There is, perhaps, no more enthralling sound than the far but sure approach of someone who comes unlooked-for to a lonely place. The two men who were keeping vigil became certain that travelers were ascending the steep zig-zags of Deer. They looked at one another in apprehensive silence, and went softly out to that side of the house nearest the road. The young moon had set, and there was cloud overhead. Almost an hour's journey below them the creak of wheel, the sound of hoof, came faint but nearer. The two house dogs stood by the men, a growl in their throats.
Bertha came downstairs and out to them, a shawl over her head. The mountain nights had been growing colder; the air was bleak and dry.
"Hermie is terribly ill," she said. "She has cried till the pain in her head is anguish—and who can possibly be coming?"
Then she turned indignantly to Alden. "Is this some plan of your arranging?"
Alden denied in dispirited tones, and suggested that perhaps some travelers had lost their way.
"People don't usually climb a mountain by mistake," she retorted.
"There are two horses—and two men talking—and wheels," said Durgan, slowly reckoning up the sounds he heard.
"Go in, and take the dogs," said Alden to Bertha. "We will go down to the mine and meet them, so that Hermione need not be disturbed."
"You need not be so careful to protect her now," she said hardly. "She is in too great pain to care what happens."
Then Durgan was striding down the trail, and Alden hopping nimbly over the rocks beside him.
"The last visitors who rode here through the night brought handcuffs," said Durgan grimly.
He could not divest himself of the idea that some armed fate was close upon them all.
He lit his lantern, and kindled a fire of sticks in the stove of his hut. Alden, who was shivering with cold, warmed himself. The travelers were now resting their horses a half-mile below. The keen air, the new excitement, were a spur to the mind of the weary lawyer. He began to talk with renewed melancholy, and a persistence that wearied Durgan's ears.
"So far, we are not only without proof, but without reasonable hypothesis. The cleverest detective in New York tells me that Beardsley left New York and cannot be traced. When we find him, we shall only have, as means to incriminate him, the word of a dead negro, whose mind was obviously failing when he gave his evidence, and one letter which——"
Durgan's impatience was intolerable. He went out on the dark road. He thought of that other night, gorgeous in its whiteness, when the full moon had looked down on the beautiful bronze form of the murdered woman and on a strolling, dandified valet, of whose portrait Durgan remembered every detail. He had seen him in the glamor of the silvered avenue; and his silken hair and long whiskers, the expanse of shirt-front, the flash of false jewels, and his mad utterance, which was now gradually taking the form of truth, lived again in his memory. He remembered, too, the crimson dawn in which he had witnessed Adam's passionate grief, and his own rage of indignation when the next night had brought with it, on this same road, the worst of insults to taint that grief.
The cause of all that coil of evil and pain had been the quiet lady, whom they had just left with the intense loneliness of her secret, shut off in her anguish from sister and lover. For her sake, it seemed, Eve had been killed, and Adam had wept, and the vain serving-man had used his last vital powers to save her from a world's reproach. As yet there was no outcome of it all, except dissension and misery.
The horses below began to move again. Durgan went in to Alden. They sometimes heard a thin, impatient voice raised high in questioning tones, and answers given. When the horses had passed the last turn below, the words of the thin voice could be heard clearly.
"Drivah, what is this light?" There was a slight drawl and an assumption of importance.
"I think I have heard that voice before," said the lawyer slowly, listening; "but I cannot tell where."
"Is this the top of the mountain, drivah? Is this the house?"
"I can't be sure, but I think I know it," commented the lawyer again. "Do you recognize it?"
"No, I do not."
Durgan stood out on the road.
"Then drive on. If this is not the summit house, drive on, drivah. Don't stop." There was a note of alarm in the thin tone.
Durgan's lantern flashed its light upon horses and driver and old-fashioned surrey from the hotel at Hilyard. The driver was a silent man, well known on the road. Within, his keen, facile face bent forward in ill temper and alarm, sat an emaciated man, wrapped in a rich fur coat and propped with cushions.
The driver had so far answered in lazy monosyllables. Now, on recognizing Durgan, he pulled up the carriage. The thin-voiced traveler addressed Durgan.
"I am going to the boarding-house of a Miss Smith. I understand there is a lawyer there, the best in the State. I will not detain you, sir. Go on, drivah; we are much too late now."
The owner of the voice leaned back in the surrey. He was evidently alarmed by his surroundings; but a stranger might well be excused for showing some dislike of the long, steep road, the extreme solitude, and the sudden appearance of a man who barred the way.
Durgan turned his light on the face of the driver. "What's the meaning of this?" he asked sternly.
The man returned his inspection with a queer, sphinx-like look that had in it something of the nature of a grin and a wink, but gave no indication as to the cause of his humor. He grumbled as he clumsily tumbled off his seat. Then, opening the surrey door, he remarked, in a casual tone, that his horses could go no further.
"If this 'ere gentleman doesn't keep summer hotels and big-bug lawyers handy, I dunno anyone as does 'bout here. As for Miss Smith's house, we'll have a rest first."
Again the face of the invalid, keen and drawn by pain or passion, was thrust forward from the shadow of the carriage. His voice was shrill enough to sound at first like a shriek. "Look here, my man; you needn't suppose the money I've got to pay you is in my pockets. It's in Hilyard, where you'll get all the currency you want when you've done my work; but you'll gain nothing by stopping here."
On seeing Durgan more clearly he looked about him in absolute terror, grasping the rug that impeded his movements as if wondering only how to fling himself out of their reach, or else not knowing whether to argue or ingratiate.
The driver held the door, taking the volley of weak-voiced profanity in the passive way common to the region.
Durgan's amusement at the driver's mastery, and at being himself so obviously mistaken for a robber, was overlaid by astonishment and curiosity.
"I am working a small mica mine close by. You can come into my camp to rest and get warm if you wish to." He spoke to the agitated traveler in the low, haughty tone that usually won for him the immediate respect of those inferior in social position. But the traveler only answered in a more imperious tone.
"Who are you, sir? Is this Bear Mountain? I was told it was. This man," he cried, pointing to the driver, "engaged to bring me to a mountain called Bear and a house kept by a woman called Smith. We were delayed—horribly delayed—by one of the horses casting a shoe. I ask you, sir, what does this man mean by turning me out at a mica mine? What does he mean?"
"I should like to know," said Durgan. "You have evidently been misled."
The driver here left the open carriage door, and began busying himself about the harness.
Again suggesting that the traveler might take advantage of his fire if he chose, Durgan turned back to his camp.
Alden stood outside, unseen from the carriage in the black shadow of the hut. He had the baffled air of a hound who, thinking he has found a scent, loses it again. He shook his head; his eyes contracted in concentrated attention. "I've no idea who he is; but I think he is acting a part."
The stranger now proved himself a man of the world by descending from the carriage with some polite expressions of relief at obtaining rest from the intolerable road, and gratitude for Durgan's hospitality.
He was of middle height, and stooped as he walked. His traveling coat was of the richest, the muffling of the fur collar and the slouch of the warm felt hat seemed habitual to him. In spite of them he shivered in the mountain night.
He went close to the fire, unbuttoned his coat to let the warmth reach him, and took out a card-case.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to extract a card," said he, handing it to Durgan. "My fingers are numb."
He took off his gloves, and chafed his hands before the blaze. He took off his hat, holding its inside to the fire to warm. He had the appearance of a man of perhaps fifty, with face withered and sunburnt. His hair was black, his mustache waxed, his beard pointed. He looked like a fashion plate from Paris, handsome in his way, but his skin and eyes gave the impression of pain impatiently borne. The sense of being an aristocrat was written large all over him. His cat's-eye pin, the cutting of his seal ring, answered true to the glare of the firelight. Having shown himself, as it would appear accidentally, he put on his hat and buttoned up his collar.
Durgan took a card from a well-filled and well-worn card-case and read it aloud, "Mr. Adolphus Courthope." It gave as an address a club in New Orleans.
"I heard a few days ago that a namesake of mine, a scoundrelly fellow, whose mother was one of our niggers, is lying in jail at Hilyard, charged with murder. Of course, I have no responsibility for the fellow—never saw him till to-day. Still, his mother was my foster-sister, the daughter of the good old mammy who nursed me. She gave him my name, and—damn it—I don't care to have the fellow publicly hanged. Seems in a bad way now with lung trouble; but he'll revive—that's the way with these cases."
Durgan disliked this man, but was surprised to find that he pitied him still more. The terror that he had just shown, the illusive resemblance in his eyes to someone—perhaps someone more worthy of pity—the very disparity of physical size and strength, all inspired in Durgan an unreasoning instinct to protect him.
The other went on. "Only reached Hilyard to-day. The poor fellow would have it that there was a woman called Smith, who kept a small summer hotel, or something of the kind, located here, who alone could give the evidence that would get him off; and that there was a clever lawyer boarding with her who would take up the case on her evidence. Would have it there was nothing for it but for me to come straight on here. I'm not the man to give up what I've undertaken, but if I'd known what the roads were like, confound it if I'd not have stayed in New Orleans. I say this to you, sir, because I see you are a man of my own class—damn it, there are few enough of us left."
Certain now that this man had been sent by 'Dolphus, Durgan perceived that till now he had had some vague hope that 'Dolphus, as some deus ex machina, would contrive to trick Beardsley himself into their power. The production of this man, beguiled hither by a lie, was evidently the mulatto's supreme effort; but this man, whoever he was, was certainly not Charlton Beardsley, for however accomplished an actor he might be, Durgan felt certain he had never been a man of plebeian origin.
"Is there no hotel that I can sleep in to-night?" asked the other shortly. "Has that cursed nigger not told me the truth?"
"Not precisely. Had he any reason for endeavoring to mislead you?"
"Well, I should rather think not. Trial coming on in two days. If he had his senses about him, he'd go only the quickest road to success."
This sounded genuine.
"And the driver brought you all this way and did not enlighten you?" said Durgan.
"Great God!" cried the other. "What could they mean?" And in his tone vibrated returning fear.
"I have a friend here—the lawyer to whom you are sent; and there is a Miss Smith living higher up, but it is a private house."
Again the stranger overcame the fear he had a second time betrayed. "Oh, thanks awfully. That is all that matters. Has your friend turned in for the night?"
Aware that Alden had been looking and listening through the chinks of the hut, Durgan wandered out in a slow detour among the trees, and brought Alden back with him. When they entered, the stranger was not looking toward the door.
"This is Mr. Theodore Alden, of New York," said Durgan; and altho the visitor only appeared to indolently turn his head and bow, Durgan felt sure that his whole body started and shrank under the heavy folds of his long coat.
"Mr. Courthope has come," began Durgan, and then, with indifferent manner, he repeated the story of Mr. Courthope of New Orleans. He could see that Alden had as yet no scent.
"Are you aware," began Alden, "that the other negro apprehended for this murder is being protected by his late owner upon the same grounds? It is not a usual proceeding; I might almost say—speaking from a wide knowledge of the South since the war—a novel proceeding. To have it repeated is a novel coincidence."
There was a little silence in which Durgan and Alden both observed the stranger narrowly, and neither felt sure whether his pause was caused by the inattentive habits of illness, or whether he was silent from annoyance. It would appear to have been the first, for, after again warming his legs and again rubbing his hands before the blaze, he lifted his head as if he had just observed that he had not replied.
"I beg your pardon—a bad habit of mine, forgetting to answer. As to coincidence, it isn't coincidence at all. My nigger writes to me what a Mr. Durgan is doing for the other nigger, and sends me a local paper, saying in effect how much better the Durgans are than the Courthopes. I acted on impulse—we Courthopes always do. It's the way of the world, you know—we should never do anything if it wasn't for trying to show that we are as good, or one better, than someone else. But if I'd known that folks here all lived on different mountains, I'd have let the Durgans have the field. Devilish cold at this altitude."
As he turned from the fire to speak he shivered, pushed up his collar still higher, and pulled his hat down almost to his eyes. He turned again to the fire. "Desperately cold up here," he repeated. "What's the name of this mountain?" he suddenly demanded.
They told him.
"'Deer Mountain.' I thought the driver said 'Bear Mountain.' I'm sure the nigger told me to come up 'Bear.'"
"There is a peak of that name further off," said Alden.
"Ah, well, I must say I am relieved to find I've not come on a fool's errand, but have achieved my purpose and discovered our friend, Mr. Alden, altho on another mountain. Odd place this, where mountains have to be reckoned like streets or squares. Well, Mr. Alden, my business is just this: I'm willing to pay anything in reason, and you can use bribery and corruption, or talent, or villainy, or anything else you like as long as you get my man off. There is my card; and if you'll agree to undertake it, I'd better drive back to the last village and try to get a bed."
He did not take a step toward the door as he spoke, but Durgan believed that he would fain have done so.
Alden was standing very square, alert, and upright. "Mr. Courthope, this is a very strange thing. There is nothing that Adolphus knows better than that I believe him to be guilty, and will not defend him."
The stranger expressed astonishment in word and action. He moved back a few steps, and sat down weakly on the bench by the wall; but Durgan observed that he thus neared the door, tho appearing to settle himself for conversation.
"You are scarcely a hundred yards from the place where this 'Dolphus stabbed a beautiful quadroon woman, and left her dead," said Durgan. "She was found just here at——"
"How ghastly!" interrupted the other in unfeigned distress. "I confess to being afraid of ghosts—horribly afraid. But, gentlemen, I beg you to think what an awful business it would be to have that poor nigger hanged."
There was no doubt as to the truth of the emotion he now displayed, any more than in the matter of his former terror.
"It isn't fair, you know," he said; "for the punishment is out of all proportion to the crime, even if he is guilty. To be killed suddenly, when you are not expecting it, you know, is no suffering at all—nothing to compare with sitting for weeks expecting a horrible and deliberate end. Then the disgrace, the execration of the public." His thin voice had risen now in actual terror at the picture he had conjured up. "Save the poor devil if you can." His eyes turned instinctively toward Durgan's. "Sir, I do not know who you are, but I recognize a man of feeling and of honor. I protest the very thought of such a fate for this poor fellow appals me. I beseech you, have pity on the poor wretch, as you would desire pity in—in—your worst extremity."
He rose after he had spoken, moving about restlessly, as if in the attempt to control himself. His unfeigned appeal seemed to touch even Alden. His manner to the man suddenly became kinder.
"There is one thing that I can do for you," said the lawyer. "If you will write a short letter formally empowering me to find better counsel for the defence, I will—telegraph to a man I know in Atlanta to undertake it. Of course you must formally authorize me."
"Certainly; certainly. I quite understand," said the stranger eagerly, coming toward the table where Alden was arranging paper.
"What's that?" he said sharply, as he sat down.
There was a scrambling upon the hill above, in which Durgan recognized the well-known run of Bertha with her dogs in leash. He determined at once to meet her and send her back, altho he hardly knew why.
He said to Courthope evasively, "There are cattle grazing on all these hills."
At the moment he felt reproach for the lie, because the stranger seemed to trust him implicitly, for he seated himself and took the pen.
Alden surreptitiously kicked the damper of the small stove, increasing its heat, which was already great. He said to the stranger, who sat with his back to it, "You will catch cold in driving if you do not open your coat here."
Durgan left Alden to put the stranger through his paces, and went hastily round the ledge of the mine and swung himself up to the trail, meaning to intercept Bertha before she came near. He had not correctly estimated her pace, for when he emerged on the path she had just passed over it. He could only follow her, as the girl descended by a light jump to the rock platform.
She was about forty feet from the door of the hut when she stood still and, turning, spoke: "My sister has a terrible attack of neuralgia. If the carriage is going back—we must send for the doctor. Who—who is it?"
In the next few confused moments Durgan was promising to send the message, seeking words to persuade her to return, and giving some answer to her question; while Bertha was trying to hold the dogs still, and they, on the scent of strange footsteps, were straining on their leashes toward the door of the hut.
She was, perhaps, little loth to be pulled a few steps forward so that she could look in at the open door for herself. The lantern, which burned full in the face of the stranger, writing at the table, sent a long, bright stream outwards, in which Bertha now stood framed. In Durgan's memory afterwards this moment always remained with these two faces lit up at each end of the beam of light, while all around them was lost in darkness.
The stranger had thrown back his coat. His face was in clear profile.
Durgan himself was paralyzed by the intensity of emotion which leaped to Bertha's face. She gave an inarticulate sound of terrified joy, a moan of heart-rending joy—or was it terror?
The stranger, turning sharply, saw the girl, her face and figure illumined. His jaw dropped with terror. He stood up abjectly.
She sank to the ground, and Durgan, bending over her, heard her trying to gasp a word with a wonderful intonation of tenderness and astonishment. That word was "Father." She tried again and again to speak it aloud.
She seemed fainting. Instinctively Durgan held the dogs, who broke into a howl of rage against the abject intruder.
As for the stranger, he appeared to become mad. Alden moved to the door to detain him, and was caught and thrown into the room as a child would be cast off by an athlete. The man had fled, and was lost in the gloom of the forest. He disappeared somewhere between the glow of the carriage lamps and Durgan's light, rushing down the hill.
Bertha had not wholly fainted. Now she was clinging to the collars of the dogs with her whole weight, grappling with them on the very floor of the rock. She was entreating Durgan in almost voiceless whispers to "Go and bring him back. Go bring him."
Alden, who heard nothing Bertha said, was on the road shouting to the driver, "The man is mad. He is dangerous. Head him off down the road. Don't let him escape." The words rang sharp.
That portion of the hill into which the stranger had run was bordered by the rock precipice, which came up to the road beyond where the carriage stood.
Alden raised his voice to a reverberating shout, addressing the fugitive. "Come back. If you don't come back we will loose the dogs."
Durgan was trying to take the furious dogs from the girl, but she would not relax her hold. She was crying and moaning to the dogs to quiet them, and entreating Durgan to leave her with wild whispers. "Oh, save him; for God's sake, save him. Bring him back to me." She ground her teeth in anger at Alden's shout. "For pity's sake, stop that cruel man shouting. Call him off," she demanded, as if Alden were a dog; "call him off."
Durgan followed Alden. "She won't give you the dogs," he said.
"It was the sight of the dogs that frightened him," said Alden. "He is a maddened criminal, and a very dangerous man, whoever he may be. His weakness was feigned. He's skulking; but he's as good as caught, for he can't get over the precipice."
Durgan heard Bertha dragging and coaxing the dogs up the trail. In a few minutes she would have them shut up. He felt glad of this. In Alden's anger there was no mercy.
The driver was making torches with sticks, lamp oil, and a bit of rope. Before long, the three men had a glare which so illumined the wood that each tree-trunk threw a sharp, black shadow. They distributed the lights to lessen the shadows. They hunted all the slope between the road and the rock wall, but the fugitive was not found.
"If he had fallen over we should certainly have heard the fall," they said.
The silent driver added, "He swore he'd be good for forty dollars if I'd get him here and back; reckon I ain't the man to lose half a chance of that. I kep' my ears open; he ain't rolled over."
The bank shelved: no one could come on the precipice unwarned. Soon they found a travelling boot, and after that, at some distance, another. They felt sure now that the fugitive had climbed one of the trees, throwing away his boots as far as possible. Looking up, they perceived the hopelessness, in that case, of their quest. The arms of the forest spread out above them thick, gnarled, and black with the heaviest foliage of the year. The flame of their torches glared only on the under side of the boughs. Light and shadow were thrown in fantastic patches into the higher canopies, where also the lurid smoke of their torches curled.
They went back to the road; the small, neat New Yorker tripping first, his torch dying, the boots of the fugitive in his other hand; the driver, in old, loose coat, striding indolently toward the horses; Durgan, lingering as he went, with sinewy arm throwing his light high and looking upward.
Alden examined the boots by the lamp in the hut. "These are New York boots," he said. Then he turned to the half-written letter on the table. "This writing I made him do is in a feigned hand." Alden's eyes were ablaze with angry excitement. "Look!" he cried. In the lining of the boots he had found a mark in ink. The initials were "J. C. B." "Can he be Beardsley, masquerading as a Southerner?"
"I begin to think he has done some years of masquerading as Beardsley."
"What do you mean?"
But Durgan went no further. His own uncertainty, Alden's obvious exhaustion, and the desire to let things sift themselves, kept him silent.
Something more alert than weary human sense was required for the vigil. Durgan went to the stable to get the terrier. He purposely took his way near the window of the sisters, anxious as to the nature of Bertha's excitement and her sister's illness.
But after passing the tranquil house, he found that Bertha had not entered it. She still stood outside the locked door of the stable in which she had chained the dogs. She leaned back against the door, looking up at the quiet light in her sister's window. Durgan lit a match, and held it in the pink lantern of his fingers until it was big enough to give them both a clear momentary view of each other. To his surprise, Bertha appeared to be in a quiet mood. The spark fell, and again only her light dress glimmered in the night. The first fine drops of gathering rain were falling.
He did not like a calm that seemed to him unnatural. He told her of the watch kept below, and of his errand.
She answered, "I am glad you have come. I don't know how to go to Hermie. Poor Hermie! How we have wronged her! But I am afraid to tell her, for it might kill her to-night. It was some cruel plan of Mr. Alden's, I know. I am afraid to go to her; but I am afraid, too, to leave her alone as ill as she is. She might die; tho I don't think she will, because she always seems to have God with her; and, do you know, I have a queer feeling to-night that God may be here. It would seem better, of course, if we could all three die to-night; but in that case, why have we lived to meet again? No; there must be some way out, because Hermie has prayed so much—prayer must make some difference, don't you think?"
"I don't like to hear you talking in this mild, reasonable way. Are you not excited? Why do you not cry?"
"I was so dreadfully excited that I thought I was going mad; and then seemed to grow all still inside, as if there was no need to be afraid. I can't explain. The reason I'm talking is that I want you to tell me what to do. I've told you the danger of telling Hermie, and the danger of not going to her; and then, too, I want to go down the hill. If I went alone, he would come to me and speak to me. He must be cold and hungry and tired. In the old days we never let a draught blow upon him. And he is so terribly thin, and has done something so dreadful with his hair, because I suppose he was afraid of being known. I ought to go to him."
"You must not stand here and go on talking like this. You must go at once into the house and nurse your sister. And you must not tell her what you are fancying or thinking about. If you do, it will make her very ill, and it will be your fault. You have wronged her terribly, as you say. Rouse yourself, and make some amends."
"Well—I will." She began to move with docility, but talked as he walked with her. "Could you not send Mr. Alden down to the Cove on some pretence? And then, you know, we could find him, and I could bring him into the kitchen, at least, and give him warm wine—he used to like warm wine—and get him to bed without Hermie knowing. Dear Mr. Durgan, couldn't you do this for Hermie's sake? You know it is what she would like."
Durgan took her by the arm. "Miss Bertha, you have, perhaps, made a mistake. It is very easy to make such mistakes under excitement such as you have passed through to-night. That excitement has almost killed your sister, and it has probably made you fanciful."
"Yes—but then, how was it he knew me?"
"He saw the dogs. He may have supposed they were brought to seize him, and so he bolted."
She replied in the same voice as before. "But then, this explains Hermie's secret. What else could? You know we said nothing could, but this does."
Durgan felt that, perhaps, her mind had become a blank, and her voice was answering with his own thoughts, which within him were holding the same dialog.
"What are you saying?" he said roughly. "How can your father be alive? And if he were, do you understand that he must have killed the other man?"
He had struck the right note. She pulled herself from him with natural recoil. "Yes, yes; and that is clear from Hermie's action, too. But you don't know what happened. There must be some excuse."
"You know, Miss Bertha, you have thought very foolish things before; you may not be right now."
She sat down on the edge of the verandah, and began to weep heartily and quietly. He was relieved: tears proved her well-being.
They had come, walking together, to that end of the house where, on the second day of their acquaintance, he had found her at dawn watching over his safety. He looked about now, and longed for the dawn, but there was nothing but glimmering darkness and the sweet smell of the gathering rain.
When Bertha had cried for a while she went in to her sister. In a minute she came tip-toeing back to Durgan.
"Hermie is sleeping quite restfully," she said. "How much softer the air feels; I think the change has done her good."
As he turned away Durgan's heart sank. The belief that Claxton was the murderer, not the murdered, and had been sheltered all these years by his own wife, forced itself upon Durgan. These innocent women might find rest in the softened air; but what rest could that woman who bore his name ever find, whose cruelty and selfishness must, in consequence of the exposure now imminent, bear the light of public shame?
Durgan took the terrier and led him up and down through the bit of sequestered woodland; but the animal, beyond enjoying the unusual festivity of a night walk, exhibited no sense of the situation. It stopped to bark at no tree-foot, and altho it resented the intrusion of the driver, discovered nothing else to resent.
The slow-tongued driver made another remark. "That's a queer thing, too. I'd have thought he'd have barked at a cat in a tree, I would."
Durgan had despised Alden in the vicious snap of his pitiless anger against the fugitive; but as the night wore on, and he saw his face grow more and more haggard, as if he were aged by a decade since the last sun shone, he was glad to procure him rest or relief of any sort.
Confident that the dog would give warning if the prisoner climbed down, Alden accepted the use of Durgan's bed; but it was easy to see that he could not rest. There was the constant secret movement of one who was pretending to be still.
"Perhaps you would rather talk," said Durgan. "I wish you would tell me all you know about Miss Claxton's father. Is she like him?"
"Not at all. I found little to respect in his character."
"I suppose you dug up his past very thoroughly."
"There was nothing in it but selfishness and vanity. He was of old colonial stock, but had been ill-reared to leisure and luxury—the worst training in a new country, where these things involve no corresponding responsibilities. He married into a plain New England family for the sake of money. The mother of Hermione, I need not say, was immensely his superior; but she died at the birth of the second daughter. There is some disparity of age between them—Hermione——"
Durgan had to bring him back from reminiscences of his love.
"Ah—as to Claxton's ill health, if it interests you, I judge that it dated from a blow to his vanity. He was very worldly, and, when a widower, did a good deal of amateur acting, and became engaged to marry a young beauty who had just come out as a public singer. Society took her up. She was the belle of the season, and jilted Claxton. It was a matter of talk; but I don't suppose his daughters ever heard of it—daughters don't hear such things, you know. He kept them in a country boarding-school, where, I am happy to say, Hermione got religion."
Durgan smiled to himself over the quaint phrase used so seriously. "But the father?"
"He married in pique a dull pink and white society woman, with more money; and then became a chronic invalid. When he was tired of his wife he sent for his daughters. I never heard that he was unkind to them, or to his wife; but it seemed to me he only cared for them as they devoted themselves to his comfort. Hermione—often has she discussed it with me—was very anxious as to his spiritual state. It was her great desire that he should seek salvation. It was that desire that caused her always such distress when her father finally dabbled in spiritualism. His death, in a still ungodly state, was, I can aver, her worst trouble in all that terrible chain of events. She felt so much that she never mentioned her concern about him again."
Alden had been speaking in a sleepy way, as if his recent distrust of his chosen lady was obliterated by some fragrance from the poppy beds of weariness and love and night.
He slept at last. The bleakness of the mountain night had given place to a balmy rain.
Durgan pondered. He knew that his wife would bow down to one like Claxton, who had had the social ball at his feet; she would regard his intimate knowledge of the society she desired to cajole as a most valuable property, and would risk much to retain it.
When the gray morning came they went out to the trees again, but no one was hiding among them.
Then they went down by the road, and climbed along to the foot of the precipice; but, making the closest search along its base, they found nothing.
Alden became racked by a new fear: the unknown had perhaps cheated them, and recrossed the road. The desperate condition of the man, the women unprotected—these thoughts were so terrible that he ran up the hill to protect them, unconscious that his valor was out of all proportion to his frame.
When he was gone the driver said, "Forty dollars didn't get the better of me crossin' that road while I kep' an eye on it, I reckon."
The mountain forest dripped and trickled, the dry ground soaking in the moisture with almost audible expansion of each atom of earth, each pore of fern and leaf, and the swelling of twigs. The wet and glisten everywhere deepened the color of rock and wood, moss, lichen, and weed.
The driver stood considering the face of the rock; the terrier began nosing among some fallen leaves; Durgan was looking this way and that, to see which might have invited the nearest temporary hiding. Alden had believed the stranger's weakness a pretence; Durgan believed the strength he had shown to be the transient effect of fear.
The driver at length said, "Hi! Look here. What's that?"
He pointed to a black bundle in a fissure of the precipice.
"That there fur coat! I'll be blowed! He got down here, sir; and he had the devil to help him—leastwise, reckoning from all I have seen this night, I conclude that Satan was in the concern. He climbed down that crack in the rock, sir, and caught on by the bushes on the way, and scrambled along that slantwise bit, and then he got hold of the tree. He warn't killed or maimed or he'd be here."
"Then we've lost him."
"Mr. Bantam Cock will perhaps be sending despatches for to apprehend him at the different steam-car depôts, for to get my forty dollars."
"Say we make it fifty?"
"Well, sir; I would say, 'thank you.'"
"And that would be all you would say, mind you, or I'll have you turned off at the hotel."
"Then I won't even say that, sir. There ain't anything comes easier to me than shuttin' up, I reckon."
After this colloquy, which passed quickly, Durgan was turning upwards when he heard a horse ascending the road. In a few minutes he had met his two negro laborers coming to their work, and, behind them, the doctor from Hilyard, riding, as he usually did, with saddle-bags, his old buff clothes much bespattered.
"The yellow nigger is dead, Mr. Durgan. He died last night with the change of the weather. You told me to keep him alive till you came, but you didn't come. He was a very curious fellow—not half bad; and his last freak was to ask me to come and tell you to look sharp after the visitor he sent you. So, as you're not much out of my way to-day, I've come at once."
He got off his horse, and the two men talked together.
The doctor, whose ordinary round comprised anything within a radius of thirty miles, had not been in Hilyard when the rich traveler from New Orleans arrived and started again. His wealth and imperious airs had impressed the little town, but beyond the fact that he had gained a private interview with the dying prisoner, nothing was known about him.
"And the odd thing is," said the doctor, "that 'Dolphus sent the jailer with every cent he had in the world—about fifteen dollars—to bribe the driver. As to his health, he was decidedly better, and when this Mr. Courthope turned up he seems to have acted like a well man, and made him believe he was well. When I got home there was a report about that the stranger was a wonder-worker, and had cured him. But when I went to him the fever was up. After his last flash in the pan he burnt out in a few hours."
Durgan supposed there might be something of greater importance to justify the doctor's ride. "Perhaps," he said, "he asked you to bring a message to Mr. Alden or Miss Smith?"
"He was a most extraordinary fellow," said the other. "I never was quite sure when he was talking sense and when nonsense. But the message was to you; and it was that you were to keep this Courthope, and write to the chief of police in New York and claim the reward offered in the Claxton case. And you are to give as much of the money to Adam as you think will pay for his wife. He said he'd die easy if I'd give you that tip; and he did die easy."
Durgan smiled sadly at the pathos of the dying nigger's interest in his fellows and his desire for justice to be done. "Did you reckon him wandering?"
"That's just as you choose to take it," said the doctor. "I'm accustomed to hearing secrets and forgetting them. My only business before I forget this one is to ascertain that a dangerous character is not left at large. If you cannot give me that assurance, I suppose I ought to tell the police myself."
Durgan felt that the case of the Claxton sisters had now reached extremity, and, much against his will, he replied in a nonchalant tone, "We must come and talk the matter over with Mr. Alden." He saw no means of securing the runaway or of hiding the scandal—he hardly desired to hide it. He felt stunned at the shame that must fall on his wife.
As they turned the doctor said, "You think this yellow fellow and his sort mere trash, Mr. Durgan; but I'm inclined to think he would have made a good citizen with any sort of training. He had more public spirit than ten of our corrupt politicians rolled into one."
"Perhaps so," said Durgan absently. "I may be prejudiced."
He whistled the dog, and heard nothing at first, but then, from a nook below the hill, came an answering yelp. The yelp was repeated.
The driver, who had been standing passive at a distance, sauntered nearer. "There's something queer about that dog. He's been down there a powerful while. If he'd found another shoe he'd bark like that. And mebbe there's another shoe still to find, sir, for if two fits out a man, a man in conjunction with the devil might require two more."
Durgan took the hint, and went down towards the dog. He was puzzled by its peculiar call. It came a little way to meet him, crawling and fawning, but returned swiftly whither it came.
In a few minutes more Durgan was looking down on the prostrate body of the unknown traveler. He was lying straight and flat on his back; his eyes were open, and they met Durgan's with a mournful look of full intelligence which, in that position, was more startling than the glazed eye of death. The terrier licked the hand that lay nearest the face, then licked the brow very gently just for a moment, and yelped again.
"Why don't you get up?"
The stranger's lips moved. Durgan had to kneel to hear the thick effort at speech.
"Paralyzed!"
The lips moved feebly to let Durgan know that, after his escape, the seizure had come as he fled. The doctor came, and gently moved hand and foot, testing the muscles and nerves. He confirmed the self-diagnosis. The stricken man had probably lain unconscious half through the night, but his mind was clear now.
The rain had washed the temporary dye and all the stiffness from his hair. It lay gray and disheveled about his thin, brown face. The haggard lines were partly gone; the dark eyes looked up steadily, sad as eyes could be, but fearless.
The change was so great that Durgan spoke his involuntary sympathy. "Guess you feel nothing worse can come to you now." Then he added, "Keep up your heart. I'll take you where you will be well cared for."
The driver had followed slowly, and looked on without query.
"You bet," he said at length; "the devil's gone out of him."
Durgan wondered if that was actually what had happened when Bertha felt the peace of God, and Hermione slept, and the wretched mulatto found ease in death.
"He had over-exerted," said the doctor, "and all the tonic went out of the air when the rain fell."
They went back to Durgan's hut, and made a stretcher of his bed, and brought down his laborers as carriers.
A curious group walked slowly up the zig-zag road to the summit house: Durgan and the terrier walked one on each side; the doctor rode behind. There was naught to be said; they walked in silence. Sometimes the eyelids of the still face drooped; again they were opened wide. The wet forest breathed about their silence the whisper of the rain.
When the party came in sight of the house gable, someone who was sitting in the window of the sisters' room seemed to see them and moved away. The place was astir for the day. Smoke was rising from the chimneys, and the soft-voiced colored servant was singing to a Southern melody one of the doggerel hymns of her race: