"Yes, my dear; I am going with you. See, I have my own carriage and horses, brought all the way by steamer from St. Louis. Our own servants, brought all the way from North End. Now introduce me to your friend here, and later I will tell you all about it," said the new comer, with a smile, as he kissed his niece.

"Oh, Colonel ----, this is my dear Uncle Clarence--Mr. Clarence Rockharrt, I mean," said Corona, in a rapture of confusion.

"How do you do, sir? I am very glad to see you. Really going over the plains with this train?" inquired the colonel, as the two gentlemen shook hands.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE NEW COMERS.

"Yes, colonel," briskly replied Clarence, "I am really going out to the frontier! I have not enlisted in the army, nor have I received any appointment as post trader or Indian agent from the government, nor missionary or schoolmaster from any Christian a.s.sociation. But, all the same, I am en route for the wilderness on my own responsibility, by my own conveyance, at my own expense, and with this outgoing trail--if there be no objection," added Clarence, with a sudden obscure doubt arising in his mind that there might exist some military regulation against the attachment of any outsider to the trail of army wagons going over the plains from fort to fort.

"'Objections!' What objections could there possibly be, my dear sir? I fancy there could be nothing worse than a warm welcome for you," replied the colonel.

At that moment Captain Neville, who had put his wife in their carryall, came up to see what had delayed his guest.

"My dear Mrs. Rothsay, we are ready to start," he said. Then seeing Mr.

Clarence, whom he had met in Washington and liked very much, he seized his hand and exclaimed:

"Why, Rockharrt, my dear fellow! You here! This is a surprise, indeed! I am very glad to see you! How are you? When did you arrive?" and he shook the hand of the new comer as if he would have shaken it off.

"I am very well, thank you, captain, and have just landed from the boat.

I hope you and your wife are quite well."

"Robust, sir! Robust! So glad to see you! But so sorry you did not arrive a few days sooner, so that we might have seen more of you. You have come, I suppose, all this distance to bid a last, supplementary farewell to your dear favorite niece?"

"I have come to go with her to the frontier, if I may have the privilege of traveling with your trail of wagons."

"Why, a.s.suredly. We are always glad of good company on the way,"

heartily responded the captain.

"Oh, beg pardon, and thank you very much; but I did not intend to 'beat'

my way. Look there!" exclaimed Clarence, with a brighter smile, as he pointed to the commodious carriage, drawn by a pair of fine draught horses, that stood waiting for him, and to the covered wagon, drawn by a pair of stout mules, that was coming up behind.

"Oh! Ah! Yes, I see! You are traveling with your retinue. But is not this a very sudden move on your part?" demanded the captain.

"So sudden in its impulse that it might be mistaken for the flight of a criminal, had it not been so deliberate in its execution. The fact is, sir, I am very much attached to my widowed niece, and not being able to dissuade her from her purpose of going out into the Indian country, and being her natural protector and an uninc.u.mbered bachelor, I decided to follow her. And now I feel very happy to have overtaken her in the nick of time."

"I see! I see!" said the captain with a laugh.

While this talk was still going on, Corona turned to take a better look at the great, strong carriage in which her uncle had driven up from the steamboat landing. There, to her surprise and delight, she saw young Mark, from Rockhold, seated on the box. He was staring at her, trying to catch her eye, and when he did so he grinned and bobbed, and bobbed and grinned, half a dozen times, in as many half seconds.

"Why, Mark! I am so surprised!" said Corona, as she went toward him. "I am so glad to see you!"

"Yes'm. Thanky'm. So is I. Yes'm, an'dar's mammy an' daddy an' Sister Phebe 'hind dar in de wagon," jerking his head toward the rear.

Corona looked, and her heart leaped with joy to see the dear, familiar faces of the colored servants who had been about her from her childhood.

For there on the front seat of the wagon sat old John, from Rockhold, with the reins in his hands, drawing up the team of mules, while on one side of him sat his middle-aged wife, Martha, the housekeeper, and on the other his young daughter, Phebe, once lady's maid to Corona Rothsay.

Corona uttered a little cry of joy as she hastened toward the wagon. The three colored people saw her at once, and, with the unconventionally of their old servitude, shouted out in chorus:

"How do, Miss C'rona?"

"Sarvint, Miss C'rona!"

"Didn't 'spect to see we dem come trapesin' arter yer 'way out yere, did yer now?"

And they also grinned and bobbed, and bobbed and grinned, between every word, as they tumbled off their seats and ran to meet her.

Mr. Clarence hoisted the two women to their seats, one on each side of the driver, and then turned to Corona.

"Come, my dear. Let me put you into our carriage," he said, as he drew her arm within his own and led her on.

"Oh! I have not taken leave of Colonel ---- yet.

"Where is he?" she inquired, looking around.

"Here I am, my dear Mrs. Rothsay. Waiting at the carriage door to put you in your seat and to wish you a pleasant journey. And certainly, if this initial day is any index, you will have a pleasant one, for I never saw finer weather at this season of the year," said the colonel, cheerily, as he received Corona from her uncle's hand, and, with the stately courtesy of the olden time, placed her in her seat.

"I thank you, colonel, for all the kindness I have received at your hands and at those of Mrs. ----. I shall never forget it. Good by," said Corona, giving him her hand.

He lifted the tips of her fingers to his lips, bowed, and stepped back.

Mr. Clarence entered the carriage and gave the order to the young coachman. Carriage and covered wagon then fell into the procession, which began to move on. A farewell gun was fired from the fort.

"Uncle Clarence," said Corona, after the party had been on the road some hours--"Uncle Clarence, how came you first to think of such a strange move as to leave the works and come out here? And when did you first make up your mind to do it?"

"I think, Cora, my dear, that the idea came vaguely into my mind, as a mere possibility, after my father's death. It occurred to me that there was no absolute necessity for my remaining longer at the works. You see, Cora, however much I might have wished for a change in my life, I never could have vexed my father by even expressing such a wish, while he lived. After his death I thought of it vaguely."

"Oh! why didn't you tell me?"

"My mind was not made up; therefore I spoke of the matter to no one. I only hinted something to you, when on bidding you good by at North End Junction I told you that you might possibly see me before you would expect to do so."

"Yes; I remember that well. I thought you only said that to comfort me.

And you really meant that you might possibly follow me?"

"Yes, my dear; that is just what I meant. I could not speak more plainly because I was not sure of my own course. I had to think of Fabian."

"Yes. How, at last, came you to the conclusion of following your poor niece?"

"Fabian and myself could not agree upon a certain policy in conducting our business. There was no longer the father's controlling influence, you see, and Fabian is the head of the firm; and I could not do business on his principles," said Mr. Clarence, flushing up to his brow.

"No; I suppose you could not," said Cora, meditatively; and then she was sorry that she had said anything that might imply a reproach to the good-humored uncle she had left behind.

"Still, I said nothing about a dissolution of partnership until Fabian complained that I, or my policy, was a dead weight around his neck, dragging him down from the most magnificent flights to mere sordid drudgery. Then I proposed that we should dissolve partnership. And he said he was sorry. And I believe he was; but also glad, inconsistent as that seems. For he was sorry I could not come into his policy, and stay in the firm; but since I could not so agree with him, he was relieved when I proposed to withdraw from it. We disagreed, my dear Cora, but we did not fall out; we parted good friends and brothers with tears in our eyes. Poor little Violet cried a good deal. But you know she has such a tender heart, poor child!--Look at that herd of deer, Cora, standing on the top of that swell of the land to the right, and actually gazing at the trail without a motion or a panic. I hope n.o.body will shoot at them!" exclaimed Mr. Clarence, suddenly breaking off in his discourse to point to the denizens of the thicket and the prairie, until upon some sudden impulse the whole herd turned and bounded away.