He fell into a profound reverie, and remained for a lengthened period absorbed in a flood of bitter memories, that oppressed his breast. At length he raised his head, shook back his thick hair, and passed his hand over his forehead.
"No more hesitation," he said, hoarsely, "let me know what I have to depend on. Something tells me that my researches will this time be crowned with success."
He then seized one of the hooks with a trembling hand, and put it in the lock; but his emotion was so great that he could not make the instrument act, and he threw it angrily from him. "Am I a child, then?" he said; "I will be calm."
He took the hook up again with a firm hand, and the casket opened. Bloodson looked eagerly into the interior; it only contained two letters, which time had turned yellow. At the sight of them, a livid pallor covered the ranger's face. He evidently recognised the handwriting at the first glance. He uttered a howl of joy, and seized the letters, saying, in a voice that had nothing human about it:-- "Here, then, are the proofs I believed to be destroyed!" He unfolded the paper with the most minute precautions, for fear of tearing the creases, and began reading. Ere long, a sigh of relief burst from his overladen bosom.
"Ah!" he uttered, "Heaven has at length delivered you to me, my masters; we will settle our accounts."
He replaced the letters in the casket, closed it again, and carefully hid it in his bosom.
The three adventurers rapidly left Bloodson's camp, and proceeded in the direction of the mountains, galloping silently side by side. They had a foreboding that the finale of this terrible drama was approaching, and involuntarily their thoughts were sad.
Man is so constituted that the feeling which has most power over him is sadness; human organisation is formed for struggling, and joy is only an anomaly; built to resist the hardest trials, the strongest man is frequently the one who yields most easily to great joy; hence, strange to say nothing more resembles happiness than sorrow; the symptoms are so completely the same, that a great joy annihilates the faculties almost as much as a great sorrow does.
At this moment, the three persons we are following were under the weight of an emotion such as we have described. At the instant when they expected the hopes they had so long entertained would be fulfilled, they felt an emotion which completely mastered them, and for which they could not account. They were about to play for a decisive stake. Ever since they had been contending with this rude adversary, they had ever found him standing in the track, returning them trick for trick, and although cruelly wounded, constantly retaining the victory. This time luck had turned; Heaven itself seemed to have interposed to make justice triumph, and the bandit, driven to his last entrenchments, was expecting them to be forced at any moment.