The Project Gutenberg EBook of Erema, by R. D. Blackmore

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Title: Erema
My Father's Sin

Author: R. D. Blackmore

Release Date: June 6, 2006 [EBook #7112]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EREMA ***

Produced by Don Lainson

EREMA; OR, MY FATHER'S SIN

By R. D. Blackmore

1877

CHAPTER I

A LOST LANDMARK

"The sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me."

These are the words that have followed me always. This is the curse
which has fallen on my life.

If I had not known my father, if I had not loved him, if I had not
closed his eyes in desert silence deeper than the silence of the grave,
even if I could have buried and bewailed him duly, the common business
of this world and the universal carelessness might have led me down the
general track that leads to nothing.

Until my father fell and died I never dreamed that he could die. I knew
that his mind was quite made up to see me safe in my new home, and then
himself to start again for still remoter solitudes. And when his mind
was thus made up, who had ever known him fail of it?

If ever a resolute man there was, that very man was my father. And
he showed it now, in this the last and fatal act of his fatal life.
"Captain, here I leave you all," he shouted to the leader of our wagon
train, at a place where a dark, narrow gorge departed from the moilsome
mountain track. "My reasons are my own; let no man trouble himself
about them. All my baggage I leave with you. I have paid my share of
the venture, and shall claim it at Sacramento. My little girl and I will
take this short-cut through the mountains."

"General!" answered the leader of our train, standing up on his board in
amazement. "Forgive and forget, Sir; forgive and forget. What is a hot
word spoken hotly? If not for your own sake, at least come back for the
sake of your young daughter."

"A fair haven to you!" replied my father. He offered me his hand, and
we were out of sight of all that wearisome, drearisome, uncompanionable
company with whom, for eight long weeks at least, we had been dragging