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Every boy in Springvale had an ambition to climb to the Hermit's Cave and explore its mysteries; for the old man died as he had lived, unknown. One winter day his body was found on the sand bar below the rapids where the waters had carried him after his fall from the point of rock above the deep pool.
"Round the bend below the gorge the Arickaree runs over a little strip of gravel with a ripple that sounds just like the Neosho above the Deep Hole. I'll stake him out there where he can hear it and think of home until he dies. And before I leave him I've got a letter to read to him. It'll help to keep Springvale in his mind if the water fails.
The word that I had gone away started from Conlow's shop and swept through the town like a prairie fire through a grassy draw. No one man is essential to any community. Springvale didn't need me so much as I needed it.
Poor Dave! he left Springvale that Fall, and he never came back. And although he has been honored and courted of women, I have been told that in his luxurious bachelor apartments in Hong Kong there is only one woman's picture, an old-fashioned daguerreotype of a sweet girlish face, in an ebony frame. Dr. Hemingway always planned the music to suit his own notions. What he asked for we gave.
Peter, not suspecting old Jim's motive, sat down on the locker in the cabin. Not feeling disposed to sleep he took up his Bible, as he had been accustomed to do when tending sheep on the Springvale downs, and began to read. Old Jim gazed at him with open eyes. To see a ship's-boy reading a book, and that book the Bible, as he guessed it to be, was entirely out of his experience.
"Now, little girl, I'm asked to urge you for your own good name, for your mother's maintenance, and your own, for the sake of that boy of mine, and for my own good, as well, and most of all for the sake of your father's memory, revered here as no other man who ever lived in Springvale for all these reasons, I'm asked to urge you to take this man for your husband."
Le Claire has done his part toward the purchase of the Plains, and I am glad for the quiet years before him." It was the custom in Springvale for every girl to go up to Topeka for the final purchases of her bridal belongings. We were to be married in October. In the late September days Mrs. Whately and her daughter spent a week at the capital city.
In the East he had been a successful lawyer and his success followed him. They will tell you in Springvale to-day that "if Judge Baronet were alive and on the bench things would go vastly better," and much more to like effect. My mother was young and beautiful, and to her the world was full of beauty. Especially did she love the sea. All her life was spent beside it, and it was ever her delight.
It seemed hours before relief came. I held O'mie all that time, hoping that the gracious May sunshine might win him to us again, but his delirium increased. He did not know any of us, but babbled of strange things. At length many shouts overhead told us that half of Springvale was above us, and a rude sort of hammock was being lowered. "It's the best we can do," shouted Father Le Claire.
In all the town there were not a dozen men, loyal supporters of the Union cause, who had a fighting strength. On the eight stalwart boys, and the quickness and shrewdness of little O'mie, the salvation of Springvale rested. After that awful night I was never a boy again. Henceforth I was a man, with a man's work and a man's spirit.
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