"He said the old home was open, and would always be what it had been in the past. Home! What would that not mean now, after all these years! But that was long ago. I am dead to them now,--dead and forgotten. They will be happy with their new-found daughter, and Everard will be to them as a son, their happiness will be complete, and I will not mar it by any reminders of the wretched past." He glanced upward at the surrounding peaks. "To-morrow I go forth again into the mountains,--those towers of refuge and strength,--and in their soothing solitudes I shall once more find peace!" Then he retired. But to Jack, resting for the last time in his cabin home, to those then peacefully sleeping in the little mining camp, or to the others speeding westward through the night, on the wings of steam, there came no vision, no thought of what the morrow was, in reality, to bring. CHAPTER XLIII. Tuesday morning dawned,--a day never to be forgotten in the history of the little mining camp, or in the lives of many outsiders as well. A strange thrill of subdued excitement ran through the little group, assembled before breakfast in the porch, as they realized that the day to which they had looked forward with varying anticipations had at last arrived; and there was, unconsciously, a look of watchful expectancy on every face. Even Nature herself seemed in sympathy with them. For a few days the heat had been intense, devouring with its scorching breath every vestige of verdure on the mountain sides and foothills, and leaving them dull and dun. On this particular morning the heat seemed more terrible than ever, and there was not a breath of air stirring to cool the oppressive atmosphere. The earth and sky were suffused with a bright, red light, which gradually died away into a dim, purplish haze, through which the sun ascended like a ball of fire; while every blade and leaf hung motionless, as if awaiting breathlessly the coming of some great catastrophe. "This portends a storm," said Houston, as he watched the strange phenomena. "Yes," added Morton Rutherford, "an electric storm, and, if I am not mistaken, a very severe one." "How strange!" exclaimed Leslie, in a low tone, to Lyle, "everything is so hushed and still; it seems as if the elements, like ourselves, were just waiting." "I don't like it," Lyle answered, "it seems ominous," and she shuddered visibly. There was little breakfast eaten that morning, and the group of friends adjourned to the porch on the pretext of watching the weather, thereby attracting the attention of Haight, who still remained at the table. "What's in the wind now, I wonder," he soliloquized. "There was some kind of excitement here last evening, and everybody seems on the qui vive this morning. I guess I'd better look into this," and calling Minty to him, he gave her a quarter, with his most insinuating smile, saying in low tones: