Reports,
in due form, accompany the occasional communications forwarded
from the "Sacred Heart" as to the heiress. This must all be left
to time.
With a deep interest, Hardin sees the cessation of all hostilities,
the death of Lincoln, the disbandment, in peace, of the great
Union armies.
Bayonets glitter no more upon the crested Southern heights.
The embers of the watchfires are cold, gray ashes now. The lonely
bivouac of the dead is the last holding of the foughten fields.
While the South and East is a graveyard or in mourning, strange
to say, only a general relief is felt in the West. The great issue
easily drops out of sight. There are here no local questions, no
neighborhood hatreds, no appealing graves. Happy California! happy,
but inglorious. The railway approaches completion. A great activity
of scientific mining, enterprises of scope and local development,
urge the Western communities to action. The bonanza of Lagunitas
gives Judge Hardin even greater local prominence. He establishes
his residence at the old home in the Sierras.
With no trusted associates, he splits and divides the funds from
the mine, placing them in varied depositories. He refrains from an
undue appearance of wealth or improvement at the rancho itself.
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