Having reached this conclusion, General Belmont’s first impulse was to destroy the will; on second thoughts he locked it carefully away in his safe.  He would hold it awhile.  It might some time be advisable to talk the matter over with young Delamere, who was of a fickle disposition and might wish to change his legal adviser.

XXVIII

IN SEASON AND OUT

Wellington soon resumed its wonted calm, and in a few weeks the intended lynching was only a memory.  The robbery and assault, however, still remained a mystery to all but a chosen few.  The affair had been dropped as absolutely as though it had never occurred.  No colored man ever learned the reason of this sudden change of front, and Sandy Campbell’s loyalty to his old employer’s memory kept him silent.  Tom Delamere did not offer to retain Sandy in his service, though he presented him with most of the old gentleman’s wardrobe.  It is only justice to Tom to state that up to this time he had not been informed of the contents of his grandfather’s latest will.  Major Carteret gave Sandy employment as butler, thus making a sort of vicarious atonement, on the part of the white race, of which the major felt himself in a way the embodiment, for the risk to which Sandy had been subjected.

Shortly after these events Sandy was restored to the bosom of the church, and, enfolded by its sheltering arms, was no longer tempted to stray from the path of rectitude, but became even a more rigid Methodist than before his recent troubles.

Tom Delamere did not call upon Clara again in the character of a lover.  Of course they could not help meeting, from time to time, but he never dared presume upon their former relations.  Indeed, the social atmosphere of Wellington remained so frigid toward Delamere that he left town, and did not return for several months.

Ellis was aware that Delamere had been thrown over, but a certain delicacy restrained him from following up immediately the advantage which the absence of his former rival gave him.  It seemed to him, with the quixotry of a clean, pure mind, that Clara would pass through a period of mourning for her lost illusion, and that it would be indelicate, for the time being, to approach her with a lover’s attentions.  The work of the office had been unusually heavy of late.  The major, deeply absorbed in politics, left the detail work of the paper to Ellis.  Into the intimate counsels of the revolutionary committee Ellis had not been admitted, nor would he have desired to be.  He knew, of course, in a general way, the results that it was sought to achieve; and while he did not see their necessity, he deferred to the views of older men, and was satisfied to remain in ignorance of anything which he might disapprove.  Moreover, his own personal affairs occupied his mind to an extent that made politics or any other subject a matter of minor importance.