essed, he felt sure he would never be suffered to return. He refused
both; and Aspinwall, he said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious,
as the spectacle of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for my
father and his family. He besought him to reconsider his decision; and
at length, finding he could not prevail, gave him till the moon rose to
settle his affairs, and say farewell to wife and daughter. "For," said
he, "then, at the latest, you must ride with me."

I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all too fast;
and presently the moon out-topped the eastern range, and my father and
Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their nocturnal journey. My
mother, though still bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened to
shut herself in her apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in
the dark house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste to
saddle my Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of the mountain, and to
enjoy one farewell sight of my departing father. The two men had set
forth at a deliberate pace; nor was I long behind them, when I reached
the point of view. I was the more amazed to see no moving creature in
the landscape. The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day; and
nowhere, under the whole arch of night, was there a growing tree, a
bush, a farm, a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man, but one. From
the corner where I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of bluffs
concealed the doctor's house; and across the top of that projection the
soft night wind carried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable
smoke. What fuel could produce a vapour so sluggish to dissipate in that
dry air, or what furnace pour it forth so copiously, I was unable to
conceive; but I knew well enough that it came from the doctor's chimney;
I saw well enough that my father had already disappeared; and in despite
of reason, I connected in my mind the loss of that dear protector with
the ribbon of foul smoke that trailed along the mountains.

Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for news; a week
went by, a second followed, but we heard no word of the father and
husband. As smoke dissipates, as the image glides from the mirror, so in
the ten or twenty minutes that I had spent in getting my horse and
following upon his trail, had that strong and brave man vanished out of
life. Hope, if any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now
certain for my father, the wor