CHAPTER XXIII.CONCLUSION.

Madame left Perfection City alone and unattended. No one knew that she was going, and no one knew whither she went. Her spirit, however, still hovered over the city of her founding and made itself most potently felt. She sold all her rights in the place, and since these included the land, horses, and implements, as well as most of the houses, the Pioneers awoke in early winter to find themselves homeless and houseless, cast upon the bleak world again. In a tempest of indignation, Sister Mary Winkle and her husband departed out of the place, and after them the Carpenters. The going of the Wrights was highly characteristic. They had managed to save a waggon and a pair of horses out of the general wreck, along with a few of the most primitive household necessaries. These, with his wife and daughter, Brother Wright packed into his waggon and started for Union Mills. At the store there he bought a rifle, a bowie-knife, and a plentiful supply of ammunition. He came out of the store looking like a buccaneer ready equipped forCentral America. Mary Winkle raised her hands in speechless horror.

“I say, pa, be yer goin’ to be a jay-hawker?” asked Willette, grinning with delight.

Wright got into the waggon in grim silence.

“Whatareyou going to be?” asked Sister Mary recovering her speech at last.

“I’m going to be a man, Mrs. Wright, and not a blamed fool any longer. Guess I’ll pre-empt some land near the Cherokee Reservation, and stick to it and get the fruits of my toil, anyhow.”

“Your principles——” stammered his wife.

“Damn principles, Mrs. Wright. I’ve had about enough of them. Common sense is what I want, and so do you. I guess a spell of that will come handy now.”

Thus they journeyed out of sight, but a legend came floating back from near the Cherokee lands that at a difficult ford Wright was attacked by a couple of robbers, whereupon he took up that new rifle of his and fired so uncommonly straight that one man fell into the river, and the other ran away.

Brother Green remained at his forge, for blacksmiths were much in request on the prairie, and such a one as he was hard to find. The new owner of Perfection City offered him good inducements to stay, so he stayed. He is still there shoeing horses and mending ploughs. The name has been changed to Mountainburg, in order to emphasise the existence ofthe rising ground over Weddell’s Gully. Brother Green is almost the oldest inhabitant now, and sometimes he thinks of that far-off English village where he was born, and it looks brighter and more beautiful to him as the years roll him away from it. He thinks too of the grass-grown grave in the church-yard where the jackdaws caw overhead, and it seems to him that when his last day’s work shall be done he would rest more peacefully beside that mound than in any other spot beneath the broad canopy of heaven.

Brother Dummy decided not to leave when the rest of the Pioneers scattered. He preferred to stay where he was and rent a bit of land from the new owner. By and by he was enabled to buy his bit outright. For there came a letter addressed to “The Pioneers of Perfection City” and containing a draft for five hundred dollars “for the hire of one horse” from an ever grateful friend. And Brother Dummy was given this money by the united wish of Olive, Ezra, Brother Green, and Uncle David, the last of the Pioneers, because, as they said, he was the only one who didn’t know why it had been sent, and he was the only one who had not suffered through that episode that had so nearly wrecked their lives.

On a cold winter’s day, when the snow lay in patches on the black prairie, Olive and her husband and Uncle David set out from Perfection City. Shewas pale and thin, and looked very ill as she stood leaning against the door-way of her dismantled home.

“I wish I could feel sorry at leaving the prairie, but I can’t. I never want to see Perfection City again, but I’m sorry for my little home, and I would like to see my garden blossom again.” So spoke Olive to Uncle David, standing beside her with shawls on his arm.

“Wal, now,” replied he sadly, “we came here full o’ the notion o’ teachin’ folks things, but it ’pears like as if it wasn’t so much other folks out here as needed teachin’ as jes’ our own selves. We hev hed a hard lesson to learn, Ollie, my little gal, but I reckon we’ve pretty well learned it by now. It mos’ likely comes to the same thing, on’y it’s a sight more comfortin’ to human pride to set up as a teacher than to sit down as a learner. We was as certain as anything we had a bran’ new truth to teach to the world, an’ we was goin’ to show ’em how they’d been doin’ wrong in everything ’fore we come to set ’em right. We was jes’ bustin’ with pride and vanity, that’s what we was. We had foun’ a new road to Kingdom Come, we had. ’Twasn’t no road at all, on’y a coon track leadin’ into a swamp. Guess we’ll foller the road other folks has trod before, an’ if we can fill up a slough or help anyone over the rough bits as is scattered plentiful all the way, that’ll do for us. Ain’t that your ’pinion, Ezry?”

“Yes, Uncle, we made a mistake. We thoughtthe great thing to do was to reform the ways of the world. We forgot that the human heart needed reforming first of all,” said Ezra, looking sadly at his poor wan-cheeked little wife.

“And if the heart is right it doesn’t matter about the rest, does it, dear?” said Olive, looking timidly at him.

He was sad and down-hearted and the eager enthusiasm was gone out of his manner. Ezra was much older-looking than he should have been, if life be reckoned by solar time alone. He had been aged by a lapse of mental time and suffering of which the almanac can take no heed. His wife saw and understood how he was, at this moment, realizing the downfall of his young hopes and beliefs, that was why he gazed so sadly across the desolate fields.

“We take nothing away with us except sad experience,” he said as he lifted her into the waggon and drove off.

“And our love, dear, which nothing can ever destroy,” she whispered, pressing his hand.

He stooped and kissed her. There were tears in his eyes. But they made a mistake. They took something else with them. Something that came tearing over the prairie with tongue out and tail stiff-stretched and nose to the ground—Diana, who had been turned over to Napoleon Pompey to have and to hold, but he could not hold her when she saw the waggon goingoff, therefore he could not have her. She caught them up when they were two miles off, and Olive let the dog clamber all over her, regardless of wet paws, and lick her face, so delighted were they to meet again.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESSilently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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