“My mother wrote me. She loves Miss Clitheroe like a daughter. She pities the father. His wife was her friend. A genial, lovable man he was, she says, until, after his losses, people whom he had aided turned and accused him of recklessness and dishonesty,—a charge as false and cruel as could be made. My mother wrote, told me of Sizzum’s success in Clitheroe, and of our friends’ departure. She ordered me, on my obedience, never to come back to England until I could tell her that Ellen was safe out of Sizzum’s power. She had gone to hear him preach, and abhorred him. I received her letter after we had parted, John, and I camped with Jake Shamberlain, waiting for the train. What I could have done, I do not know; but my life was Miss Clitheroe’s.”
How easy his chivalry seemed to this noble fellow! “Noblesse obligé”; but the obligation was no burden.
“You are a stanch friend, Biron,” said Brent. “She may need you yet.”
“Yes,” said he; “Christian England is a savage, cruel as any of these brutes she has encountered here, to a beautiful girl with a helpless, crazy father. When can you travel, John?”
“Nearly a month I have been here fighting death and grasping at life. Give me two days more to find a horse and ride about a little, and we are off.”
“Armstrong, fine old fellow, left the sorrel for you,” I said. “He is in racing trim now.”
“Capital!” said Brent. “One Armstrong is a brave weight on the true side of the balance, against an army of pioneers who have gone barbarous.”
“I have something to show you, John,” said Biddulph. “See here. I bought this of a Mormon. He had very likely stolen it from Mr. Clitheroe’s wagon. It was the only relic I could get of them.”
The very drawing of Clitheroe Hall its former owner had wished to show me at Fort Bridger. An able sketch of a thoroughly English house. If England were sunk in the sea, and its whole history perished, English life, society, and manners could be reconstructed from the inspection of such a drawing, as a geologist recalls an æon from a trilobite. I did not wonder that it had been heart-breaking to quit the shelter of that grand old roof. I fixed the picture in my mind. The time came when that remembrance was precious.
“Now, Biddulph!” called Ruby, “supper waits. Potatoes! Flapjacks and molasses!”