Читать книгу The Boy Miners; Or, The Enchanted Island, A Tale of the Yellowstone Country онлайн

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“Now, I will take a look and see whether there are any of them left,” said Inwood, as he stealthily followed the liberated Mohave.

By this time it was growing dark, but objects for a considerable distance were quite distinct, and George Inwood made a thorough reconnoisance of the bed of the brook for several hundred yards up and down. At the end of a half hour, he returned with the pleasing word that the Mohaves had taken their departure.

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Having given this episode in the history of the gold hunters, it is necessary to take a look at events which came to pass a few months previous.

One bleak day in the winter of 1857-8, a young man was walking slowly down Broadway, humming a lively tune in a mournful voice, and doing his utmost to keep up his spirits, which, just then, were at their lowest ebb. In the nature of things, the poor fellow could not be otherwise. While in the senior class in college, preparing for the ministry, and succeeding most brilliantly, he was summoned home to New York, just in time to receive his father’s dying blessing; his mother having fallen asleep several years before, he was thus left an orphan, with a younger brother to provide for. As his father had been a leading merchant in the great metropolis, there seemed to be little difficulty in this, and he assumed the control of affairs at once.