We will forsake David Jenison for the time being. He is well started on
his journey to the home of his forefathers, where complete restoration
and the newspaper reporters await him. Let the imagination picture the
welcome he is to receive; if possible, let it also describe the
attitude of the community which had hunted him with dogs and deadly
weapons, but which now stood ready to cast itself without reserve at
the feet of the boy who had been so cruelly wronged.
Picture Mr. Blake's disgust at learning from David's own lips how he
had been outwitted by the circus people, and contrast it with his
sincere relief in contemplation of the fact that he had not captured
the boy in those days of prejudice.
We leave all these details to the generous intelligence of the reader,
for he knows that the heir to Jenison Hall has come unto his own again;
and he also knows that in spite of all that can be done to make life
bright and cheerful for David, there is still a shadow in the
background that turns the world into a bleak and desolate waste for him.
Two weeks passed over his head before he was able to turn away from the
bewildering mass of legal requirements and look once more to the West,
whither his heart was forever journeying. Not all the excitement that
filled the fortnight to overflowing, nor all the homage that came to
him, could ease the dull, insistent pain of separation from interests
so vital to his young heart.
He stole away one night, accompanied by a single servant--for now he
was "lord of the manor" and traveled only as a true gentleman of the
South should travel. Half-way to his destination he stopped off to draw
from the savings bank the money he had placed there. With this small
fortune in his possession he resumed the journey, now closely guarded
by old Jeff, who always had been a slave to the Jenisons and would be
till he died, Abraham Lincoln to the contrary.
David's constant prayer was that he might not be too late.
He was destined to find many changes in Van Slye's Great and Only
Mammoth Shows.
Let us go back to the night after the one which saw David's departure
from the show. For two days Thomas Braddock had slunk about the show
grounds, morose, ugly, taciturn. He avoided every one except those with
whom he was obliged to consult. His wife and daughter caught fleeting
glimpses of him; Colonel Grand and the others saw him but little more.
He held aloof, brooding over his wrongs, accumulating a vast resentment
against the world and all of its inhabitants, obsessed by the single
desire to make some one else suffer for the ignominy that had come to
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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