Colonel Dick Ivey was a bachelor and a man of vast wealth.
He had been an only son, and the idol of his boyhood life had been his
sister, two years his junior.
Their parents had been wealthy, and they dated their ancestry back for
many generations, and the father of the young Richard had been anxious
to have his son become a soldier, and so got for him a cadetship at West
Point.
A handsome, dashing youth, generous to a fault, Dick Ivey had won the
hearts of professors and comrades alike, and none of the latter had
envied him the first honours of his class when he had graduated, while
the instructors had said they were well won and deserved.
There were four persons present at the graduating exercises that Dick
was most desirous of pleasing, and these were his parents, his sister,
and her best friend, the young cadet's lady-love.
But, in spite of his honours won, the fickle young lady-love had flirted
with the honoured cadet, refused his proffered love, and became
infatuated, as it were, with a brother cadet of her old lover.
It cut Dick Ivey to the heart, but he nursed his sorrow in silence,
uttered no complaint, and went to the border with his regiment, to soon
win distinction as a daring officer.
The fickle maiden meanwhile married the successful rival, and two years
after died, it was said, of a broken heart.
The news came to Dick Ivey that his sister was to marry, and when he
heard whom it was that was to be her husband, he obtained a furlough and
started for his home to warn her against the man who had broken the
heart of his old lady-love.
But, wounded on the way, in a fight with Indians, he was laid up for
weeks, and arrived too late, for his sister had married the man whom he
now hated with all his soul.
Soon after the Mexican war broke out, and as the American army crossed
the Rio Grande, Dick Ivey met his old rival, and learned of his sister's
death.
Soon after a letter came to him, written by his sister, and given to
some faithful servant to mail.
It told of her sorrows, her sufferings, the cruelties of the man she had
loved, and that she too was dying of a broken heart.
At once did Dick Ivey seek the man who had wrecked the lives of two whom
he had so dearly loved, and what he said was terse, to the point, and in
deadly earnest. It was:
"You know my cause of quarrel with you, sir, and that now is no time to
settle it, for we belong to our country.
"But, the day this war ends, if you and I are alive, you shall meet me
on the field of honour, and but one of us shall ever leave it alive."
And all through the war did Dick Ivey win fame, and he became a hero in
the eyes of his gallant comrades.
At last the war ended, the City of Mexico was in the hands of General
Scott, and the Daring Dragoons, commanded by Colonel Ivey, were ordered
home.
Instantly, he sought his rival, and reminded him of his words at the
breaking out of hostilities, and the two met in personal combat upon the
duelling field.
It was a duel with swords, and each man meant that it should be to the
death, that no mercy should be shown, and it could end in but one
way--the death of one, or both.
It was fought through to the bitter end, and Dick Ivey left his hated
enemy dead upon the field.
Resigning his commission, he returned to his home in the State of
Mississippi, and yet he remained there but a short while, for the spirit
of unrest was upon him, and the papers teeming with stories of his
career, he sailed for foreign lands and remained abroad for years.
Again, he returned to America and settled in an elegant bachelor-home
upon a fashionable avenue in New York city, a man of noble impulses, yet
one upon whose life a shadow had fallen, and who carried in his heart a
skeleton of bitter memories.
Such was the man who had found Will Raymond's lost gold-piece, and his
career, from a cadet at West Point, to his living a luxurious bachelor
life in New York, Mrs. Raymond read to her children that Thanksgiving
night after he had left; for the distinguished soldier had begged an
invitation to eat his Thanksgiving turkey that day in the humble home of
the woman he had so strangely met, and who, by some strange accident,
had pasted in her scrap-book his picture, as a young soldier, and the
scraps of his life history as she had then read them, never dreaming
that she would meet the hero with the dark, handsome face, dressed in
his gorgeous Dragoon uniform.
To her children then, that Thanksgiving night, after he had departed,
Mrs. Raymond read the history of the Dashing Dragoon, and he became to
Will and Pearl a hero also in their eyes, and warm was the welcome that
he received when he came the next day to tell Mrs. Raymond that he had
adopted all of them as _protegées_, and meant to take them to a pleasant
home and send the children to school.
This promise he kept, for he would not be said nay, and Mrs. Raymond,
grown almost happy-faced with the change, moved to a pleasant little
home in the upper part of the city, and Will and Pearl daily attended
the most fashionable schools in the metropolis.
Months thus passed away, Colonel Ivey taking his Sunday dinner with the
mother and her children at first, and then calling oftener and oftener,
until one night he called Will and Pearl to him and told them that he
had asked their mother to become his wife, and that she had said that
she would.
It made them happy, for they were glad to see joy in the face of their
dearly loved mother, and soon after Mrs. Ruby Raymond became Mrs.
Richard Ivey.
It was a quiet wedding in the cosey home, and then into the grand
mansion of Colonel Ivey the mother and her children moved, and sunshine
seemed to brighten all their pathway through life; but alas! who can see
into the future, who can tell how far beyond the sunshine lie the
shadows that must fall upon our lives, shutting out all brightness,
encircling them with gloom as black as the grave, and far more cruel.