What had been accomplished?  We had fixed the Rio Grande as the Texas boundary; we had added California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah to the American domain.  With Oregon acquired Douglas’ ocean-bound republic was realized.  Was it to prove his lasting triumph, or his undoing?

I had been gone less than a year.  I was eager to reach Chicago, but I had to stop off at Jacksonville to help bury the body of Colonel Hardin.  We made his grave near the grave of my father and not far from Lamborn’s.

What had happened in my absence?  How should I find the home that I had left?  If Dorothy should be dead, or Mother Clayton, or Mammy or Jenny?

I rang the bell.  Jenny came to the door.  She gave a cry.  Mammy came hurrying through the hall; then Mother Clayton, flinging her arms upward in dumb delight.  Then Dorothy, lovely in her young motherhood, carrying our boy, the tears running down her cheeks.  She could not speak.  She could only rub her cheek against mine, press her lips to mine, hold our little boy’s laughing and uncomprehending lips to mine.  We cried.  We uttered broken words.

I entered.  The door closed behind me.  I was home.  All was well.  I sat down.  All looked at me.  Jenny and Mammy loitered in the room.  I wanted to speak.  But what had I to say?  Nothing!  Such happiness at being home!  So we sat until I broke the silence by asking:  “When was the baby born?” Mother Clayton replied:  “He is five weeks old to-morrow.”  Then we all laughed.  We had broken this heavy silence with such simple words.  And after that, many words, much laughter; and later a wonderful meal prepared by the delighted hands of Mammy and Jenny.

CHAPTER XXXVI

But what of Douglas?  During the war I had been entirely out of touch with him.  What was he doing?  What had he accomplished?  What was now stirring in his restless imagination?  They all had news for me about him and of varied import, according to their attitude.

For one thing he had married while I was in the war.  Mother Clayton approved the marriage.  Abigail mocked it.  For his wife was a southern woman, the owner of many slaves in Mississippi.  Douglas had announced that he would have nothing to do with her property, especially with the slaves.  But how was he to escape a derivative gain?  So Abigail asked.  I knew that he disliked the institution; but here it was touching him again in a peculiarly intimate way.  Texas soiled him with its influence and now his marriage identified him with it.  He might regard it, if he would, as a domestic matter like the liquor business, which Maine had just now laid low by a prohibition law.  As he would not be a liquor dealer, so he would not be a slave owner.  But he was the next thing to it in the circumstance of his marriage.

But in my absence he had moved to Chicago, and this gave me great happiness.  I should now see much of him.  He was speculating in land and growing rich.  He was advocating the immediate construction of the Illinois Central railroad.  He had been triumphantly reelected to Congress.  The Mexican War had helped to do that for him.  He was only thirty-four, but a great and growing figure.