"The cold neutrality of an impartial judge."—Burke.
"The cold neutrality of an impartial judge."—Burke.
The jury were out.
They had been out four hours, but the crowd in the closely packed court-room still kept its ranks unbroken, and even seemed to grow more dense; for if, here and there, one person went away, two from the waiting throng of those in the halls and about the doors immediately pressed their way in to take the vacant place. The long warm summer day was drawing toward its close. The tired people fanned themselves, but would not go, because it was rumored that a decision was near.
Outside, the fair green farming country, which came up almost to the doors, stretched away peacefully in the twilight, shading into the grays of evening down the valley, and at the bases of the hills. The fields were falling asleep; eight o'clock sounding from a distant church bell seemed like a curfew and good-night.
If one had had time to think of it, the picture of the crowded court-room, rising in that peaceful landscape, was a strange one. But no one had time to think of it. Lights had been brought in. The summer beetles, attracted by them, flew in through the open windows, knocked themselves against the wall, fell to the floor, and then slowly took wing again to repeat the process. With the coming of the lights the crowd stirred a little, looked about, and then settled itself anew. The prisoner's chances were canvassed again, and for the hundredth time. The testimony of Anne Douglas had destroyed the theory which had seemed to fill out so well the missing parts of the story; it had proved that the supposed rival was a friend of the wife's, and that the wife loved her; it had proved that Mrs. Heathcote was devoted to her husband, and happy with him, up to the last hour of her life. This was much. But the circumstantial evidenceregarding the movements of the prisoner at Timloesville remained unchanged; he was still confronted by the fact of his having been seen on that outside stairway, by the other significant details, and by the print of that left hand.
During this evening waiting, the city papers had come, were brought in, and read. One of them contained some paragraphs upon a point which, in the rapid succession of events that followed each other in the case, had been partially overlooked—a point which the country readers cast aside as unimportant, but which wakened in the minds of the city people present the remembrance that they had needed the admonition.
"But if this conversation (now given in full) was remarkable," wrote the editor far away in New York, "it should not be forgotten that the circumstances were remarkable as well. While reading it one should keep clearly in mind the fact that the subject of it, namely, Captain Heathcote, was, in the belief of both the speakers, dead. Had it not been for this belief of theirs, these words would never have been uttered. He was gone from earth forever—killed suddenly in battle. Such a death brings the deepest feelings of the heart to the surface. Such a death wrings out avowals which otherwise would never be made. Words can be spoken over a coffin—where all is ended—which could never be spoken elsewhere. Death brought together these two women, who seem to have loved each other through and in spite of all. One has gone. And now the menacing shadow of a far worse death has forced the other to come forward, and go through a cruel ordeal, an ordeal which was, however, turned into a triumph by the instant admiration which all rightly minded persons gave to the pure, noble bravery which thus saved a life. For although the verdict has not yet been given, the general opinion is that this new testimony turned the scale, and that the accused man will be acquitted."
But this prophecy was not fulfilled.
Five hours of waiting. Six hours. And now there came a stir. The jury were returning; they had entered; they were in their places. Rachel Bannert bent her facebehind her open fan, that people should not see how white it was. Miss Teller involuntarily rose. But as many had also risen in the crowded room, which was not brightly lighted save round the lawyers' tables, they passed unnoticed. The accused looked straight into the faces of the jurors. He was quite calm; this part seemed far less trying to him than that which had gone before.
And then it was told: they had neither convicted nor acquitted him. They had disagreed.
Anne Douglas was not present. She was sitting alone in an unlighted house on the other side of the little country square. Some one walking up and down there, under the maples, had noticed, or rather divined, a figure at the open window behind the muslin curtains of the dark room; he knew that this figure was looking at the lights from the court-room opposite, visible through the trees.
This man under the maples had no more intention of losing the final moment than the most persistent countryman there. But being in the habit of using his money, now that he had it, rather than himself, he had posted two sentinels, sharp-eyed boys whom he had himself selected, one in an upper window of the court-room on the sill, the other outside on the sloping roof of a one-story building which touched it. The boy in the window was to keep watch; the boy on the roof was to drop to the ground at the first signal from the sill, and run. By means of this human telegraph, its designer under the maples intended to reach the window himself, through the little house whose door stood open (its mistress having already been paid for the right of way), in time to hear and see the whole. This intention was carried out—as his intentions generally were. The instant the verdict, or rather the want of verdict, was announced, he left the window, hastened down through the little house, and crossed the square. The people would be slow in leaving the court-room, the stairway was narrow, the crowd dense; the square was empty as he passed through it, went up the steps of the house occupied by Miss Teller, crossed the balcony, and stopped at the open window.
"Anne?" he said.
A figure stirred within.
"They have disagreed. The case will now go over to the November term, when there will be a new trial."
He could see that she covered her face with her hands. But she did not speak.
"It was your testimony that turned the scale," he added.
After a moment, as she still remained silent, "I am going away to-night," he went on; "that is, unless there is something I can do for you. Will you tell me your plans?"
"Yes, always," she answered, speaking low from the darkness. "Everything concerning me you may always know, if you care to know. But so far I have no plan."
"I leave you with Miss Teller; that is safety. Miss Teller claims the privilege now of having you with her always."
"I shall not stay long."
"You will write to me?"
"Yes."
People were now entering the square from the other side. The window-sill was between them; he took her hands, drew her forward from the shadow, and looked at her in the dim light from the street lamp.
"It is my last look, Anne," he said, sadly.
"It need not be."
"Yes; you have chosen. You are sure that there is nothing more that I can do?"
"There is one thing."
"What is it?"
"Believe him innocent. Believe it, not for my sake, but for your own."
"If I try, it will be for yours. Good-by."
He left her, and an hour later was on his way back to his post at the capital of his State. He was needed there; an accumulation of responsibilities awaited him. For that State owed the excellence of its war record, its finely equipped regiments, well-supplied hospitals, and prompt efficiency in all departments of public business throughout those four years, principally to the brain and force of one man—Gregory Dexter.
Summer was at its height. Multomah had returned to its rural quietude; the farmers were busy afield, the court-room was closed, the crowd gone. The interest in the Heathcote case, and the interest in Ward Heathcote, remained as great as ever in the small circle of which he and Helen had formed part; but nothing more could happen until November, and as, in the mean time, the summer was before them, they had found a diversion of thought in discovering an island off the coast of Maine, and betaking themselves thither, leaving to mistaken followers the belief that Caryl's still remained an exclusive and fashionable resort. Beyond this small circle, the attention of the nation at large was absorbed in a far greater story—the story of the Seven Days round Richmond.
Word had come to Anne from the northern island that the little boy, whose failing health had for so many months engrossed all Miss Lois's time and care, had closed his tired eyes upon this world's pain forever. He would no longer need the little crutch, which they had both grieved to think must always be his support; and Miss Lois coming home to the silent church-house after the burial in the little cemetery on the height, and seeing it there in its corner, had burst into bitter tears. For the child, in his helplessness and suffering, had grown into her very heart. But now Anne needed her—that other child whom she had loved so long and so well. And so, after that one fit of weeping, she covered her grief from sight, put a weight of silent remembrance upon it, and with much energy journeyed southward.
For Anne, Miss Lois, and Miss Teller were now linkedtogether by a purpose, a feminine purpose, founded upon faith only, and with outlines vague, yet one none the less to be carried out: to go to Timloesville or its neighborhood, and search for the murderer there.
Miss Teller, who had found occupation in various small schemes for additions to Heathcote's comfort during the summer, rose to excitement when the new idea was presented to her.
"We must have advice about it," she began; "we must consult—" Then seeing in the young face, upon whose expressions she had already come to rely, a non-agreement, she paused.
"The best skill of detectives has already been used," said Anne; "they followed a track, worked from a beginning. We should follow no track, and accept no beginning, save the immovable certainty that he was innocent." She was silent a moment; then with a sigh which was a sad, yet not a hopeless, one, "Dear Miss Teller," she added, "it is said that women divine a truth sometimes by intuition, and against all probability. It is to this instinct—if such there be—that we must trust now."
Miss Teller studied these suggestions with respect; but they seemed large and indistinct. In spite of herself her mind reverted to certain articles of furniture which she had looked at the day before, furniture which was to make his narrow room more comfortable. But she caught herself in these wanderings, brought back her straying thoughts promptly, and fastened them to the main subject with a question—like a pin.
"But how could I go to Timloesville at present, when I have so much planned out to do here? Oh, Anne, I could not leave him here, shut up in that dreary place."
"It seems to me safer that you should not go," replied the girl; "it might be noticed, especially as it is known that you took this house for the summer. But I could go. And there is Miss Lois. She is free now, and the church-house must be very lonely." The tears sprang again as she thought of André, the last of the little black-eyed children who had been so dear.
They talked over the plan. No man being there to weigh it with a cooler masculine judgment, it seemed to them a richly promising one. Anne was imaginative, and Miss Teller reflected Anne. They both felt, however, that its accomplishment depended upon Miss Lois. But Anne's confidence in Miss Lois was great.
"I know of no one for whom I have a deeper respect than for that remarkable woman," said Miss Teller, reverentially. "It will be a great gratification to see her."
"But it would be best, I think, that she should not come here," replied Anne. "I should bid you good-by, and go away; every one would see me go. Then in New York I could meet Miss Lois, and we could go together to Timloesville by another route. At Timloesville nobody would know Miss Lois, and I should keep myself in a measure concealed; there were only a few persons from Timloesville at the trial, and I think I could evade them."
"I should have liked much to meet Miss Hinsdale," said Miss Margaretta, in a tone of regret. "But you know best."
"Oh, no, no," said Anne, letting her arms fall in sudden despondency. "I sometimes think that I know nothing, and worse than nothing! Moments come when I would give years of my life for one hour, only one, of trusting reliance upon some one wiser, stronger, than I—who would tell me what I ought to do."
But this cry of the young heart (brave, but yet so young) distressed Miss Margaretta. If the pilot should lose courage, what would become of the passengers? She felt herself looking into chaos.
Anne saw this. And controlled herself again.
"When should you start?" said the elder lady, relieved, and bringing forward a date. Miss Margaretta always found great support in dates.
"I can not tell yet. We must first hear from Miss Lois."
"I will write to her myself," said Miss Margaretta, putting on her spectacles and setting to work at once. It was a relief to be engaged upon something tangible.
And write she did. The pages she sent to Miss Lois,and the pages with which Miss Lois replied were many, eloquent, and underlined. Before the correspondence was ended they had scientifically discovered, convicted, and hanged the murderer, and religiously buried him.
Miss Lois was the most devoted partisan the accused man had gained. She was pleader, audience, public opinion, detective, judge, and final clergyman, in one. She had never seen Heathcote. That made no difference. She was sure he was a concentration of virtue, and the victim not of circumstances (that was far too mild), but of a "plot" (she wanted to say "popish," but was restrained by her regard for Père Michaux).
Miss Teller saw Heathcote daily. So far, she had not felt it necessary that Anne should accompany her. But shortly before the time fixed for the young girl's departure she was seized with the idea that it was Anne's duty to see him once. For perhaps he could tell her something which would be of use at Timloesville.
"I would rather not; it is not necessary," replied Anne. "You can tell me."
"You should not think of yourself; in such cases ourselves are nothing," said Miss Teller. "The sheriff and the persons in charge under him are possessed of excellent dispositions, as I have had occasion to prove; no one need know of your visit, and I should of course accompany you."
Anne heard her in silence. She was asking herself whether this gentle lady had lost all memory of her own youth, and whether that youth had held no feelings which would make her comprehend the depth of that which she was asking now.
But Miss Teller was not thinking of her youth, or of herself, or of Anne. She had but one thought, one motive—Helen's husband, and how to save him; all the rest seemed to her unimportant. She had in fact forgotten it. "I do not see how you can hesitate," she said, the tears suffusing her light eyes, "when it is for our dear Helen's sake."
"Yes," replied Anne; "but Helen is dead. How can we know—how can we be sure—what she would wish?"She seemed to be speaking to herself. She rose, walked to the window, and stood there looking out.
"She would wish to have him saved, would she not?" answered Miss Teller. "I consider it quite necessary that you should see him before you go. For you could not depend upon my report of what he says. It has, I am sorry to say, been represented to me more than once that I have a tendency to forget what has been variously mentioned as the knob, the point, the gist of a thing."
Anne did not turn.
Miss Teller noted this obstinacy with surprise.
"It is mysterious to me that after the great ordeal of that trial, Anne, you should demur over such a simple thing as this," she said, gently.
But to Anne the sea of faces in the court-room seemed now less difficult than that quiet cell with its one occupant. Then she asked herself whether this were not an unworthy feeling, a weak one? One to be put down at once, and with a strong hand. She yielded. The visit was appointed for the next day.
The county jail with its stone hall; a locked door. They were entering; the jailer retired.
The prisoner rose to receive them; he knew that they were coming, and was prepared. Miss Teller kissed him; he brought forward his two chairs. Then turning to Anne, he said, "It is kind of you to come;" and for a moment they looked at each other.
It was as if they had met in another world, in a far gray land beyond all human error and human dread. Anne felt this suddenly; if not like a chill, it was like the touch of an all-enveloping sadness, which would not pass away. Her fear left her; it seemed to her then that it would never come back.
As she looked at him she saw that he was greatly changed; her one glance in the court-room had not told her how greatly. Part of it was due doubtless to the effects of his wound, to the unaccustomed confinement in the heats of a lowland summer; his face, though still bronzed, was thin, his clothes hung loosely from his broad shoulders. But the marked alteration was in hisexpression. This was so widely different from that of the brown-eyed lounger of Caryl's, that it seemed another man who was standing there, and not the same. Heathcote's eyes were still brown; but their look was so changed that Gregory Dexter would never have occasion to find fault with it again. His half-indolent carelessness had given place to a stern reticence; his indifference, to a measured self-control. And Anne knew, as though a prophetic vision were passing, that he would carry that changed face always, to his life's end.
Miss Teller had related to him their plan, their womans' plan. He was strongly, unyieldingly, opposed to it. Miss Teller came home every day, won over to his view, and then as regularly changed her mind, in talking with Anne, and went back—to be converted over again. But he knew that Anne had persisted. He knew that he was now expected to search his memory, and see if he could not find there something new. Miss Teller, with a touching eagerness to be of use and business-like, arranged pen, paper, and ink upon the table, and sat down to take notes. She was still a majestic personage, in spite of her grief and anxiety; her height, profile, and flowing draperies were as imposing as ever. But in other ways she had grown suddenly old; her light complexion was now over-spread with a net-work of fine small wrinkles, the last faint blonde of her hair was silvered, and in her cheeks and about her mouth there was a pathetic alteration, the final predominance of old age, and its ineffective helplessness over her own mild personality.
But while they waited, he found that he could not speak. When he saw them sitting there in their mourning garb for Helen, when he felt that Anne too was within the circle of this grief and danger and pain, Anne, in all her pure fair youth and trust and courage, something rose in his throat and stopped utterance. All the past and his own part in it unrolled itself before him like a judgment; all the present, and her brave effort for him; the future, near and dark. For Heathcote, like Dexter, believed that the chances were adverse; and even should he escape conviction, he believed that the cloudupon him would never be cleared away entirely, but that it would rest like a pall over the remainder of his life. At that moment, in his suffering, he felt that uncleared acquittal, conviction, the worst that could come to him, he could bear without a murmur were it only possible to separate Anne—Anne both in the past and present—from his own dark lot. He rose suddenly from the bench where he had seated himself, turned his back to them, went to his little grated window, and stood there looking out.
Miss Teller followed him, and laid her hand on his shoulder. "Dear Ward," she said, "I do not wonder that you are overcome." And she took out her handkerchief.
He mastered himself and came back to the table. Miss Teller, who, having once begun, was unable to stop so quickly, remained where she was. Anne, to break the painful pause, began to ask her written questions from the slip of paper she had brought.
"Can you recall anything concerning the man who came by and spoke to you while you were bathing?" she said, looking at him gravely.
"No. I could not see him; it was very dark."
"What did he say?"
"He asked if the water was cold."
"How did he say it?"
"Simply, 'Is the water cold?'"
"Was there any foreign accent or tone, any peculiarity of pronunciation or trace of dialect, no matter how slight, in his voice or utterance?"
"I do not recall any. Stay, he may have given something of the sound of g to the word—said 'gold,' instead of 'cold.' But the variation was scarcely noticeable. Country people talk in all sorts of ways."
Miss Teller hurriedly returned to her chair, after wiping her eyes, wrote down "gold" and "cold" in large letters on her sheet of paper, and surveyed them critically.
"Is there nothing else you can think of?" pursued Anne.
"No. Why do you dwell upon him?"
"Because he is the man."
"Oh, Anne, is he?—is he?" cried Miss Teller, with as much excitement as though Anne had proved it.
"There is no probability. They have not even been able to find him," said Heathcote.
"Of course it is only my feeling," said the girl.
"But whatAnnefeels is no child's play," commented Miss Teller.
This remark, made in nervousness and without much meaning, seemed to touch Heathcote; he turned to the window again.
"Will you please describe to me exactly what you did from the time you left the inn to take the first walk until you came back after the river-bath?" continued Anne.
He repeated his account of the evening's events as he had first given it, with hardly the variation of a word.
"Are you sure that you took two towels? Might it not be possible that you took only one? For then the second, found at the end of the meadow trail, might have been taken by the murderer."
"No; I took two. I remember it because I put first one in my pocket, and then, with some difficulty, the other, and I spoke to Helen laughingly about my left-handed awkwardness." It was the first time he had spoken his wife's name, and his voice was very grave and sweet as he pronounced it.
Poor Miss Teller broke down again. And Anne began to see her little paper of questions through a blur. But the look of Heathcote's face saved her. Why should he have anything more to bear? She went on quickly with her inquiry.
"Was there much money in the purse?"
"I think not. She gave me almost all she had brought with her as soon as we met."
"Is it a large river?"
"Rather deep; in breadth only a mill-stream."
Then there was a silence. It seemed as if they all felt how little there was to work with, to hope for.
"Will you let Miss Teller draw on a sheet of paper the outline of your left hand?" continued Anne.
He obeyed without comment.
"Now please place your hand in this position, and let her draw the finger-tips." As she spoke, she extended her own left hand, with the finger-tips touching the table, as if she was going to grasp something which lay underneath.
But Heathcote drew back. A flush rose in his cheeks. "I will have nothing to do with it," he said.
"Oh, Ward, when Anne asks you?" said Miss Teller, in distress.
"Ido not wish her to go to Timloesville," he said, with emphasis; "I have been utterly against it from the first. It is a plan made without reason, and directly against my feelings, my wishes, and my consent. It is unnecessary. It will be useless. And, worse than this, it may bring her into great trouble. Send as many detectives as you please, but do not send her. It is the misfortune of your position and hers that at such a moment you have no one to control you, no man, I mean, to whose better judgment you would defer. My wishes are nothing to you; you override them. You are, in fact, taking advantage of my helplessness."
He spoke to Miss Teller. But Anne, flushing a little at his tone, answered him.
"I can not explain the hope that is in me," she said; "but such a hope I certainly have. I will not be imprudent; Miss Lois shall do everything; I will be very guarded. If we are not suspected (and we shall not be; women are clever in such things), where is the danger? It will be but—but spending a few weeks in the country." She ended hesitatingly, ineffectively. Then, "To sit still and do nothing, to wait—is unendurable!" broke from her in a changed tone. "It is useless to oppose me. I shall go."
Heathcote did not reply.
"No one is to know of it, dear Ward, save ourselves and Miss Hinsdale," said Miss Teller, pleadingly.
"And Mr. Dexter," added Anne.
Heathcote now looked at her. "Dexter has done more for me than I could have expected," he said. "I never knew him well; I fancied, too, that he did not like me."
"HE OBEYED WITHOUT COMMENT.""HE OBEYED WITHOUT COMMENT."
"Oh, there you are quite mistaken, Ward. He is your most devoted friend," said Miss Teller.
But a change in Anne's face had struck Heathcote. "He thinks me guilty," he said.
"Never! never!" cried Miss Teller. "Tell him no, Anne. Tell him no."
But Anne could not. "He said—" she began; then remembering that Dexter's words, "If I try, it will be for yours," were hardly a promise, she stopped.
"It is of small consequence. Those who could believe me guilty may continue to believe it," said Heathcote. But his face showed that he felt the sting.
He had never cared to be liked by all, or even by many; but when the blow fell it had been an overwhelming surprise to him that any one, even the dullest farm laborer, should suppose it possible that he, Ward Heathcote, could be guilty of such a deed.
It was the lesson which careless men, such as he had been, learn sometimes if brought face to face with the direct homely judgment of the plain people of the land.
"Oh, Anne, how can you have him for your friend? And I, who trusted him so!" said Miss Teller, with indignant grief.
"As Mr. Heathcote has said, it is of small consequence," answered Anne, steadily. "Mr. Dexter brought me here, in spite of his—his feeling, and that should be more to his credit, I think, than as though he had been—one of us. And now, Miss Teller, if there is nothing more to learn, I should like to go."
She rose. Heathcote made a motion as if to detain her, then his hand fell, and he rose also.
"I suppose we can stay until Jason Longworthy knocks?" said Miss Margaretta, hesitatingly.
"I would rather go now, please," said Anne.
For a slow tremor was taking possession of her; the country prison, which had not before had a dangerous look, seemed now to be growing dark and cruel; the iron-barred window was like a menace. It seemed to say that they might talk; but that the prisoner was theirs.
Miss Margaretta rose, disappointed but obedient; shebade Heathcote good-by, and said that she would come again on the morrow.
Then he stepped forward. "I shall not see you again," he said to Anne, holding out his hand. He had not offered to take her hand before.
She gave him hers, and he held it for a moment. No word was spoken; it was a mute farewell. Then she passed out, followed by Miss Teller, and the door was closed behind them.
"Why, you had twenty minutes more," said Jason Longworthy, the deputy, keeping watch in the hall outside.
"The fisherman, unassisted by destiny, could not catch a fish in the Tigris; and the fish, without fate, could not have died upon dry land."—Saadi.
"The fisherman, unassisted by destiny, could not catch a fish in the Tigris; and the fish, without fate, could not have died upon dry land."—Saadi.
Anne met Miss Lois in New York. Miss Lois had never been in New York before; but it would take more than New York to confuse Miss Lois. They remained in the city for several days in order to rest and arrange their plans. There was still much to explain which the letters, voluminous as they had been, had not made entirely clear.
But first they spoke of the child. It was Miss Lois at length who turned resolutely from the subject, and took up the tangled coil which awaited her. "Begin at the beginning and tell every word," she said, sitting erect in her chair, her arms folded with tight compactness. If Miss Lois could talk, she could also listen. In the present case she listened comprehensively, sharply, and understandingly. When all was told—"How different it is from the old days when we believed that you and Rast would live always with us on the island, and that that would be the whole," she said, with a long, sad retrospective sigh. Then dismissing the past, "But we must do in this disappointing world what is set before us," she added, sighing again, but this time in a preparatory way. Anew she surveyed Anne. "You are much changed,child," she said. Something of her old spirit returned to her. "I wish those fort ladies could see younow!" she remarked, taking off her spectacles and wiping them with a combative air.
Possessed of Anne's narrative, she now began to arrange their plans in accordance with it, and to fit what she considered the necessities of the situation. As a stand-point she prepared a history, which, in its completeness, would have satisfied even herself as third person, forgetting that the mental organizations of the Timloesville people were probably not so well developed in the direction of a conscientious and public-spirited inquiry into the affairs of their neighbors as were those of the meritorious New England community where she had spent her youth. In this history they were to be aunt and niece, of the same name, which, after long cogitation, she decided should be Young, because it had "a plain, respectable sound." She herself was to be a widow (could it have been possible that, for once in her life, she wished to know, even if but reminiscently, how the married state would feel?), and Anne was to be her husband's niece. "Which will account for the lack of resemblance," she said, fitting all the parts of her plan together like those of a puzzle. She had even constructed an elaborate legend concerning said husband, and its items she enumerated with relish. His name, it appeared, had been Asher, and he had been something of a trial to her, although at the last he had experienced religion, and died thoroughly saved. His brother Eleazer, Anne's father, had been a very different person, a sort of New England David. He had taught in an academy, studied for the ministry, and died of "a galloping consumption"—a consolation to all his friends. Miss Lois could describe in detail both of these death-beds, and repeat the inscriptions on the two tombstones. Her own name was Deborah, and Anne's was Ruth. On the second day she evolved the additional item that Ruth was "worn out keeping the accounts of an Asylum for the Aged, in Washington—which is the farthest thing I can think of from teaching children in New York—and I have brought you into the country for your health."
Anne was dismayed. "I shall certainly make some mistake in all this," she said.
"Not if you pay attention. And you can always say your head aches if you don't want to talk. I am not sure but that you had better be threatened with something serious," added Miss Lois, surveying her companion consideringly. "It would have to be connected with the mind, because, unfortunately, you always look the picture of health."
"Oh, please let me be myself," pleaded Anne.
"Never in the world," replied Miss Lois. "Ourselves? No indeed. We've got tobeconundrums as well as guess them, Ruth Young."
They arrived at their destination, not by the train, but in the little country stage which came from the south. The witnesses from Timloesville present at the trial had been persons connected with the hotel. In order that Anne should not come under their observation, they took lodgings at a farm-house at some distance from the village, and on the opposite side of the valley. Anne was not to enter the village; but of the meadow-paths and woods she would have free range, as the inhabitants of Timloesville, like most country people, had not a high opinion of pedestrian exercise. Anne was not to enter the town at all; but Miss Lois was to examine "its every inch."
The first day passed safely, and the second and third. Anne was now sufficiently accustomed to her new name not to start when she was addressed, and sufficiently instructed in her "headaches" not to repudiate them when inquiries were made; Miss Lois announced, therefore, that the search could begin. She classified the probabilities under five heads.
First. The man must be left-handed.
Second. He must say "gold" for "cold."
Third. As Timloesville was a secluded village to which few strangers came, and as it had been expressly stated at the trial that no strangers were noticed in its vicinity either before or after the murder, the deed had evidently been committed, not as the prosecution mole-blindedly averred, by the one stranger whowasthere, but by no strangerat all—by a resident in the village itself or its neighborhood.
Fourth. As the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Heathcote was unexpected, the crime must have been one of impulse: there had not been time for a plan.
Fifth. The motive was robbery: the murder was probably a second thought, occasioned, perhaps, by Helen's stirring.
Miss Lois did not waste time. Within a few days she was widely known in Timloesville—"the widow Young, from Washington, staying at Farmer Blackwell's, with her niece, who is out of health, poor thing, and her aunt so anxious about her." The widow was very affable, very talkative; she was considered an almost excitingly agreeable person. But it was strange that she should not have heard of their event, their own particular and now celebrated crime. Mrs. Strain, wife of J. Strain, Esq., felt that this ignorance was lamentable. She therefore proposed to the widow that she should in person go to the Timloe Hotel, and see with her own eyes "the very spot."
"The effect, Mrs. Young, is curdling," she declared.
Mrs. Young was willing to be curdled, if Mrs. Strain would support her in the experience. On the next afternoon, therefore, they went to the Timloe Hotel, and were shown over "the very floor" which had been pressed by the footsteps of the murderer, his beautiful wife, and her highly respectable and observing (one might almost sayprovidentiallyobserving) maid. The landlord himself, Mr. Graub, did not disdain to accompany them. Mr. Graub had attended the trial in person, and he had hardly ceased since to admire himself for his own perspicuous cleverness in owning the house where such a very distinguished crime had been committed. There might be localities where a like deed would have injured the patronage of an inn; but the neighborhood of Timloesville was not one of them. The people slowly took in and appreciated their event, as an anaconda is said slowly to take in and appreciate his dinner; they digested it at their leisure. Farmers coming in to town on Saturdays, insteadof bringing luncheon in a tin pail, as usual, went to the expense of dining at the hotel, with their wives and daughters, in order to see the room, the blind, and the outside stairway. Mr. Graub, in this position of affairs, was willing to repeat the tale, even to a non-diner. For Mrs. Young was a stranger from Washington, and who knew but that Washington itself might be stirred to a dining interest in the scene of the tragedy, especially as the second trial was still to come?
The impression on the blind was displayed; it was very faint, but clearly that of a left hand.
"And here is the cloth that covered the bureau," continued the landlord, taking it from a paper and spreading it on the old-fashioned chest of drawers. "It is not the identical cloth, for that was required at the trial, together with a fac-simile of the blind; but I can assure you that this one is just like the original, blue-bordered and fringed precisely the same, and we traced the spots on it exactly similar before we let the other go. For we knew that folks would naturally be interested in such a memento."
"It is indeed deeply absorbing," said Mrs. Young. "I wonder, now, what the size of that hand might be? Not yours, Mr. Graub; yours is a very small hand. Let me compare. Suppose I place my fingers so (I will not touch it). Yes, a large hand, without doubt, and a left hand. Do you know of any left-handed persons about here?"
"Why, the man himself was left-handed," answered the landlord and Mrs. Strain together—"Captain Heathcote himself."
"He had been wounded, and carried his right arm in a sling," added Mr. Graub.
"Ah, yes," said the widow; "I remember now. Was this impression measured?"
"Yes; I have the exact figures," replied the landlord, taking out a note-book, and reading the items aloud in a slow, important voice.
"Did you measure it yourself?" asked the widow. "Because ifyoudid it, I shall feel sure the figures are correct."
"I did not measure it myself," answered Mr. Graub, not unimpressed by this confidence. "I can, however, re-measure it in a moment if it would be any gratification to you."
"It would be—immense," said the widow. Whereupon he went down stairs for a measure.
"I am subject to dizziness myself, but Imusthear some one come up that outside stairway," said Mrs. Young to Mrs. Strain during his absence. "Wouldyou do it for me? I want toimaginethewhole."
Mrs. J. Strain, though stout, consented; and when her highly decorated bonnet was out of sight, the visitor swiftly drew from her pocket the paper outline of Heathcote's hand which Anne had given her, and compared it with the impression. The outlines seemed different; the hand which had touched the cloth appeared to have been shorter and wider than Heathcote's, the finger-tips broader, as though cushioned with flesh underneath. Mrs. Strain's substantial step was now heard on the outside stairway. But the pattern was already safely returned to the deep pocket of Mrs. Young.
"I have been picturing the entire scene," she said, in an impressive whisper when the bonnet re-appeared, "and I assure you that when I heard your footsteps on those stairs, goose-flesh rose and ran like lightning down my spine." And Mrs. Strain, though out of breath, considered that her services had been well repaid.
Mr. Graub now returned, and measured the prints with the nicest accuracy. Owing to the widow's compliment to his hands, he had stopped to wash them, in order to give a finer effect to the operation. Mrs. Young requested that the figures be written down for her on a slip of paper, "as a memorial"; and then, with one more exhaustive look at the room, the stairway, and the garden, she went away, accompanied by her friend, leaving Mr. Graub more than ever convinced that he was a very unusual man.
Mrs. Strain was easily induced to finish the afternoon's dissipations by going through the grass meadow by the side of the track made by the murderer on his way to theriver. They walked "by the side," because the track itself was railed off. So many persons had visited the meadow that Mr. Graub had been obliged to protect his relic in order to preserve its identity, and even existence. The little trail was now conspicuous by the fringing of tall grass which still stood erect on each side of it, the remainder of the meadow having been trodden flat.
"It ends at the river," said Mrs. Young, reflectively.
"Yes, where he came to wash his hands, after the deed was done," responded Mrs. Strain. "And what his visions and inward thoughts must have been at sech a moment I leave you, Mrs. Young, solemnly to consider."
Mrs. Young then returned homeward, after thanking her Timloesville friend for a "most impressive day."
"The outlines are too indistinct to be really of much use, Ruth," she said, as she removed her bonnet. "I believe it was so stated at the trial, wasn't it? But if I have eyes, they donotfit."
"Of course not, since it is the hand of another person," replied Anne. "But did you notice, or rather could you see, what the variations were?"
"A broader palm, I should say, and the fingers shorter. The only point, however, which I could make out with certainty was the thick cushion of flesh at the ends of the fingers; that seemed clear enough."
At sunset they went across the fields together to the point on the river-bank where the meadow trail ended.
"The river knows all," said Anne, looking wistfully at the smooth water.
"Theythink so too, for they've dragged it a number of times," responded Miss Lois. "All the boys in the neighborhood have been diving here ever since, I am told; they fancy the purse, watch, and rings are in the mud at the bottom. But they're safe enough in somebody'spocket, you may be sure."
"Miss Lois," said the girl, suddenly, "perhaps he went away in a boat!"
"My name is Deborah—Aunt Deborah; and I do wish, Ruth, you would not forget it so constantly. In a boat? Well, perhaps he did. But I don't see howthat helps it. To-morrow is market-day, and I must go in to the village and look out for left-handed men; they won't escape me though they fairly dance jigs on their right!"
"He went away in a boat," repeated Anne, as they walked homeward through the dusky fields.
But the man was no nearer or plainer because she had taken him from the main road and placed him on the river; he seemed, indeed, more distant and shadowy than before.
Miss Lois came home excited. She had seen a left-handed man. True, he was a well-known farmer of the neighborhood, a jovial man, apparently frank and honest as the daylight. But there was no height of impossibility impossible to Miss Lois when she was on a quest. She announced her intention of going to his farm on the morrow under the pretext of looking at his peonies, which, she had been told, were remarkably fine, "for of course I made inquiries immediately, in order to discover the prominent points, if there were any. If it had been onions, I should have been deeply interested in them just the same."
Anne, obliged for the present to let Miss Lois make the tentative efforts, listened apathetically; then she mentioned her wish to row on the river.
"Better stay at home," said Miss Lois. "Then I shall know you are safe."
"But I should like to go, if merely for the air," replied Anne. "My head throbs as I sit here through the longhours. It is not that I expect to accomplish anything, though I confess Iamhaunted by the river, but the motion and fresh air would perhaps keep me from thinking so constantly."
"I am a savage," said Miss Lois, "and you shall go where you please. The truth is, Ruth, that while I am pursuing this matter with my mental faculties,youare pursuing it with the inmost fibres of your heart." (The sentence was mixed, but the feeling sincere.) "I will go down this very moment, and begin an arrangement about a boat for you."
She kept her word. Anne, sitting by the window, heard her narrating to Mrs. Blackwell a long chain of reasons to explain the fancy of her niece Ruth for rowing. "She inherits it from her mother, poor child," said the widow, with the sigh which she always gave to the memory of her departed relatives. "Her mother was the daughter of a light-house keeper, and lived, one might say, afloat. Little Ruthie, as a baby, used to play boat; her very baby-talk was full of sailor words.Youhaven't any kind of a row-boat she could use, have you?"
Mrs. Blackwell replied that they had not, but that a neighbor farther down the river owned a skiff which might be borrowed.
"Borrow it, then," said Mrs. Young. "They will lend it toyou, of course, in a friendly way, and thenwecan payyousomething for the use of it."
This thrifty arrangement, of which Mrs. Blackwell unaided would never have thought, was carried into effect, and early the next morning the skiff floated at the foot of the meadow, tied to an overhanging branch.
In the afternoon Mrs. Young, in the farm wagon, accompanied by her hostess, and her hostess's little son as driver, set off for John Cole's farm, to see, in Mrs. Blackwell's language, "the pynies." A little later Anne was in the skiff, rowing up the river. She had not had oars in her hands since she left the island.
She rowed on for an hour, through the green fields, then through the woods. Long-legged flies skated on the still surface of the water, insects with gauzy wings floatedto and fro. A dragon-fly with steel-blue mail lighted on the edge of the boat. The burnished little creature seemed attracted. He would not leave her, but even when he took flight floated near by on his filmy wings, timing his advance with hers. With one of those vague impulses by which women often select the merest chance to decide their actions, Anne said to herself, "I will row on until I lose sight of him." Turning the skiff, she took one oar for a paddle, and followed the dragon-fly. He flew on now more steadily, selecting the middle of the stream. No doubt he had a dragon-fly's motives; perhaps he was going home; but whether he was or not, he led Anne's boat onward until the river grew suddenly narrower, and entered a ravine. Here, where the long boughs touched leaf-tips over her head, and everything was still and green, she lost him. The sun was sinking toward the western horizon line; it was time to return; but she said to herself that she would come again on the morrow, and explore this cool glen to which her gauzy-winged guide had brought her. When she reached home she found Miss Lois there, and in a state of profound discomfiture. "The man was left-handed enough," she said, "but, come to look at him, he hadn't any little finger at all: chopped off by mistake when a boy. Now the little finger in the impression is the most distinct part of the whole; and so we've lost a day, and the price of the wagon thrown in, not to speak of enough talking about peonies to last a lifetime! There's a fair to-morrow, and of course I must go: more left hands: although now, I confess, they swim round me in a cloud of vexation and peonies, which makes me never want to lay eyes on one of them again;" and she gave a groan, ending in a long yawn. However, the next morning, with patience and energies renewed by sleep, she rose early, like a phœnix from her ashes, and accompanied Mrs. Blackwell to the fair. Anne, again in her skiff, went up the river. She rowed to the glen where she had lost the dragon-fly. Here she rested on her oars a moment. The river still haunted her. "He went away in a boat," had not been out of her mind since it first came to her. "He went away in a boat," she nowthought again. "Would he, then, have rowed up or down the stream? If he had wished to escape from the neighborhood, he would have rowed down to the larger river below. He would not have rowed up stream unless he lived somewhere in this region, and was simply going home, because there is no main road in this direction, no railway, nothing but farms which touch each other for miles round. Now, as I believe he wasnota stranger, but a resident, I will suppose that he went up stream, and I will follow him." She took up her oars and rowed on.
The stream grew still narrower. She had been rowing a long time, and knew that she must be far from home. Nothing broke the green solitude of the shore until at last she came suddenly upon a little board house, hardly more than a shanty, standing near the water, with the forest behind. She started as she saw it, and a chill ran over her. And yet what was it? Only a little board house.
She rowed past; it seemed empty and silent. She turned the skiff, came back, and gathering her courage, landed, and timidly tried the door; it was locked. She went round and looked through the window. There was no one within, but there were signs of habitation—some common furniture, a gun, and on the wall a gaudy picture of the Virgin and the Holy Child. She scrutinized the place with eyes that noted even the mark of muddy boots on the floor and the gray ashes from a pipe on the table. Then suddenly she felt herself seized with fear. If the owner of the cabin should steal up behind her, and ask her what she was doing there! She looked over her shoulder fearfully. But no one was visible, no one was coming up or down the river; her own boat was the only thing that moved, swaying to and fro where she had left it tied to a tree trunk. With the vague terror still haunting her, she hastened to the skiff, pushed off, and paddled swiftly away. But during the long voyage homeward the fear did not entirely die away. "I am growing foolishly nervous," she said to herself, with a weary sigh.
Miss Lois had discovered no left-handed men at the fair; but she had seen a person whom she considered suspicious—a person who sold medicines. "He was middle-sized," she said to Anne, in the low tone they used when within the house, "and he had a down look—a thing I never could abide. He spoke, too, in an odd voice. I suspected him as soon as I laid my eyes upon him, and so just took up a station near him, and watched. He wasn't left-handedexactly," she added, as though he might have been so endowed inexactly; "but he is capable of anything—left-handed, web-footed, or whatever you please. After taking a good long look at him, I went round and made (of course by chance, and accidentally) some inquiries. Nobody seemed to know much about him except that his name is Juder (and highly appropriate in my opinion), and he came to the fair the day before with his little hand-cart of medicines, andwent out again, into the country somewhere, at sunset. Do you mark the significance of that, Ruth Young? He did not stay at the Timloe hotel (prices reduced for the fair, and very reasonable beds on the floor), like the other traders; but though the fair is to be continued over to-morrow, and he is to be there, he took all the trouble to go out of town for the night."
"Perhaps he had no money," said Anne, abstractedly.
"I saw him with my own eyes take in dollars and dollars. Singular that when country people will buy nothing else, they will buy patent medicines. No: the man knows something of that murder, andcouldnot stay at that hotel, Ruth Young. And that'smytheory."
In her turn Anne now related the history of the day, and the discovery of the solitary cabin. Miss Lois was not much impressed by the cabin. "A man is better than a house, any day," she said. "But the thing is to get the man to say 'cold.' I shall ask him to-morrow if he has any pills for a cold in the head or on the lungs; and, as he tells long stories about the remarkable cures his different bottles have effected, I hope, when I once get him started, to hear the word several times. I confess, Ruth, that I have great hopes; I feel the spirit rising within me to run him down."
Miss Lois went again to the fair, her mission bubblingwithin her. At eight in the morning she started; at nine in the evening she returned. With skirt and shawl bedraggled, and bonnet awry, she came to Anne's room, closed the door, and demanded tragically that the broom-switch should be taken from the shelf and applied to her own thin shoulders. "I deserve it," she said.
"For what?" said Anne, smiling.
Miss Lois returned no answer until she had removed her bonnet and brought forward a chair, seated herself upon it, severely erect, with folded arms, and placed her feet on the round of another. "I went to that fair," she began, in a concentrated tone, "and I followed that medicine man; wherever he stopped his hand-cart and tried to sell,Iwas among his audience. I heard all his stories over and over again; every time he produced his three certificates,Iread them. I watched his hands, too, and made up my mind that they would do, though I did not catch him inopenleft-handedness. I now tried 'cold.' 'Have you any pills for a cold in the head?' I asked. But all he said was 'yes,' and he brought out a bottle. Then I tried him with a cold on the lungs; but it was just the same. 'What are your testimonials for colds?' I remarked, as though I had not quite made up my mind; and he thereupon told two stories, but they were incoherent, and never once mentioned the word I was waiting to hear. 'Haven't you ever had a cold yourself?' I said, getting mad. 'Can't you speak?' And then, looking frightened, he said he often had colds, and that he took those medicines, and that they always cured him. And then hurriedly, and without waiting for the two bottles which I held in my hand tightly, he began to move on with his cart. But he had said 'gold,' Ruth—he had actually said 'gold!' And, with the stings of a guilty, murderous conscience torturing him, he was going away without the thirty-seven and a half cents each which those two bottles cost! It was enough for me. I tracked him from that moment—at a distance, of course, and in roundabout ways, so that he would not suspect. I think during the day I must have walked, owing to doublings and never stopping, twenty miles. When atlast the fair was over, and he started away, I started too. He went by the main road, and I by a lane, andsuchwork as I had to keep him in sight, and yet not let him see me! I almost lost him several times, but persevered until he too turned off and went up a hill opposite toward a grove, dragging his little cart behind him. I followed as quickly as I could. He was in the grove as I drew near, stepping as softly as possible, and others were with him; I heard the murmur of voices. 'I have come upon the whole villainous band,' I thought, and I crept softly in among the trees, hardly daring to breathe. Ruth, the voices had a little camp; they had just lighted a fire; and—what do you think they were? Just a parcel of children, the eldest a slip of a girl of ten or eleven! I never was more dumbfounded in my life. Ruth, that medicine man sat down, kissed the children all round, opened his cart, took out bread, cheese, and a little package of tea, while the eldest girl put on a kettle, and they all began to talk. And then the youngest, a little tot, climbed up on his knee, and called him—Mammy! This was too much; and I appeared on the scene. Ruth, he gathered up the children in a frightened sort of way, as if I were going to eat them. 'What do you mean by following me round all day like this?' he began, trying to be brave, though I could see how scared he was. Itwasrather unexpected, you know, my appearing there at that hour so far from town. 'I mean,' said I, 'to know who and what you are. Are you a woman, or are you a man?'
"'Can't you see,' said the poor creature; 'with all these children around? But it's not likely from your looks thatyouever had any of your own, so you don't know.' She said that," thoughtfully remarked Miss Lois, interrupting her own narrative, "and it has been said before. But how in the world any one can know it at sight is and always will be a mystery to me. Then said I to her, 'Are you the mother, then, of all these children? And if so, how came you to be selling medicines dressed up like a man? It's perfectly disgraceful, and you ought to be arrested.'
"'No one would buy of me if I was a woman,' sheanswered. 'The cart and medicines belonged to my husband, and he died, poor fellow! four weeks ago, leaving me without a cent. What was I to do? I know all the medicines, and I know all he used to say when he sold them. He was about my size, and I could wear his clothes. I just thought I'd try it for a little while during fair-time for the sake of the children—only for a little while to get started. So I cut my hair and resked it. And it's done tolerably well untilyoucome along and nearly scared my life out of me yesterday and to-day. I don't see what on earth you meant by it.'
"Ruth, I took tea with that family on the hill-side, and I gave them all the money I had with me. I have now come home. Any plan you have to propose, I'll follow without a word. I have decided that my mission in this life isnotto lead. But shedidsay gold for cold," added Miss Lois, with the spirit of "scissors."
"I am afraid a good many persons say it," answered Anne.
The next day Miss Lois gave herself up passively to the boat. They were to take courage in each other's presence, and row to the solitary cabin on the shore. When they reached it, it was again deserted.
"There is no path leading to it or away from it in any direction," said Miss Lois, after peeping through the small window. "The fire is still burning. The owner, therefore, whoever it is, uses a boat, and can not have been long gone either, or the fire would be out."
"If he had gone down the river, we should have met him," suggested Anne, still haunted by the old fear, and watching the forest glades apprehensively.
"How do you know it is ahe?" said Miss Lois, with grim humor. "Perhaps this, too, is a woman. However, as you say, if he had gone down the river,probablywe should have met him—a 'probably' is all we have to stand on—and the chances are, therefore, that he has gone up. So we will go up."
"THE SECOND BOAT, WHICH WAS FARTHER UP THE LAKE, CONTAINED A MAN.""THE SECOND BOAT, WHICH WAS FARTHER UP THE LAKE, CONTAINED A MAN."
They took their places in the skiff again, and the little craft moved forward. After another half-hour they saw, to their surprise, a broad expanse of shining water openingout before them: the river was the outlet of a little lake two miles long.
"This, then, is where they go fishing," said Miss Lois. "The Blackwells spoke of the pond, but I thought it was on the other side of the valley. Push out, Ruth. There are two boats on it, both dug-outs; we'll row by them."
The first boat contained a boy, who said, "Good-day, mums," and showed a string of fish. The second boat, which was farther up the lake, contained a man. He was also fishing, and his face was shaded by an old slouch hat. Anne, who was rowing, could not see him as they approached; but she saw Miss Lois's hands close suddenly upon each other in their lisle-thread gloves, and was prepared for something, she knew not what. No word was spoken; she rowed steadily on, though her heart was throbbing. When she too could look at the man, she saw what it was: he was holding his rod with his left hand.
Their skiff had not paused; it passed him and his dug-out, and moved onward a quarter of a mile—half a mile—before they spoke; they were afraid the very air would betray them. Then Anne beached the boat under the shade of a tree, took off her straw hat, and bathed her pale face in the clear water.
"After all, it is the vaguest kind of a chance," said Miss Lois, rallying, and bringing forward the common-sense view of the case: "no better a one, at this stage, than the peony farmer or my medicine man. You must not be excited, Ruth."
"I am excited only because I have thought so much of the river," said Anne. "The theory that the man who did it went away from the foot of that meadow in a boat, and up this river, has haunted me constantly."
"Theories are like scaffolding: they are not the house, but you can not build the house without them," said Miss Lois. "What we've got to do next is to see whether this man has all his fingers, whether he is a woman, and whether he says, 'gold.' Will you leave it to me, or will you speak to him yourself? On the whole, I think you had better speak to him: your face is in your favor."
When Anne felt herself sufficiently calm, they rowed down the lake again, and passed nearer to the dug-out, and paused.
"Have you taken many fish?" said Anne, in a voice totally unlike her own, owing to the effort she made to control it. The fisherman looked up, took his rod in his right hand, and, with his left, lifted a string of fish.
"Pretty good, eh?" he said, regarding Anne with slow-coming approval. "Have some?"
"Oh no," she answered, almost recoiling.
"But, on the whole, I think Ishouldlike a few for tea, Ruth," said Miss Lois, hastening to the rescue—"my health," she added, addressing the fisherman, "not being what it was in the lifetime of Mr. Young. How much are your fish? I should like six, if you do not ask too much."
The man named his price, and the widow objected. Then she asked him to hold up the string again, that she might have a better view. He laid his rod aside, held the string in his right hand, and as she selected, still bargaining for the fish she preferred, he detached them with his left hand. Two pairs of eyes, one old, sharp, and aided by spectacles, the other young, soft, intent, yet fearful, watched his every motion. When he held the fish toward them, the widow was long in finding her purse; the palm of his hand was toward them, they could see the underside of the fingers. They were broad, and cushioned with coarse flesh.
Anne had now grown so pale that the elder woman did not dare to linger longer. She paid the money, took the fish, and asked her niece to row on down the lake, not forgetting, even then, to add that she was afraid of the sun's heat, having once had a sun-stroke during the life of the lamented Mr. Young. Anne rowed on, hardly knowing what she was doing. Not until they had reached the little river again, and were out of sight round its curve under the overhanging trees, did they speak.
"Left-handed, and cushions under his finger-tips," said Miss Lois. "But, Ruth, how you acted! You almost betrayed us."
"I could not help it," said Anne, shuddering. "When I saw that hand, and thought— Oh, poor, poor Helen!"
"You must not give way to fancies," said Miss Louis. But she too felt an inward excitement, though she would not acknowledge it.
The fisherman was short in stature, and broad; he was muscular, and his arms seemed too long for his body as he sat in his boat. His head was set on his shoulders without visible throat, his small eyes were very near together, and twinkled when he spoke, while his massive jaw contradicted their ferrety mirthfulness as his muscular frame contradicted the childish, vacant expression of his peculiarly small boyish mouth, whose upper lip protruded over narrow yellow teeth like fangs.
"Faces have little to do with it," said Miss Lois again, half to herself, half to Anne. "It is well known that the portraits of murderers show not a few fine-looking men among them, while the women are almost invariably handsome. WhatInoticed was a certain want in the creature's face, a weakness of some kind, with all his evident craftiness."
When they came to the solitary cabin, Miss Lois proposed that they should wait and see whether it really was the fisherman's home. "It will be another small point settled," she said. "We can conceal our boat, and keep watch in the woods. As he has my money, he will probably come home soon, and very likely go directly down to the village to spend it: that is always the way with such shiftless creatures."
They landed, hid the boat in a little bay among the reeds some distance below the cabin, and then stole back through the woods until they came within sight of its door. There, standing concealed behind two tree trunks, they waited, neither speaking nor stirring. Miss Lois was right in her conjecture: within a quarter of an hour the fisherman came down the river from the lake, stopped at the house, brought out a jug, placed it in his dug-out; then, relocking the door, he paddled by them down the river. They waited some minutes without stirring. Then Miss Lois stepped from her hiding-place.
"Whiskey!" she said. "Andmymoney pays for the damnable stuff!" This reflection kept her silent while they returned to the skiff; but when they were again afloat, she sighed and yielded it as a sacrifice to the emergencies of the quest. Returning to the former subject, she held forth as follows: "It is something, Ruth, but not all. We must not hope too much. What is it? A man lives up the river, and owns a boat; he is left-handed, and has cushions of flesh under his finger-tips: that is the whole. For we can scarcely count as evidence the fact that he is as ugly as a stump fence, such men being not uncommon in the world, and often pious as well. We must do nothing hurriedly, and make no inquiries, lest we scare the game—if itisgame. To-morrow is market-day; he will probably be in the village with fish to sell, and the best way will be for me to find out quietly who his associates are, by using my eyes and not my tongue. His associates, if he has any, might next be tackled, through their wives, perhaps. Maybe they do sewing, some of them; in that case, we could order something, and so get to speaking terms. There's my old challis, which I have had dyed black—it might be made over, though Iwasgoing to do it myself. And now do row home, Ruth; I'm dropping for my tea. This exploring work is powerfully wearing on the nerves."
The next day she went to the village.
Anne, finding herself uncontrollably restless, went down and unfastened the skiff, with the intention of rowing awhile to calm her excited fancies. She went up the river for a mile or two. Her mind had fastened itself tenaciously upon the image of the fisherman, and would not loosen its hold. She imagined him stealing up the stairway and leaning over Helen; then escaping with his booty, running through the meadow, and hiding it in his boat, probably the same old black dug-out she had seen. And then, while she was thinking of him, she came suddenly upon him, sitting in his dug-out, not ten feet distant, fishing. Miss Lois had been mistaken in her surmise: he was not in the village, but here.
There had not been a moment of preparation for Anne;yet in the emergency coolness came. Resting on her oars, she spoke: "Have you any fish to-day?"
He shook his head, and held up one. "That's all," he said, drawing his hand over his mouth by way of preparation for conversation.
"I should not think there would be as many fish here as in the lake," she continued, keeping her boat at a distance by a slight motion of her oars.
"When the wind blows hard, there's more in the river," he answered. "Wind blows to-day."
Was she mistaken? Had he given a sound ofdtoth?
"But the water of the lake must be colder," she said, hardly able to pronounce the word herself.
"Yes, in places where it's deep. But it's mostly shaller."
"How cold is it? Very cold?" (Wasshesaying "gold" too?)
"No, not very, this time o' year. But cold enough in April."
"What?"
"Cold enough in April," replied the fisherman, his small eyes gazing at her with increasing approbation.
He had given the sound ofgto thec. The pulses in Anne's throat and temples were throbbing so rapidly now that she could not speak.
"I could bring yer some fish to-morrer, I reckon," said the man, making a clicking sound with his teeth as he felt a bite and then lost it.
She nodded, and began to turn the boat.
"Where do you live?" he called, as the space between them widened.
She succeeded in pronouncing the name of her hostess, and then rowed round the curve out of sight, trying not to betray her tremulous haste and fear. All the way home she rowed with the strength of a giantess, not knowing how she was exerting herself until she began to walk through the meadow toward the house, when she found her limbs failing her. She reached her room with an effort, and locking her door, threw herself down on a couch to wait for Miss Lois. It was understood in the house that "poor Miss Young" had one of her "mathematical headaches."