Lewis Rand

FAIRFAX CARY

The December frost lay hard upon the ground, and a pale winter sky gleamed above and between bare limbs of trees. In Vinie Mocket's garden withered and bent stalk showed where had been zinnia and prince's feather, and the grapevine over the porch was but a mass of twisted stems. The sun shone bright, however, on this day, and as there was no wind, it was not hard to imagine it warm out-of-doors and the spring somewhere in keeping. It was the week before Christmas, and the season unwontedly mild.

Vinie, seated upon the doorstep in the sun, a grey shawl around her shoulders and her pink chin in her hand, stared at the Ragged Mountains and wondered when Tom was coming to dinner. A grey cat purred in the sun beside her. Smut the dog, lying in a patch of light upon the porch floor, broke out of a dream, got up, and wagged his tail.

"Who do you hear, Smut?" asked Vinie. "I think it ith Mr. Adam."

Adam came through the gate that had never been mended and up the little, sunny path. He had his gun, and in addition a great armful of holly and mistletoe, and he deposited all alike upon the porch floor. "A green Christmas we're having," he announced cheerfully, "so we might as well make it greener! I thought these would look pretty over your chimney glass."

"They'll be lovely," answered Vinie. "I just somehow didn't think of fixing things up this Christmas. I'll put them all around the parlour, Mr. Adam."

"I'll put them for you," said Adam. "This isn't mistletoe like you get in the big trees south, and it isn't holly such as grows down Williamsburgh way—but it's mistletoe and it's holly."

"Yeth," agreed Vinie listlessly. "I don't know which ith the prettier, the little white waxen berries or the red."

"I like the red," returned the hunter. "That in your hand—bright and quick as blood-drops."

"No," said Vinie, and let the spray drop to the floor. "Blood ith darker than that."

"Not if it's heart's blood—that's bright enough. What is the matter, little partridge?"

"Nothing," Vinie replied, with an effort. "I've been baking cake all morning, and I'm tired. I reckon you couldn't have Christmas without baking and scrubbing and sweeping and dusting and making a whole lot of fuss about nothing—nothing at all." Her voice dragged away.

"You couldn't have it without hanging up mistletoe and holly," quoth Adam. "I've been a month in these parts, and I've come around mighty often to see you and Tom. Why won't you tell me?"

Vinie turned upon him startled eyes. "Tell you?"

"Tell me what ails you. Why, you aren't any more like—Don't you remember that morning, a'most four years ago, when I found you sitting by the blackberry bushes on the Fontenoy road? Yes, you do. The blackberries were in bloom, and you had on a pink sunbonnet, and I broke you a lot of wild cherry for your very same parlour in there. You had been crying that day, too,—oh, I knew!—but you plucked up spirit and put the wild cherry all around the parlour. And now, look at you!—you aren't a partridge any longer, you're a dove without a mate. Well, why don't you cry, little dove?"

"I don't feel like crying," said Vinie. "There isn't anything the matter with me. I'm going to put the green stuff up, and Tom's got ever so many wax candles and two bottles of Madeira, and you'll come to supper—"

"I'll send you a brace of wild turkeys Christmas Eve. I'll shoot them over on Indian Run."

Vinie shrank back. "You look," exclaimed Adam, "as though you were on Indian Run, and I had turned my gun on you! Why did you go white and sick like that?"

He glanced at her again with keen, deep blue eyes. "Now the colour has come back. Were you frightened over there in those woods when you really were a bird? Indian Run! It is more than three months, isn't it, since Mr. Cary's death?"

"December," answered Vinie, in a fluttering voice, "December, November, October, and part of September—yeth, more than three months. Suppose we go now and put the holly up?"

"Let's stay here a little in the sun. The holly won't wither. I don't know a doorstep, East or West, that I like to sit on better than this. There's a variety of log cabins that I'm fond of, and maybe as many as four or five wigwams, but I'd like to grow old sitting in the sun before this little grey house! It isn't going to be long before the sap runs in the sugar trees and it's spring. Then all the pretty flowers will come up again and I'll help you draw cool water from the well. Don't you ever wear that Spanish comb I brought you?"

"I've got it put away. It's lovely."

"It oughtn't to be put away. It ought to be stuck there, dark shell above your yellow hair. You'll wear it, won't you, Christmas Day?"

"Yeth, I'll wear it, Mr. Adam. Who's coming now, Smut?"

"He hears a horse. Wear the Spanish comb, and Tom shall brew us a bowl of punch, and we might get in some gay folk and a fiddle and have a dance. I'd like to stand up with you, little partridge."

Vinie put down her head and began to cry. "It's nothing, nothing! There isn't anything the matter! Don't think it, Mr. Adam. I jutht get tired and cold, and Christmas isn't like it used to be. Now I've stopped—and I'll dance with you with pleasure, Mr. Adam."

"That's right," said Adam. "Now, you dry your eyes, and we'll go into the parlour and I'll make a fire, and we'll put leaves and berries all around. Who is it coming by? Mr. Fairfax Cary."

"Yeth," answered Vinie. "He rides a black horse."

The hunter glanced at her again. "Little bird," he thought, "your voice didn't use to have so many notes." Aloud he said, "He's grown to look like his brother. I met him in the road the other day and we talked awhile. He's too stern and quiet, though. All the time we talked I was thinking of a Cherokee whom I once met following a war party that had killed his wife. Fairfax Cary had just the same air as that Indian—still, like an afternoon on a mountain-top. There's no clue yet as to who shot his brother."

Fairfax Cary, going by on Saladin, lifted his hat to the woman on the porch. "Yes, he's like that Cherokee," repeated Adam. "Where's he riding?—to Fontenoy, I reckon. Now, little partridge, let's go make the parlour look like Christmas."

Vinie rose, and the hunter gathered up the green stuff. She spoke again in the same fluttered voice. "Mr. Adam, do you think—do you think they'll ever find out—"

"Find out who shot Mr. Cary?" asked Gaudylock. "They may—there's no telling. Every day makes a trail like that more overgrown and hard to read. But if Fairfax Cary is truly like my Cherokee, I'd not care to be the murderer, even five years and a thousand miles from here and now. You may be sure the Cherokee got his man. Now you take the mistletoe and I'll take the holly, and we'll make a Christmas bower to dance in." He raised his great armful and went into the house singing,—

"Once I was in old Kentucky,
Christmas time, by all that's lucky!
Bear meat, deer meat, coon and possum,
Apple-jack we did allow some,
In Kentucky.

"Roaring logs and whining fiddle,
Up one side and down the middle!
Two foot snow and ne'er a flower,—
But Molly Darke she danced that hour,
In Kentucky!"

The hunter's surmise was correct. Fairfax Cary rode slowly on upon the old, familiar way to Fontenoy. All the hills were brown, winter earth and winter air despite the brightness of the sunshine. A blue stream rippled by, pine and cedar made silhouettes against a tranquil sky, and crows were cawing in a stubble-field. Cary rode slowly, plodding on with a thoughtful brow. The few whom he met greeted him respectfully, and he answered them readily enough, then pursued his way, again in a brown study. The Fontenoy gates were reached at last, and he was about to bend from his saddle and lift the heavy latch, when a slim black girl in a checked gown made a sudden appearance in the driveway upon the other side. "I'll open hit, sah! Don' you trouble. Dar now!"

The gate swung open, Cary rode through, and Deb appeared beside Miranda. "We've been walking a mile," she announced. "Down the drive and back again, through the hollow, round the garden, and up to the glass door—that's a mile. Are you going to stay to supper?"

Cary dismounted and walked beside her, his bridle over his arm. "I don't think so, Deb,—not to-night."

"I wish you would," said Deb wistfully. "You used to all the time, and you most never do now. And—and it's Christmas, and we aren't going to decorate, or have a party, or people staying!" Deb's chin trembled. "I don't like houses in mourning."

"Neither do I, Deb."

The colour streamed into his companion's small face. "I didn't mean—I didn't mean—I forgot! Oh, Mr. Fairfax,—"

"Dear Deb, don't mind. I wish you were going to have a Christmas as bright as bright! Won't there be any brightness for you?"

"Why, of course," answered Deb, with bravery. "I am going to have a lovely time. Uncle Dick says I can do what I please with the schoolroom, and Miranda and I and the quarter children—we're going to decorate. Unity's going to show us how, and Scipio's going to put up the wreaths. The quarter's to have its feast just the same, and I'm going to help Unity give out the presents. I expect it will be beautiful!"

The two walked on, Miranda following. Cary took the child's hand. "I expect it will be beautiful too, Deb. Sometimes ever so much brightness in just a little place makes up for the grey all around. Aren't you going to let me see the schoolroom?"

"Oh, would you like to?" cried Deb, brightening. "Certainly, Mr. Fairfax. Christmas is lovely, isn't it? Unity says that maybe she and I will slip down to the quarter and watch them dancing. I'm sure I don't want parties, nor people staying!"

Deb squeezed her companion's hand, and kept silence from the big elm to the lilac-bushes. Then she broke out. "But I don't understand—I don't understand at all—"

Cary, looking down upon her, saw her little pointed chin quiver again, and her brown eyes swim. "What don't you understand, poor little Deb?"

"I don't understand why I can't go to Roselands. I've always gone the day after every Christmas, and it is always like Christmas over again! And now Uncle Dick says, 'Stay at home, chicken, this year,' and Uncle Edward says he needs me to tell him stories, and Unity begged them at first to let me go, but when they wouldn't, she said that she couldn't beg them any more, and that she didn't think the world was going right anyhow." The tears ran over. "And Jacqueline," continued Deb, in a stifled little voice,—"Jacqueline wrote me a letter and said not to come this year if Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward wanted me at home. She told me I must always obey and love them—just as if I didn't anyhow. She said she loved me more than most anything, but I don't think that is loving me—to think I'd better not come to Roselands. She said I was most a woman, and so I am,—I'm more than twelve,—and that I was to love her always and know that she loved me. Of course I shall love Jacqueline always—but I wanted to go to Roselands." Deb felt in her pocket, found a tiny handkerchief, and applied it to her eyes. "It's not like Christmas not to go to Roselands the day after—and I think people are cruel."

"I wouldn't think that of your sister, Deb," said Cary, with gentleness. "Your sister isn't cruel. Don't cry."

"I'm not," answered Deb, and put carefully away a wet ball of handkerchief. "I hope you'll like the schoolroom, Mr. Fairfax. It's all cedar and red berries, and Miranda's and my dolls are sitting in the four corners. It's lovely weather for Christmas—though I wanted it to snow."

Major Edward, seated at an old desk, going over old papers, looked up as Cary entered the library. A fire of hickory crackled and flamed on the hearth, making a light to play over the portrait of Henry Churchill and over the swords crossed beneath. An old hound named Watch slept under the table, the tall clock ticked loudly, and through the glass doors, beyond the leafless trees, showed the long wave of the Blue Ridge.

"Is it you, Fair?" demanded the Major. "Come in—come in! I am merely going over old letters. They can wait. The men who wrote them are all dead." He turned in his chair. "Have you just come in?"

"Yes, sir."

"Unity was here awhile ago. She went through the glass door—down to the quarter, I suppose."

"I will stay here for a while, sir, if I may. Don't let me disturb you. I will take a book."

"You do not disturb me," answered the Major. "I was reading a letter from Hamilton, written long ago—long ago.

"I met Deb in the driveway and we walked to the house together. Poor little maid! She is mightily distressed because she thinks there's a lack of Christmas cheer. I wish, sir, that she might have a merry Christmas."

"We'll do our best, Fair. Unity shall make it bright."

"The servants, too,—I give mine the usual feast at Greenwood, and I'm going down to the quarter for half an hour."

"The Carys make good masters. In that respect all here, too, goes on as usual. As for Deb, the child shall have the happiest day we can give her." He took from a drawer a small morocco case and opened it. "She'll have from Dick a horse and saddle, and I give her this." He held out the case, and Cary praised the small gold watch with D.C. marked in pearls. "The only thing," continued Major Edward wearily, "is that she cannot go to Roselands. She has cried her heart out over that."

"You declined the invitation for her?"

"Yes. I made Dick do so. She is growing into womanhood. It will not answer."

"Then, sir, Colonel Churchill must know—"

"He doesn't 'know,'" said the Major doggedly. "Nobody really knows. We may be all pursuing a spectre. I told Dick enough to make him see that Deb should not be brought into contact—"

There was a silence. Cary studied the fire, and Major Churchill unfolded deftly with his one hand a yellowing paper, glanced over it, and laid it in a separate drawer. "An order from General Washington—the André matter. Deb shall not visit Roselands again. Dick and I are not going to have both of Henry's children"—The Major's voice broke. "Pshaw! this damned weather gives a man a cold that Valley Forge itself couldn't give!" He unfolded another paper. "What's this? Benedict Arnold! Faugh!" Rising, he approached the fire and threw the letter in, then turned impatiently upon the younger man. "Well, Fairfax Cary?"

"Is it still," asked Cary slowly, "your opinion that she does not know?"

"She?"

"Mrs. Rand."

Major Edward dragged a chair to the corner of the hearth and sat heavily down. He bent forward, a brooding, melancholy figure, a thin old veteran, grey and scarred. The fire-light showed strongly square jaw, hawk nose, and beetle brows. When he spoke, it was in a voice inexpressibly sombre. "I have seen my niece but three times since September. If you ask me now what you asked me then, I shall answer differently. I do not know—I do not know if she knows or not!"

"I think, sir, that I have a clue. The hour when he passed Red Fields—"

Major Churchill put up a shaking hand. "No, sir! Remember our bargain. I'll not hear it. I'll weigh no evidence on this subject. Enough for me to know in my heart of hearts that this man murdered Ludwell Cary, and that he dwells free at Roselands, blackening my niece—that he rides free to town—pleads his cases—does his work—ingratiates himself, and grows, grows in the esteem of his county and his state! That, I say, is enough, sir! If you have your clue, for God's sake don't impart it to me! I've told you I will not make nor meddle." Major Edward began to cough. "Open the window, will you? The room is damned hot. Well, sir, well?"

"I'll say no more, then, sir, as to that," Cary answered from the window. "I wish absolutely to respect your position. It will do no harm, however, to tell you that I am going to Richmond the day after Christmas."

"To Richmond! What are you going to Richmond for?"

"I want," replied the other, with restrained passion,—"I want to ride from Shockoe Hill at three o'clock in the afternoon, with my face to Roselands, and in my heart the knowledge that I have been foiled and thwarted in deep-laid and cherished schemes by the one whom, for no especially good reason, I have singled out of the world to be my enemy! I want to feel the black rage of the Rands in my heart. I want to sleep, the third night, at the Cross Roads Tavern, and I want to go on in the morning by Malplaquet I want to learn at Forrest's forge that Ludwell Cary is on the road before me. Perhaps, by the time I reach the mill and cross the ford, I will remember what it was that I did next, and how I managed to be on two roads at once."

He turned, and took up from a chair his hat and riding-whip "'Tis no easy feat," he said, with grimness, "to put one's self in the place of Lewis Rand. But then, other things are not easy either. I'll not grudge a little straining." He stood before the Major, holding out his hand—a handsome figure in his mourning dress, resolute, quiet, no longer breathing outward grief, ready even, when occasion demanded, to smile or to laugh, but essentially altered and fixed to one point. "I think, sir, I will look now for Unity. There is something I wish to say to her. Good-bye, sir. I shall not come again until after New Year."

Miss Dandridge, mounting the hill from the quarter, and sitting down to rest upon a great, sun-bathed stone beside the foot-path, heard a quick step and looked up to greet her betrothed. "It is so warm and bright," she said, "in this fence-corner that I feel as though summer were on the way. The stone is large—there's room for you, too, here in the sunshine."

He sat down beside her. "You have been making Christmas for the quarter?"

"I've been telling them that Christmas is to be bright. I have not seen you for a week."

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. "Unity, I have been sitting there at home at Greenwood, thinking, thinking! Page came to see me, but I was such poor company that he did not tarry long. I rode here to-day to say something to you—Unity, don't you think you had better give me up?"

"No! I don't—"

"I do not think it is fair to you. I am not the man you knew—except in loving you I am not the man who sat with you beneath the catalpa. I am bereaved of the better part of me, and I see one object held up before me like a wand. I must reach that wand or all effort is fruitless, and there is no achievement and no harvest in my life. I may be years in reaching it. I love you dearly and deeply, but I am not given over to love. I am given over to reaching that wand. It has seemed to me, sitting there at Greenwood, it has seemed to me after Page's visit, that I should give you freedom—"

"It seems to me, sitting here upon this stone," answered Unity, "that I will not take it! And what under the sun Mr. Page's visit—I will wait until you are at leisure to love me as—as—as you loved me that day under the catalpa when you flung Eloïsa to Abelard into the rosebushes! Don't—don't! I like to cry a little."

"I have determined," he said, "to tell you what I am doing. You know that I seek to discover my brother's murderer, but you have not guessed that I know his name. It is Lewis Rand whom I pursue, and it is Lewis Rand whom I will convict of that deed on Indian Run!"

She gave a cry. "Lewis Rand! Fair, Fair, that's impossible!"

"Is it?" he asked sombrely. "Impossible to prove, perhaps, though I'm not prepared to grant that either, but true, Unity, true as many another black 'impossible' has been!"

"But—but—No one thinks—no one suspects. Fair, Fair! are you not mistaken?"

"No. Nor am I quite alone in my conviction. And one day the world that suspects nothing shall know."

There was a silence; then, "But Jacqueline," she whispered, with whitening lips. "Jacqueline"—

"She chose," he answered. "I cannot help it. She took her road and her companion."

"And you mean—you mean—"

"I mean to bring him to justice."

"To break her heart and ruin her life—to bring down wretchedness, misery, disgrace! Oh!" She caught her breath. "And Deb—and Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward—Fair, Fair, leave him alone!"

"You must not ask me that."

"But Ludwell would—Ludwell would have asked it! Oh, do you think he would have endured to bring woe like that upon her! Oh, Fair, Fair,—"

Cary sprang to his feet, walked away, and stood with his back to the great stone and his face toward Greenwood. He saw but one thing there, the graveyard on the hill beneath the leafless trees. When he came back to Unity, he looked as he had looked beside the dead, that day on Indian Run.

"We are alike, Ludwell and I," he said, "but we are not that much alike. I am little now but an avenger of blood. I shall be that until this draws to an end." He came closer and touched her shoulder with his hand. "Take me or leave me as I am, Unity. I shall not change, not even for you."

"But for tenderness," she cried, "for mercy, for consideration of an old house, for Jacqueline whom your brother loved as you love—as once you said you loved—me! For just pity, Fair!"

"On the other side," he answered, "is justice. Don't urge me, Unity. That is something your uncle has not done."

"Uncle Edward?"

"Yes."

There was a silence; then, "I see now," said Unity slowly. "I haven't understood. I thought—I didn't know what to think. Uncle Edward, too,—oh me! oh me! That is why Deb is not to go to Roselands." She considered through blinding tears a little patch of sere grass. "But Jacqueline," she whispered,—"Jacqueline does not know?"

Cary looked at her. "Do you think that, Unity?"

Unity stared at the grass until the tears all dried. "She knows—she knows! That was a heart-breaking letter to Deb, and I couldn't—I couldn't understand it! She does not ask me there—does not seem to want to meet—I've hardly seen her since—since—And when we meet, she's strange—too gay at first for her, and then too still, with wide eyes she will not let me read. And she talks and talks—she talks now more than I do. She's not truly Jacqueline—she's acting a part. Oh, Jacqueline, Jacqueline!"

"Be very sure," he said, "that I have for her only pity, admiration, yes, and understanding!"

"But you intend—you intend—"

"To bring Lewis Rand to justice. Yes, I intend that."

From the quarter below them came the blowing of the afternoon horn. The short, bright winter day was waning, and though the sun yet dwelt upon the hill-top, the hollow at its base was filled with shadow. Unity rose from the stone. "I must go back to the house. I promised Deb I would read to her." She caught her breath. "It is the Arabian Nights—and he gave it to her, and she's always talking of him. Oh, all of us poor children! Oh, I used to think the world so sweet and gay!"

"What do you think," he said, "of the one who turns it bitter?"

She looked at him with pleading eyes. "Fair, Fair, will you not forego it—forego vengeance?"

"It is not vengeance," he answered. "It is something deeper than that. I don't think that I can explain. It seems to me that it is destiny and all that destiny rests upon." He drew her to him and kissed her twice. "Will you wait for me, wait on no other terms than these? If you will, God bless you! If it is a task beyond your strength, God bless you still. You will do right to give it up. Which, Unity, which? And if you wait for me, you must go no more to that man's house. If you wait for me, my brother is your brother."

"I will never give up Jacqueline!"

"I do not ask it. But you'll go no more to that house, speak no more to the man she most unhappily wedded. That is my right—if you wait for me."

She turned and threw herself into his arms. "Oh, Fair, if it is only he himself—if it is only that dark and wicked man—if you do not ask me to stop loving her, or writing to her, or seeing her when I can—"

"That is all—only to speak no more to that dark and wicked man."

"Then I'll wait—I'll wait till doomsday! Oh, the world! Oh, the thing called love! Don't—don't speak to me until I cry it out."

She wept for a while, then dried her eyes and tried to smile. "That's over. Let us go now and—and read the Arabian Nights. Oh me, oh me, if we are not merry here, what must Christmas be at Roselands!"

THE IMAGE

The murderer of Ludwell Cary unlocked the green door of the office in Charlottesville, entered, and opened the shutters of the small, square windows. Outside was a tangle of rose-stems, but no leaf or bloom. The January sunshine streamed palely in, whitening the deal floor and striking against a great land map on the wall. Upon the hearth had been thrown an armful of hickory and pine. Rand, kneeling, laid a fire, struck a spark into the tinder, and had speedily a leap and colour of pointed flames. He rose, opened his desk, drew papers out of pigeon-holes and laid them in order upon the wood, then pushed before it his accustomed chair. He did not take the latter; instead, after standing a moment with an indescribable air of weary uncertainty, he turned, went back to the firelit hearth, sat down, and, bending forward, hid his face in his hands.

A cricket began to chirp upon the hearth, then the branch of a sycamore, moved by the wind, struck violently against the low eaves of the house. Rand arose, put his hands to his temples, and moved away.

There were law-books on the shelves, and he took down one and fell to studying statutes that bore upon a case he had in court. He read for a time with a frown of attention, but by degrees all interest flagged. He turned a page, looked at it with vagueness, and turned no more. His chin fell upon his hand, and he sat staring at the patch of sunshine on the floor. It was like light on water—light on Indian Run.

Five minutes more and Mocket came in, soft and quick upon his feet, sandy-haired and freckle-faced, with his quaint, twisted smile, and watery blue eye, that glanced aslant at his friend and partner "Good-morning, Lewis"

"Good-morning, Tom."

Mocket stood by the fire, warming his hands. "If 'twas a mild December, 'tis cold enough now! The wind is icy, and it's blowing hard."

"Is it? I thought the air was still."

As he spoke, Rand arose, replaced the book on the shelf, sat down at his desk, and began to unfold papers. "Work!" he said presently, in a dull voice. "Work! That is the straw at which to catch! Perhaps one might make of it a raft to bear one's weight. I have known the day when in work I have forgotten hunger, thirst, weariness, calamity. I have worked at night and grudged an hour to sleep. What I have done, cannot I do again? But I would work better, Tom, if I could get some sleep."

"I am sorry you have bad nights," said Tom; "but if you slept as deep and innocent as a babe, you couldn't do better work. That was a praising piece about you in the Enquirer."

"Nothing less than eulogy, Tom, nothing less! Well—get to work! Get to work!"

"I've brought the papers on this case that old Berry has been copying." Tom threw more wood on the fire, then moved to his own desk, dragging a chair after him. "By the way, I stopped at the Eagle for a dram to keep out the cold, and who should come riding by but Fairfax Cary—"

"Ah!" said Rand. "Is he home from Richmond?"

"I didn't know that he had been to Richmond."

"Yes. He went two weeks ago."

"I hadn't observed it. Well, whenever he went, he's back again. As I say, I was coming down the steps, buttoning up my coat, and he drew rein—he was riding his brother's horse and he looked like his brother—and he says to me, says he, 'Mr. Mocket,—'"

Tom broke off, turned the papers in his hand, and uttered an exclamation of disgust. "Old Berry is getting to be too poor a copyist! You'll have to give this work somewhere else."

Rand spoke in his measured voice. "What did Fairfax Cary say, Tom?"

"Why, he didn't say much, and I'm sure I didn't get any meaning out of what he did say! His words were, 'Mr. Mocket, I wish I could remember all that, on several occasions, I must have said to you.' Seeing," continued Tom, "that I haven't spoken to him more than a dozen times in my life, I shouldn't consider there would be much difficulty in that, and I told him as much. 'You're mistaken,' he said. 'It is difficult. We all have bad memories. I've been wondering, seeing that I have talked to you of so much, if I ever talked to you of that. On the whole, I don't think that I ever have. Cultivate your memory, Mr. Mocket. Mine is a damnably poor one.' And so," ended Tom, "he rode away and left me staring. I don't know whether his head is turned or not, but he looked strong enough for anything and all a Cary. If you know what he meant, it is more than I do. These reports are all straight enough now. Do you want to look over them?"

"No," said his partner, and stood up, moving back his chair with a grating sound. "I don't know why—I'm restless to-day." Walking across the room, he stopped before the map upon the wall, and stood there a long while in silence.

"How would it do, Tom," he asked at last, in a curiously remote and dreamy voice,—"how would it do to find two or three great white-covered waggons, store them with all a childless family would need, put to them teams sound and strong, procure a horse or two besides, a slave or two, a faithful dog,—then to take the long road—west—south—somewhere—anywhere—past the mountains and away, away"—His voice sank, then gathered strength and went on. "Flood and forest, low hills and endless plains, stillness and a measure of peace! Left behind the demon care, full before the eye the red, descending sun—at night the camp-fire, at dawn the start, and in between mere sleep without a dream! It is conceivable that, after much travel, in some hollow or by some spring, after long days and after sleep, one might stumble on new life." He struck the map with his hand. "Tom, sometimes I think that I will remove from Virginia to the West."

"You'd be a fool to do that now," answered Tom succinctly. "But you won't do it. I don't know what has been the matter with you this winter, but I reckon you still love power. Next year you'll be named for Governor of Virginia."

He fed the fire again, then, going to the window, looked down the street. "The wind has fallen."

"I am going," said Rand's voice behind him, "to ride down the Three-Notched Road. Mrs. Selden sends me word that old Carfax is annoying her again."

"Can't I go for you?"

"No. I do not mind the ride. Get the papers ready for court to-morrow."

Mocket helped him on with his heavy bottle-green riding-coat. "Lewis," spoke the scamp, with a queer note of affection and deprecation, "why don't you see Dr. Gilmer? You're growing thin, and do you know, you're haunted-looking! Tell him you cannot sleep, and make him give you bark or something. I couldn't carry on business without you, you know."

Rand looked at him with dark and sombre eyes. "Couldn't you, poor old Tom? Well, we'll keep it on awhile together. I don't want the doctor. Once, long ago, I might have doctored myself." He laughed. "Now there's no bark in Peru—no balm in Gilead. Well, what we cannot have, we must do without! Look out, will you, and see if Young Isham is there with Selim?"

The Three-Notched Road stretched red and stark between rusty cedars and gaunt trunks of locust trees. It was cold, and overhead the sun was fighting with the clouds. Rand went rapidly, his powerful horse taking the road with a long and easy stride. Few were abroad; the bare and frozen fields stretched on either hand to the hills, the hills rose to the mountains, grey and sullen in the changing light. That meadow, field, and hill had once been mantled with tender verdure, and would be so again, was hard to believe, the land lay so naked and so grim.

Mrs. Selden's small, red brick mansion appeared among the leafless trees. Rand checked Selim slightly, gazing at the place with the weary uncertainty he had before exhibited, then turned for the moment from the task, irksome now as were all tasks, and rode on past Mrs. Jane Selden's to the house in which he had lived with his father and mother, and had lived with Jacqueline.

The place had been rented out since that summer of 1804, but the tenant, failing to make good, was gone, and for some months the house had been vacant. Rand and Selim moved slowly along the old, old familiar way. Every stick, every stone, every fence-corner was known to both. The man let his hand fall upon the brute's neck. "We're going home, Selim," he said. "We're going home."

It was not now the small, clean place, fresh with whitewash and bright with garden flowers, shone upon by the sun and sung about by birds, to which he had brought Jacqueline. The tenant had been dull, and the place was fallen into disrepair. In the winter air and without a leaf or flower, it looked again as it had looked when he and Gideon lived there alone. He dismounted, fastened Selim to the fence, and entered by the gate beneath the mimosa tree.

That the mimosa had ever shown sensitive leaf and mist of rosy bloom ranked now among other impossibilities. He stood for a moment looking at it in silence, then walked up the narrow path, mounted the porch steps, and tried the door. It was locked, but with an effort of all his wasted strength he burst it open and so entered the house.

The rooms were unfurnished and forlorn. He went from one to another, pausing in each in the middle of the floor, and gazing around as if to replace in that empty square the objects of the past. This progress made, he looked for a place to rest, but there was neither chair nor bench. All was bare, unswept, and desolate. He went into the kitchen, for he remembered the old settle there upon the enormous hearth. That they could not have removed, it was too heavy. He found it, took off his riding-coat and made a pillow for his head, then lay down full length upon the time-darkened wood. He had lain so, often and often, a little boy, a larger boy, a long-limbed, brooding youth. It had been his refuge from the fields, though hardly a refuge from his father. Gideon had been always there, lounging in his chair on the other side of the hearth, black pipe in hand, heavy stick beside him, revolving in his slow-moving mind, there in the dusk after the day's work, tobacco—tobacco—tobacco—and how he should keep Lewis from learning. "It had been better if he had succeeded," said Rand aloud.

With Gideon still before his eyes he fell asleep. Grim as was that figure, there was in the vision of it a strange sense of protection. It was his father, and, giddy from want of sleep, he sank slowly into oblivion, much as before now he had travelled there in the other's presence,—travelled with a gloomy mind and a body sore from the latest beating. Now the mind was full of scorpions, and the body stood in deadly need of sleep. It took it with a strange reversion to long gone-by conditions. The thought of Gideon's stick, the feel of his heavy hand upon his shoulder, were with him as of yore. The difference was that the man was comforted by what had been the boy's leaden cross.

Exhausted as he was, he slept at first heavily, and without a dream. This state lasted for some time, but eventually the brain took up its work, and the visions that plagued him recommenced. He turned, flung out his arm, moaned once or twice, lay quiet, then presently gave a cry and started up, pale and trembling, the sweat upon his brow. He wiped it off, drew a long, shuddering breath, and sat staring.

The kitchen windows were small, and half darkened by their wooden shutters. While he slept, the day had rounded into an afternoon, with more of sunshine than the morning had contained. The gold entered the room uncertainly, dimly, filtering in by the small apertures and striking across to the cavernous fireplace.

Rand knew it was but a trick of the light touching here and there in mote-filled shafts,—a trick of the light aiding the vagaries of an overwrought brain. He put forth his arm and found that it was so—there was no chair there and no figure seated in the chair. It was a trick of the light and an effect of imagination, an imagination that was hounded, day by day, from depth to pinnacle, from pinnacle to depth, back and forth like a shuttlecock in giant hands. No chair was there and no seated figure. He sank back on the settle and found that he saw them both.

The first sick leap of the heart was past. What he saw, he knew, was a mere effect of light and shadow and tragically heightened fancy: when he moved in a certain direction, the dim picture faded, broke into pieces, was gone; but lean far back in the settle, look out with eyes of one awakened from a maze of fearful dreams, and there it was again! He had no terror of it; what was it at last but the projection of a face and form with which his mind had long—had long been occupied? It had ousted the vision of his father; and that, too, was not strange, seeing that, day by day, the thought of the one—the one—the one had grown more and yet more insistent. "Cary," said Rand, in a hollow voice, "Cary!"

The light and shadow made no answer. Rand waited, gazing with some fixedness, and imagination at white heat saw the head, the face, the form, the quiet dress, the whole air of the man, the look within his eyes and the smile upon his lips. The figure sat at ease, as of old it had sat upon the Justice's Bench the day of the election, as it had sat beside the bed in the blue room at Fontenoy. Imagination laid Lewis Rand again in that room, showed him the mandarin screen, the sunny, happy morning, the pansies in the bowl. "If," he cried,—"if I had died then, I had not died a wicked man. Cary—Cary—Cary! I am in torment!"

There came no reply. Rand bowed his head. Without, in the afternoon sky, a cloud hid the sun. When the solitary man in the deserted house looked again, there were no shafts of light, no dark between to create illusion; all was even dusk, forbidding, grey, and cold. He rose from the settle and left the room and the house. Selim whinnied at the gate, and his master, coming swiftly down the path and out of the enclosure, unknotted the reins, mounted, and rode off at speed.

Rand's haste did not hold. Remorse does not necessarily break habit, and the habit of his lifetime was attention to detail, system in matters of business, scrupulous response to the call where he acknowledged the right. He drew rein at Mrs. Selden's, dismounted, and lifted the knocker.

Cousin Jane Selden herself met him in the hail. "Lewis! I'm as glad to see you as if you brought the south wind! Come in to the fire, and I'll ring for cake and wine. It is bitter weather even for January. All's well at Roselands?"

"All's well."

They entered the small parlour and sat down before the fire. "I saw Jacqueline," continued Mrs. Selden, "at church last Sunday. I thought her looking very badly pale and absent. I know, Lewis Rand, that you love each other dearly. There has been no quarrel?"

"No quarrel."

"I don't know," quoth Mrs. Selden, "of which I'm most sensible when it's in the air—an east wind or something amiss. The wind's in the north to-day, but the latter's on my mind. What is wrong, Lewis?"

"My dear old friend, what should be wrong?"

"That is what I asked you."

"Then nothing," he replied, "nothing but the north wind. Now about Carfax—"

Advice given on the subject of all dealings with Carfax, the adviser rose to take his leave. Mrs. Selden removed her spectacles and laid them in her key-basket. It was a sign with her that she was about to speak her mind.

"Lewis," she said, "I was a good friend to you once."

"Do I not know that?" he answered. "The best friend a poor boy ever had."

"No, not quite that—except, perhaps, to help you a little with Jacqueline. Mr. Jefferson was the best friend a poor boy ever had."

Rand winced. "You say true. The best friend a boy could have. Give me another glass of wine, and then I'll go."

"A man like that during youth and a woman like Jacqueline for your manhood—you have had much to prop your life."

"Yes. Very much."

"Then," she said sharply, "don't let it fall. Grow upward, Lewis, like the vine that gave its strength to make this generous wine! If you don't, you'll disappoint your Maker, to say nothing of some poor earthly friends! Don't fall—don't run upon the earth like poison oak. You're meant for noble uses—to help your kind, and to rejoice the heart of the Maker of strong men. Don't you fail and fall, Lewis Rand!"

Rand paused before her. "How should I help my kind, now—now?"

His old friend looked at him a little wonderingly. "Do the simple right, my dear, whatever it is that you see before you."

"The simple right! And to rejoice the heart of my Maker—if I have one?"

"Do the right strongly and surely, Lewis."

"Whatever it is?"

"Whatever it is." Mrs. Jane Selden looked at him thoughtfully, her hands clasped upon her key-basket. "I'm only an old woman—just a camp-follower with an interest in the battle. I wish that you had had a friend of your own age—a man, and your equal in power and grasp. Gaudylock and Mocket and such—they're well enough, but you're high above them, you're a sort of Emperor to them. Could you but have had such a friend, Lewis—a man like the Carys—"

"For God's sake, don't!" cried Rand hoarsely. He poured out a glass of wine, looked at it, and pushed it away. "I will go now, for there is work waiting for me in town, and at home Do as I tell you about Carfax. Good-bye, good-bye!"

Out upon the road, passing through a strip of pine and withered scrub, he raised his hand, and for some moments covered his eyes. When he dropped it, he saw, in the strong purples of the winter evening, again that misty figure, riding this time, riding near him, not in the road, but apparent in the air against and between the tall trunks of pines. "Cary," he said again, "Cary!"

There was no response from the figure in the air. "Cary," cried Rand, "I would we had been friends!"

Selim reached the open country; the pines fell away, the form was gone. Rand touched his horse with the spur and rode fast between brown stubble-fields darkening to the hills and to the evening sky. "Friends," he repeated, "friends! That would be on terms of my doing the simple right—the simple right after the most complicated wrong! Terms! there are no terms."

Leaving the fields, he rode down to a stream, crossed it, and saw the shape against a pale space of evening sky. "Is it to be always thus?" he thought. "I would that I had never been born."

IN PURSUIT

January passed and February passed. Fairfax Cary, riding for the third time since the New Year from Malplaquet toward Greenwood, marked the blue March sky, the pale brown catkins by the brooks, and the white flowers of the bloodroot piercing the far-spread carpet of dead leaves. He rode rapidly, but he paused at Forrest's forge and at the mill below the ford. This also he had done before. Neither the smith nor the men at the mill knew the idea that brought him there, but they may have thought—if they thought at all—that he put strange questions. It was, moreover, matter of regret to them, and of much comment when he had passed, that Mr. Fairfax Cary had lost an old and well-liked way of making a man laugh whether he would or no. He didn't jest any more, he didn't smile and flash out something at them fit to make them hold their sides. He had aged ten years since September, he had the high look of the Carys, but he was even quieter than his brother had been—all the sparkle and play dashed out as by a violent hand. The smith and the men at the mill thought it a great pity, shook their heads as they looked after him, then fell again to work, or to mere happy lounging in the first spring airs.

The lonely horseman crossed the ford below the mill, drew rein beneath the guide-post, and halted there for some minutes, deep in thought. At last, with a shake of the head and an impatient sigh, he spoke to Saladin, and once again they took the main road. "It is the third time," thought the rider. "There is luck in the third time."

The quiet highroad, wide and sunny, seemed to mock him, and the torn white clouds sailing before the March wind might have been a beaten navy, carrying with it a wreck of hope. The gusty air brought a swirl of sere leaves across his path, and the dust rose chokingly. "Caw! caw!" sounded the crows from a nearby field. The dust fell, the wind passed, the road lay quiet and bright. "Never!" said Cary between his teeth. "I will never give up!"

Half an hour's riding, and he came in sight of a small ordinary, its low porch flush with the road, a tall gum tree standing sentinel at the back, and on the porch steps a figure which, on nearer approach, he recognized as that of the innkeeper. He rode up, dismounted, and fastened Saladin to the horse-rack, then walked up to and greeted a weight of drowsy flesh, centre to a cloud of tobacco smoke, and wedded for life to the squat bottle and deep glass adorning the step beside it.

"Good-morning, Mr. Cross."

The innkeeper stirred, removed his pipe, steadied himself by a hand upon the step, and turned a dull red face upon the speaker. "Morning, Mr.—Mr. Cary! Which way did you come, sir? I never heard you."

"I came up from the ford. You were asleep, I think."

Mr. Cross denied the imputation. "Not at this hour, sir, never at this hour—not at ten o'clock in the morning, sir! Later, maybe, when I've had my grog, I'll take my forty winks—"

"It is not ten o'clock. It is nearly twelve, Mr. Cross."

"Well, well!" returned Mr. Cross, whose face, blushing all the time, showed at no particular instant any particular discomfiture. "I must just have dropped off a bit. There's little business nowadays, and a man had better sleep than do worse! What'll you have, sir? I'll call my girl Sally to serve you.

"Nothing at the moment, Mr. Cross." Cary sat down upon the step beside the other. "I stopped here a month ago—"

"You did," answered the innkeeper. "You stopped in January, too, didn't you?"

"Yes. In January."

"I remember plain. You wanted to know this and you wanted to know that, but you certainly treated me handsome, sir, and I'm far from grudging you any information Joe Cross can give!"

"We will go back to the same subject," said Cary. "Any recompense in my power to make I should consider but your due, Mr. Cross, could you tell me—could you tell me what I want to know."

He had spoken at first guardedly, but at last with an irresistible burst of feeling. The innkeeper looked at him with dull wonder. "I'd do anything to oblige ye, Mr. Cary, I certainly would! But when we come to talking about the road, and who goes by, and who doesn't go by, and about the seventh of September, and wasn't I asleep and dreaming just before the big storm broke?—why, I say, sir, No! I don't think I was. 'Tween man and man, Mr. Cary, I don't mind telling your father's son, sir, that 'tis possible I might ha' had a drop more than usual, and ha' been asleep earlier! But I wasn't asleep when the negro spoke to me. 'Hit's gwine ter be an awful storm,' says he, just that way, just as if he were lonesome and frightened. His voice came to me as plain as my hand, and I know the mare he was riding. 'Hit's gwine ter be an awful storm,' says he—"

"The other—the other!" exclaimed Cary impatiently. "It is the other I would know of!"

"I told you before, and I tell you now," replied Mr Cross, "that I don't seem somehow clearly to remember what the other said. I'll take my oath that he said something, for he's one that don't miss speaking to a voter when he finds him! It's just slipped my mind—things act sometimes as though there was a fog, but I wasn't drunk and I wasn't asleep. No, sir! no more than I was just now when you come up and spoke to me—and it don't stand to reason, sir, that I could ha' seen two horses instead of one!"

Cary, sitting moodily attentive, chin in hand, and his eyes upon the sunny road, started violently. "Two horses instead of one," he repeated, with a catch of the breath. In a moment he was upon his feet, and the innkeeper, had he looked up and had he been less blear-eyed and dull, might have seen an approach to the old Fairfax Cary—colour in cheek and light in eye.

"I am your debtor, Mr. Cross. That's it—that's precisely it! You heard it asserted by all around you that he had gone by, and your keen mind arrived at the same conclusion. You saw and heard—in a fog—the negro boy, and later on your strong imagination provided him with a companion. Just that—you thought you saw two where there was but one! I'm your servant, Mr. Cross, your very humble, very obliged servant!"

He drew out his purse, abstracted from it all the gold it contained, and gently slid the pieces into the hand which happened to rest upon the steps in an apt position for their reception. "A trifle of drink-money, Mr. Cross! If I might suggest a toast, I would have you drink to the next Governor of Virginia! Good-day, Mr. Cross, good-day! I think I begin to remember."

He mounted and rode away. "I begin to remember—I begin to remember. The boy and I were not always together upon the main road! Did we part at the guide-post? Then where did we come together again?"

He rode through March wind and sun, by fields where men were ploughing and copses where the bloodroot bloomed, beneath the branches of a great blasted oak, and past a red bank shelving down to the road from the forest above, then on by Red Fields, and so at last into Charlottesville. Here he turned at once to the office of an agent and man of business much respected in Albemarle.

Mr. Smith rubbed his hands and asked what he could do for Mr. Cary—who was looking well, extremely well! "Spring is here, sir, spring is here! We all feel it. On a day like this I cultivate my garden, sir!"

"I also," said Cary. "Mr. Smith, my affair is short. I will thank you to keep it secret also. I want to buy, if possible, a negro boy called Young Isham, who is owned by Lewis Rand. You may offer any price, but my name is not to appear. Manage it skilfully, Mr. Smith, but manage it! I have reasons for wishing to own the boy. You will bear it in mind that my name is not to appear as purchaser."

An hour later, nearing the Greenwood gates, he saw before him another horseman, bent from the saddle and engaged with the fastening. Cary rode up. "Ned Hunter, is it you? Why, man, I have not seen you this long while! Where have you been in hiding?"

"I have visited," answered Mr. Hunter, "New York and the Eastern Shore. You are looking well, Cary; better than you did at Christmas. I was in this quarter, and so I thought I would stop at Greenwood."

The two rode together up the hill, beneath the arching oaks. The servants appeared, the horses were taken, and Cary and his guest entered the quiet old house. A little later, in the drawing-room, over a blazing fire and a bottle of wine, Mr. Hunter laid aside a somewhat quaint air of injured dignity, and condescended to speak of Fontenoy and of how very changed it was since the old days. "Nothing like so bright, sir, nothing like so bright! I have not thought Miss Dandridge looking cheerful for more than a year—and she used to be the gayest thing! always smiling, and with something witty to say every time I came near! I hate changes. This is good wine, Cary."

"Yes. I do not, on the whole, think Fontenoy so changed."

"Don't you? I do. Well, well, it is not the only place that has changed! You've no sign yet, have you, Cary, of the murderer?"

"He still goes free."

"If there's a man in the county that I dislike," remarked Mr. Hunter, "it is Lewis Rand. But if he had taken the river road that day as he said he should, he and your brother might have travelled together, and the two would have been a match for the damned gypsy, or whoever it was, that shot Mr. Cary. Have you ever noticed what little things make all the difference? Shall I pour for you, too?"

"As he said he should. How do you know that he said he should?"

"Why, he and I slept the night of the sixth of September at the Cross Roads Inn—"

"Ah!"

"Yes, one gets strange housemates at an inn. Well, after supper I went out on the porch and began calling to the dogs, and he was there sitting on the steps in the dusk. The wind was blowing, and there were fireflies, and the dogs were jumping up and down. 'Down, Rover!' said I, 'Down, Di! Down, Vixen!' And then Rand and I talked a bit, and I said to him, 'The river road's bad, but it's much the shortest.'"

"What," demanded Cary, in a strained voice,—"what did he answer?"

"He answered, 'I shall take the river road.'"

Mr. Hunter helped himself to wine. "I was tired, and he was tired, and I didn't like him anyway, and wasn't interested, so I went on calling to the dogs, and we didn't speak again. He and his negro boy went on at dawn, and he took, after all, the main road. He isn't," finished Mr. Hunter, "the kind of person you think of as changeable, and it's a thousand pities he didn't hold to his first idea! Things might have been different."

Cary rose from the table. "Would you swear, Hunter, to what he said?"

"Why, certainly—before all the justices in Virginia. I don't believe," said Mr. Hunter, "that my parents could have had good memories, for somehow things slip away from me—but when I do remember, Cary, I remember for all time!" He drank his wine and looked around him. "I haven't been in this room, I don't believe, for five years! That was before it was all done over like this. What a lot of Carys you've got hanging on the walls—and just one left to sit and look at them! You haven't a portrait of your brother?"

"No. Not upon the walls. If you're not fatigued, would you object to riding with me to West Hill? That's the nearest justice."

"I'm not at all fatigued. But I can't see what you want it taken down for—"

"Perhaps not," answered Cary patiently, "but you'll swear to it, all the same?"

"Why," said Mr Hunter, "I can have no possible objection to seeing my words in black and white. I'll take another glass, and then I'll ride with you wherever you like."

At sundown Fairfax Cary, returning to Greenwood alone, gave his horse to Eli, and presently entered the library. It was a dim old room, unrenewed and unimproved, but the two brothers had loved and frequented it. Now, in the March sunset, with the fire upon the hearth, with the dogs that had entered with the master, the shadowy corners, and many books, it had an aspect both rough and gracious. It was a room in which to remember, and it had an air favourable to resolve.

The last of the Greenwood Carys walked to the western window and stood looking out and up. He looked from a hill-top, but the summit upon which lay the Cary burying-ground was higher yet. The flat stones did not show, nor the wild tangle of dark vine, but the trees stood sharp and black against the vivid sky. Cary stood motionless, a hand on either side of the window frame. The colour faded from the sky, and there set in the iron grey of twilight. He left the window, called for candles, and when they had been brought, sat down at the heavy table and began to draw a map of the country between the ford and Red Fields.

Three days later he rode into Charlottesville and stopped at the office of Mr. Smith, whom he found at the back of the house, watching from a chair planted in the sunshine the springing of a line of bulbs. "You see, sir," quoth the agent, "I cultivate my garden! Tulips here, crocus there, yonder hyacinths. Red Chalice has been up two days, and my white Amazon peeped out of the earth yesterday. King Midas and Sulphur and Madame Mere are on the way. Well, Mr. Cary, I tried my level best with that commission of yours, and I failed! The boy is not for sale."

"Ah!" said Cary, and stooped to examine the white Amazon. "I hardly expected, Mr. Smith, that he would be for sale. At no price, I presume?"

"At no price. He is one of the house servants, and his master is attached to him. I am very sorry, sir."

His client rose from the contemplation of the springing hyacinth. "Give yourself no uneasiness, Mr. Smith. I am not disappointed. There are reasons, no doubt, why Mr. Rand declines to part with him. Let us put it out of mind. What a bright little garden you will have, sir, when tulip, crocus, and hyacinth are all in bloom!"

He took his leave, and rode homeward through the keen March weather. "I am beginning to remember quite plainly," he said. "Presently I'll know it like an old refrain—every word, Saladin, every word, every word, down to the last black one."