He himself was going to Skinner's to plead for him; he knew that Parker had left the draft,--he had seen it lying in the bar,--but a new sense of delicacy kept him from alluding to it now.
It was better to leave Collinson with his own peculiar ideas of the responsibilities of hospitality unchanged.

Key shook his hand warmly, and galloped up the rocky slope.

But when he had finally reached the higher level, and fancied he could even now see the dust raised by his departing comrades on their two diverging paths, although he knew that they had already gone their different ways,--perhaps never to meet again,--his thoughts and his eyes reverted only to the ruined mill below him and its lonely occupant.
He could see him quite distinctly in that clear air, still standing before his door.

And then he appeared to make a parting gesture with his hand, and something like snow fluttered in the air above his head.
It was only the torn fragments of Parker's draft, which this homely gentleman of the Sierras, standing beside his empty pork barrel, had scattered to the four winds..