our services? Why linger,
then, where you are no longer needed? I have that to perform which
requires me to be alone, and I have no further time to spare you.
Go--away!"

"Do you really speak in earnest, captain?" inquired the lieutenant,
doubtingly, and with a look of much concern.

"Am I so fond of trifling, that my officer asks me such a question?" was
the stern response.

"Then I am your officer still--you will go with me, or I shall remain."

"Neither, Dillon. The time is past for such an arrangement. You are
discharged from my service, and from your oath. The club has no further
existence. Go--be a happy, a better man, in another part of the world.
You have some of the weaknesses of your better nature still in you. You
had no mother to change them into scorn, and strife, and bitterness.
Go--you may be a better man, and have something, therefore, for which to
live. I have not--my heart can know no change. It is no longer under the
guidance of reason. It is quite ungovernable now. There was a time
when--but why prate of this?--it is too late to think of, and only
maddens me the more. Besides, it makes not anything with you, and would
detain you without a purpose. Linger no longer, Dillon--speed to the
west, and, at some future day, perhaps you shall see me when you least
expect, and perhaps least desire it."

The manner of the outlaw was firm and commanding, and Dillon no longer
had any reason to doubt his desires, and no motive to disobey his
wishes. The parting was brief, though the subordinate was truly
affected. He would have lingered still, but Rivers waved him off with a
farewell, whose emphasis was effectual, and, in a few moments, the
latter sat once more alone.

His mood was that of one disappointed in all things, and, consequently,
displeased and discontented with all things--querulously so. In addition
to this temper, which was common to him, his spirit, at this time,
labored under a heavy feeling of despondency, and its gloomy sullenness
was perhaps something lighter to himself while Dillon remained with him.
We have seen the manner in which he had hurried that personage off. He
had scarcely been gone, however, when the inconsistent and variable
temper of the outlaw found utterance in the following soliloquy:--

"Ay, thus it is--they all desert me; and this is human feeling. They all
fly the darkness, and this is human courage. They love themselves only,
or you only while you need no love; and th