Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/250

240 "I must save the child," he gasps, "whatever comes." Again, along the pathway of pain he drags himself.

When night had fallen, he found himself—he knew not how—on the track outside the timber, where the party had swept and burned.

The tide of fire had rolled away westward. The searchers, some of whom left the spot almost as he emerged upon it, were hoping now to get from behind upon the hill, where traces of Mary and her rescuer were expected to be found.

The shifting breeze from the south had swept the valley clear of smoke. In all its beauty it lay untouched below.

Supporting himself on one elbow, while the other arm clasped the child he had saved, the dying man looked out across the valley he was to scamper over no more. His eyes rested on the White House, where, at that sunset hour, his wife clasped in her arms a new-born child that was never to know the light of a father's smile, or the inspiration of his voice.

As he clung to the child of his enemy of yesterday, the father seemed to think it his—the little stranger he was leaving in a world of woe. Ineffectually he tried to brush a tear from his eyes.

"Happy little vale!" he murmured, as he looked down on the smoke-crowned chimneys, beside which old folk were discussing, "Where they'd find Mister Larry and poor little Mary's corpses."

"I've done what I could! For the old man, for duty, and for God!" he gasped.

Up the stretch of glittering water the last rays of the setting sun were dyeing red and gold, he looked for the returning vessel so long expected. He thought he saw it approaching. "In at the death! Relieved at