CHAPER IV.
It was a little after daybreak next morning that Mainwaring awoke from
the first unrefreshing night he had passed at The Lookout. He was so
feverish and restless that he dressed himself at sunrise, and cautiously
stepped out upon the still silent veranda. The chairs which he and
Louise Macy had occupied were still, it seemed to him, conspicuously
confidential with each other, and he separated them, but as he looked
down into the Great Canyon at his feet he was conscious of some
undefinable change in the prospect. A slight mist was rising from the
valley, as if it were the last of last night's illusions; the first
level sunbeams were obtrusively searching, and the keen morning air had
a dryly practical insistence which irritated him, until a light footstep
on the farther end of the veranda caused him to turn sharply.
It was the singular apparition of a small boy, bearing a surprising
resemblance to Minty Sharpe, and dressed in an unique fashion. On a
tumbled sea of blond curls a "chip" sailor hat, with a broad red ribbon,
rode jauntily. But here the nautical suggestion changed, as had the
desire of becoming a pirate which induced it. A red shirt, with a white
collar, and a yellow plaid ribbon tie, that also recalled Minty Sharpe,
lightly turned the suggestion of his costume to mining.
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