Julian held the shutters open and took a survey of the scene before him. He saw the high stone wall which surrounded the house on all sides, the ponderous gate which had opened a short time before to admit him and the trappers, the well-beaten bridle-path leading across the valley toward the mountains, and noted even the smallest object within the range of his vision, but nothing looked familiar.
The home of his boyhood was not so gloomy and desolate a place as this in which he now found himself. There was no high wall to shut out all view of the outer world, but there were flowers blooming before the door, a pleasant grove close by, and people constantly coming and going. And there was a jolly old gentleman, from whose side he was scarcely ever separated, who used to take him on his knee and talk to him for hours; and now and then a laughing, blue-eyed boy would make his appearance after a long absence, spend a few days in romping with him and then go off again. Where was that father and brother now? If they were alive and well, as Silas had so often assured him, why were they not living there in the rancho, if that was their home? Why should they remain away and allow a stranger to take the management of their affairs?
“If I have a home and friends I must look further to find them, that is plain enough to be seen,” soliloquized Julian, closing the shutter and creeping back into the room. “But before I go I should like to know what object this man has in view in bringing me here and claiming me for his nephew. When I meet him in the morning I will call him Uncle Reginald, and act as though I believed—— What are you doing here?”
When Julian stepped down from the window-seat into the room he had just left, he found that it had an occupant who had no business there. It was not a spirit, either, for spirits do not need lanterns to guide their footsteps, and revolvers to defend themselves, and this intruder had both. One was held in his left hand by his side, and with the muzzle of the other he was covering Julian’s head. It was the emigrant, clean shaven and close cropped, as he was when the boy first saw him with the wagon train.
“What do you want here, Dick Mortimer?” cried Julian, recoiling before the muzzle of the revolver. “Clear out!”