When Alvin Mulrady reentered his own house,he no longer noticed its loneliness.Whether the events of the last few hours had driven it from his mind,or whether his late reflections had repeopled it with his family under pleasanter auspices,it would be difficult to determine.Destitute as he was of imagination,and matter-of-fact in his judgments,he realized his new situation as calmly as he would have considered any business proposition.While he was decided to act upon his moral convictions purely,he was prepared to submit the facts of Slinn's claim to the usual patient and laborious investigation of his practical mind.It was the least he could do to justify the ready and almost superstitious assent he had given to Slinn's story.
When he had made a few memoranda at his desk by the growing light,he again took the key of the attic,and ascended to the loft that held the tangible memories of his past life.If he was still under the influence of his reflections,it was with very different sensations that he now regarded them.Was it possible that these ashes might be warmed again,and these scattered embers rekindled?
His practical sense said No!whatever his wish might have been.Asudden chill came over him;he began to realize the terrible change that was probable,more by the impossibility of his accepting the old order of things than by his voluntarily abandoning the new.
His wife and children would never submit.They would go away from this place,far away,where no reminiscence of either former wealth or former poverty could obtrude itself upon them.Mamie--his Mamie--should never go back to the cabin,since desecrated by Slinn's daughters,and take their places.No!Why should she?--because of the half-sick,half-crazy dreams of an old vindictive man?
He stopped suddenly.In moodily turning over a heap of mining clothing,blankets,and india-rubber boots,he had come upon an old pickaxe--the one he had found in the shaft;the one he had carefully preserved for a year,and then forgotten!Why had he not remembered it before?He was frightened,not only at this sudden resurrection of the proof he was seeking,but at his own fateful forgetfulness.Why had he never thought of this when Slinn was speaking?A sense of shame,as if he had voluntarily withheld it from the wronged man,swept over him.He was turning away,when he was again startled.