprise. She drew in her breath and looked in his eyes eloquently. “Oh! Oh! And you never asked him? No?”
“Not in so many words, no. But I––I––came near enough to give him the chance to tell the truth, if he would, but he had reasons of his own, and he would not.”
“Then––where we go now––to him––you have been to that place before? Not?”
“I have.”