Clay Hawkins, years gone by, had yielded, after many
a struggle, to the migratory and speculative instinct
of our age and our people, and had wandered further
and further westward upon trading ventures. Settling
finally in Melbourne, Australia, he ceased to roam,
became a steady-going substantial merchant, and prospered
greatly. His life lay beyond the theatre of
this tale.
His remittances had supported the Hawkins family,
entirely, from the time of his father’s death
until latterly when Laura by her efforts in Washington
had been able to assist in this work. Clay was
away on a long absence in some of the eastward islands
when Laura’s troubles began, trying (and almost
in vain,) to arrange certain interests which had become
disordered through a dishonest agent, and consequently
he knew nothing of the murder till he returned and
read his letters and papers. His natural impulse
was to hurry to the States and save his sister if
possible, for he loved her with a deep and abiding
affection. His business was so crippled now,
and so deranged, that to leave it would be ruin; therefore
he sold out at a sacrifice that left him considerably
reduced in worldly possessions, and began his voyage
to San Francisco. Arrived there, he perceived
by the newspapers that the trial was near its close.
At Salt Lake later telegrams told him of the acquittal,
and his gratitude was boundless—so boundless,
indeed, that sleep was driven from his eyes by the
pleasurable excitement almost as effectually as preceding
weeks of anxiety had done it. He shaped his course
straight for Hawkeye, now, and his meeting with his
mother and the rest of the household was joyful—albeit
he had been away so long that he seemed almost a stranger
in his own home.
But the greetings and congratulations were hardly
finished when all the journals in the land clamored
the news of Laura’s miserable death. Mrs.
Hawkins was prostrated by this last blow, and it was
well that Clay was at her side to stay her with comforting
words and take upon himself the ordering of the household
with its burden of labors and cares.
Washington Hawkins had scarcely more than entered
upon that decade which carries one to the full blossom
of manhood which we term the beginning: of middle
age, and yet a brief sojourn at the capital of the
nation had made him old. His hair was already
turning gray when the late session of Congress began
its sittings; it grew grayer still, and rapidly, after
the memorable day that saw Laura proclaimed a murderess;
it waxed grayer and still grayer during the lagging
suspense that succeeded it and after the crash which
ruined his last hope—the failure of his
bill in the Senate and the destruction of its champion,
Dilworthy. A few days later, when he stood uncovered
while the last prayer was pronounced over Laura’s
grave, his hair was whiter and his face hardly less
old than the venerable minister’s whose words
were sounding in his ears.
