"I think I will walk with you as far as Rockhouse," said Becker.
All four then departed; and when the party were about fifty yards from
Falcon's Nest, Fritz and Jack turned round and waved a final adieu to
those loved beings whom probably, they might never see again.
"It is well," said Becker. "I am satisfied with your conduct
throughout this trying interval."
It was now an hour when there is something indescribably sombre about
the country; day was declining, the outlines of the larger objects in
the landscape were becoming less distinct, and the trees were assuming
any sort of fantastical shape that the mind chose to assign to them.
Here and there a bird rustled in the foliage, but otherwise the
silence was only broken by footsteps of the four men.
In ordinary life children quit the parental home by easy and almost
imperceptible gradations. First, there is the school, then college;
next, perhaps, the requirements of the profession they have adopted.
Thus they readily abandon the domestic hearth; friends, intercourse,
and society divide their affection, and the separation from home
rarely, if ever, costs them a pang. Not so with Becker's two sons;
their world was New Switzerland; therefore, like the rays of the sun
absorbed by the mirror of Archimedes, all their affections were
concentrated on one point.
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