With another shake of the hand they separated for the night. For a long
time after Mainwaring had gone, Bradley remained gazing thoughtfully
into the Great Canyon. He thought of the time when he had first come
there, full of life and enthusiasm, making an ideal world of his pure
and wholesome eyrie on the ledge. What else he thought will, probably,
never be known until the misunderstanding of honorable and chivalrous
men by a charming and illogical sex shall incite the audacious pen of
some more daring romancer.

When he returned to the house, he said kindly to his wife, "I have been
thinking to-day about your hotel scheme, and I shall write to Sacramento
to-night to accept that capitalist's offer."




CHAPER V.


The sun was just rising. In two years of mutation and change it had seen
the little cottage clinging like a swallow's nest to the rocky caves of
a great Sierran canyon give way to a straggling, many-galleried hotel,
and a dozen blackened chimneys rise above the barren tableland where
once had stood the lonely forge. To that conservative orb of light and
heat there must have been a peculiar satisfaction in looking down a few
hours earlier upon the battlements and gables of Oldenhurst, whose base
was deeply embedded in the matured foundations and settled traditions
of an English county. For the rising sun had for ten centuries found
Oldenhurst in its place, from the heavy stone terrace that covered the
dead-and-forgotten wall, where a Roman sentinel had once paced, to