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Updated: May 2, 2025
Rufus Dawes was no longer the brutalized wretch who had plunged into the dark waters of the bay to escape a life he loathed, and had alternately cursed and wept in the solitudes of the forests. He was an active member of society a society of four and he began to regain an air of independence and authority. This change had been wrought by the influence of little Sylvia.
On every shore in Europe their furtive advent was watched. Impossible for such a band to embark with a child, since to disembark with one was dangerous. To lose the child was much simpler of accomplishment. And this child, of whom we have caught a glimpse in the shadow of the solitudes of Portland, by whom had he been cast away? To all appearance by Comprachicos.
The drought had now continued so long, and the heat been so severe, that I apprehended we might be obliged to remain another summer in these fearful solitudes. The weather was terrifically hot, and appeared to have set in unusually early. Under such circumstances, and with so many causes to render my mind anxious, the reader will believe I did not sleep much.
Here he sat in the midst of a mighty forest with many hostile minds all about him, and it must be confessed he began to wonder whether his services to the nation were worth so much hardship, such complete isolation. The guardians of these high places must forever be solitary. No ranger could rightfully be husband and father, for to bring women and children into these solitudes would be cruel.
But, as is commonly said, one evil calls up another and the end of one misfortune is apt to be the beginning of one still greater, and so it proved in my case; for my worthy servant, until then so faithful and trusty when he found me in this lonely spot, moved more by his own villainy than by my beauty, sought to take advantage of the opportunity which these solitudes seemed to present him, and with little shame and less fear of God and respect for me, began to make overtures to me; and finding that I replied to the effrontery of his proposals with justly severe language, he laid aside the entreaties which he had employed at first, and began to use violence.
He had not travelled through the Italian cities under his own name, for he had just returned from the solitudes of the East, and was not yet hardened to the publicity of the gossip which in towns haunted by his countrymen attended a well-known name; that given to Legard by the innkeeper, mutilated by Italian pronunciation, the young man had never heard before, and soon forgot.
But, as is commonly said, one evil calls up another and the end of one misfortune is apt to be the beginning of one still greater, and so it proved in my case; for my worthy servant, until then so faithful and trusty when he found me in this lonely spot, moved more by his own villainy than by my beauty, sought to take advantage of the opportunity which these solitudes seemed to present him, and with little shame and less fear of God and respect for me, began to make overtures to me; and finding that I replied to the effrontery of his proposals with justly severe language, he laid aside the entreaties which he had employed at first, and began to use violence.
Permit us to guard the sanctuary of our hidden sources, our beloved and holy solitudes!" But vain appeal! Our men pole frantically onward, and so the day passes. By mid-afternoon their labors cease, and we come to anchor at the bank, having achieved seventeen miles in nine hours! Let those of us to whom lightning-express-trains have been slow grumble hereafter at their fifty miles an hour!
But if ever by any chance they really are empty solitudes they are to the human spirit more desolate and dehumanized than any Yorkshire moors or Highland hills, because the suddenness with which the traveller drops into that silence has something about it as of evil elf-land. It seems to be one of the ragged suburbs of the cosmos half-forgotten by God such a place was Buxton Common, near Purley.
He forthwith set about raising a company and, at the end of three days, found himself invested with the command of sixteen men! With these, on the first of October, he started on a journey of more than one hundred leagues, through the vast solitudes of the prairies and the thousand perils of the forest, to take a military station, occupied by a detachment of British soldiers!
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