_Adieu to the Mining Camp._
“Soon after I gave up my position in the city. The money which I had
accumulated I determined to spend in trying to forget, to stamp out of
my life the truth of the love which existed between Lucy and me. She
was married—I was a gentleman. It was too late. God might right the
wrong which had been done, but in the meantime two souls were to suffer
apart. For another two years I kept away from home, my dear old parents
never urging me to return. I was successful in my business ventures.
Then sad news again came to me. A fatal illness had attacked my father.
I reached his bedside in time to hear him say, ‘Edmond, I would have
done the same were I in your place.’ We buried him in a plot by the
church, in the shadow of the steeple at the bidding of whose bell he
had so many years come to meeting, and now from the old belfry tower it
tolled the last sad notes for the departed.
“Lucy and her husband had been traveling for her health, under the
advice of the old village doctor. A change of scene, he told her
husband, would do her good. A month I spent at the old homestead.
Mother had taken my hand in hers one evening, as we sat under the
porch, I in the same chair where, at the same time of the evening,
father read the weekly paper, and many a time, with his spectacles
pushed up on his forehead, and in his shirt sleeves, had engaged in a
heated discussion with mother over some editorial comment favorable
to his views on one of his pet subjects. ‘Stay with me, Edmond,’ she
said. ‘It won’t be long now. For nearly sixty years we have never been
separated for more than a day—your father from me. It—won’t—be—long.’
I felt her grasp of my hand loosen, and she sank back into her chair.
Her left hand lay limp in the folds of her dress, an ashy whiteness had
suffused her face, a sweet, heavenly smile rested over her features.
Then I knew she had joined my father. Side by side their bodies rest in
the shadow of the village church, while their spirits have joined the
angels and are looking down at us now.
“No one at the homestead nor in the village of Darrington knows of my
whereabouts, and to them I am as though I had joined my father and
mother. Now, Andy, you know my story. If you think I should return
with you to your home, I will—but on one condition—that my secret, my
identity, be sacred between us.”
Andy promised. They arose to seek their couch of cedar boughs, but a
strange gray light was creeping through the valley. “Look, Andy,” cried
LeClare. “It’s morning!”
* * * * *
LeClare at once piloted his partner down to the cave-like opening in
the cliff. There he drew from a ledge in the shelving rocks at his
side, the loose earth and small stones he had placed there the night
before, covering from sight the rich deposits which were now plainly
to be seen fastened to the solid rock in great pockets of nearly pure
gold. Cameron was stunned at the sight. Wealth of such magnitude he
could not comprehend. Two days they worked to take from the ledge their
treasure. Then, having made ready, they bid adieu to the scenes of
their recent struggles and hastened on their way. They chose the same
direction through the mountains as that by which they had reached the
Cariboo Valley, heading, of course, for the house of the native at the
head of Soda Creek with whom they had left a part of their belongings
upon entering the ranges nearly two years previous.
Cameron had explained to his friend the necessity that haste govern
their every act in their exit from the mountainous district, that even
at great inconvenience to themselves they must hurry with all possible
speed, first to overtake the wagon trains going down through the valley
on the western side of the range to the passes at Ashcroft; then, after
crossing the Rockies to the eastern slope, to join the pack train, this
to carry them farther homeward, till at Winnipeg they would reach the
railway. Then upon fleeing steeds of winged steel they would soon reach
home.