Archie was very humble as he reflected that he hadn't done justice to the intelligence and charm, to say nothing of the professional skill of Dr. Katherine Reynolds in his hurried glimpse of her at Heart o' Dreams. His fears that a woman doctor, who was really only a girl of the age of Ruth and Isabel, would not be equal to the emergency were dismissed an hour after she reached Huddleston. She brought the camp nurse with her and was fortified with bags of instruments and hospital supplies.
She went about her examination without a question; made it as though she were daily in the habit of dealing with wounded men; specifically called for boiling water, laid out sponges and bottles and oddly shaped trinkets of steel, and the Governor's room in the ramshackle hotel was quickly transformed into a surgery. Perky had gone aboard the tug, which was to remain in the bay until the outcome of the Governor's injury could be learned. Putney Congdon kept Archie company in the hall outside the sick room.
The morning was breaking when the door opened.
"There's about one chance in a thousand," said Dr. Reynolds, looking very tired but smiling bravely; "but we've taken the chance. There are reasons, I assume, why this matter should be kept quiet, and of course you know the danger,—to you and all of us!"
"It's splendid of you to accept the responsibility; be sure I appreciate it!"
"But I have no right to take it. I've done all I know how to do, but there should be another head and a surer hand. Dr. Mosgrove of Chicago has a summer home twenty miles from Heart o' Dreams. He's an old friend of my family and one of the most skilful surgeons in America. I've written him a note and I'm sure he will come instantly."
The note was sent to the tug for delivery and at eight o'clock the surgeon was at Huddleston. He was in the sick room for a long, a very long time. Archie pounced upon him eagerly when he reappeared. He eyed the young man quizzically, apparently immensely amused about something.
"What does all this mean?" he whispered. "Pirates in these waters where I've been summering for years! Men shot and the police not notified! A girl doctor attending the case! May I trouble you for your name, sir?"
Archie replied with all possible dignity that his name was Ashton Comly, and demanded a professional opinion as to the sick man's chances of recovery. The doctor became instantly serious.
"The bullet pierced the right chest wall and of course there was immediate and copious hemorrhage. You needn't trouble about the delay in getting to the doctor; nature went to work at once, forming clots that plugged automatically the gaping mouth of the severed vessels. You men were fortunate to find Dr. Reynolds; she has handled the case admirably. Dear me! I'm constantly astonished at these girls! You don't know perhaps that your attending physician is a society girl who studied medicine overthe solemn protest of her family? Sat on my knee as a child, and it tickles me immensely to see how coolly she takes this. I approve of her work in every particular."
"Thank you," cried Archie. "Oh, thank you for that! One thing more: would you advise me to summon the patient's sister, his only close relative, I believe? I must do it at once if you think, possibly—"
"Yes. There being always the uncertainties, I should certainly do so. I'll run up in my launch this evening."
Archie accompanied Dr. Mosgrove aboard the tug and gave Perky the hopeful news of the Governor's condition. Eliphalet Congdon demanded to know what had happened in the night, and when he was to be released, and Archie spent some time trying to satisfy him that his solemn covenant with the Governor would be carried out in every particular.
Leary, who had returned to theArthur B. Grovershortly after daylight, showed the strain of the night.
"It was kind o' lonesome buryin' that poor devil over yonder. There wasn't a thing on 'im to tell who he was. That other chap came to and I did the best I could fer 'im, and gave him money; tole him to clear out and keep his mouth shet or he'd do a lot o' time for mixin' up with Carey. I tore down that lunatic's fort and Carey wouldn't know the place himself."
The old fellow's succinct report gave to the burial of the victim of the night's encounter an added gruesomeness. A dead man hidden away under cover of darkness, without benefit of clergy, meant nothing to Leary, who smoked his pipe, and asked in mournfulaccents what was to be done with old man Congdon and Carey. These questions troubled Archie not a little, but when he suggested that the detective had also to be disposed of Leary grinned broadly.
"Ole Governor don't do nothin' like nobody else; y' must a-learned that by this time. That chap ain't no detective; he's a gun man we sent to chum with Carey."
Archie bared his head to the cool morning air. It was almost too much to learn that Briggs, who had so gallantly played the part of a government detective, was really an ally, shrewdly introduced into the Governor's strategy to awaken fear in Eliphalet Congdon.
"Perky ain't no baby," Leary said, "an' you don't ketch 'im runnin' into no detective."
"But Perky wired the Governor that he thought he was being watched?"
Leary grinned again.
"Ole Governor was foolin' you. That telegram was jes' to let Governor know Briggs was on the job. Got t' have his little joke, ole Governor. It tickles 'im t' fool us boys."
Archie went at once to the Huddleston station, where he satisfied himself that the lonely agent knew nothing of the transactions of the night. The receipt and despatch of telegrams by the Governor had been a welcome relief from the routine business of the office, and recognizing Archie as a friend of his patron Mr. Saulsbury, he expressed the hope that they were finding the fishing satisfactory.
Archie drew from the breast pocket of his waistcoat the envelope the Governor's sister had given him the night she dined in the New York house. Inhis subsequent adventures he had guarded it jealously as containing his one clue to the Governor's identity. Now that the evil hour the woman dreaded had come, Archie found himself hesitating as he listened to the agent's complaint of the fate that had stranded him in so desolate a spot. The man turned to answer the importunity of the instrument which was sounding his call and Archie tore open the envelope. In a flowing hand which expressed something of the grace and charm of the woman who had given it to him in circumstances so remarkable, he read:
The agent was taking a train order and was unaware of the agitation of the man at the window. It was the Van Doren that burnt itself into Archie's consciousness. It was an old name of honorable connotations, one with which he had been familiar all his life. It was chiseled in the wall of the church near the pew held for a hundred years by his own family; it was a name of dignity, associated with the best traditions of Manhattan Island; and this, presumably, was the Governor's name. Graybill was unfamiliar, and this puzzled him, for he knew and could place half a dozen Van Dorens, probably relatives in some degree of the Governor, but he recalled no woman of the family who had married a Graybill. Julia had said at the Governor's that she remembered him; but even now with her name before him he could not place her.
He made his message as brief as possible:
Regret that I must act on my promise of several weeks ago and use the address given in confidence. Encouraged to believe that the patient will recover. Suggest, however, that you come at once.
Regret that I must act on my promise of several weeks ago and use the address given in confidence. Encouraged to believe that the patient will recover. Suggest, however, that you come at once.
To this he added instructions as to the most direct route to Huddleston, and signed himself Ashton Comly.
He and Congdon were at the supper table when he received the answer:
Thank you. I am just leaving. J. V. D. G.
Archie was not permitted to enter the sick room, but from time to time he received assurances that the patient's condition was "satisfactory," and at intervals Dr. Reynolds recited with professional brevity data as to temperature, respiration and the like. A second nurse was imperatively needed, but when they were considering the danger of adding to the number of persons who knew that a wounded man was fighting for his life in the abandoned village, Mrs. Leary suggested Sally—Sally who had been in tears from the moment the Governor was carried into the house. Dr. Reynolds accepted Sally on sight and the girl quickly adjusted herself to the routine of the sick chamber.
At eleven o'clock Archie saw the Heart o' Dreams launch approaching Huddleston and leaving Congdon to answer any call from the Governor's bedside, hurried to meet it.
Ruth and Isabel had crossed alone and their stress of mind and heart was manifest before they landed.
"I felt it; I knew that it would come!" cried Ruth. "If only you hadn't gone there! It wasn't worth the sacrifice."
"But we have every reason to hope! We must support him with our faith that he will come out of it!"
"I should never have permitted either of you to come to this place," said Isabel. "I shall always feel that it was my fault."
The obligation to cheer them raised his own spirits as he explained the nature of the Governor's injury while they sat on the hotel veranda. He described the fight at the barricade with reservations, mentioning not at all the fact that a man had died as the result. They understood as fully as he that the whole affair must be suffered to slip into oblivion as quickly as possible.
"The complications are so endless!" said Isabel with a sigh. "In that mass of mail you delivered last night I found a letter from Mrs. Congdon saying that she would arrive today—almost at once, in fact!"
"The prospect isn't wholly pleasing!" he exclaimed, looking at his watch. "I've played the very devil in the Congdons' affairs. I suppose I should lift my hat politely as she steps from the train and tell her that I'm the brute who attempted to make her a widow. She will of course recognize me instantly as the gentleman who escaped with her in a taxi after the kidnaping of her daughter."
"It seems to me," said Isabel soberly, "that from the very moment you and I unfolded our napkins on the tragic night of your sister's dinner the world has been upside down. If we should ever tell all that has happened, and how we have been whirled about and made to do things I'm sure we were never intended to do, there wouldn't be one sane person anywherewho'd believe it. I feel like crying all the time! And I'm not sure that I'm not responsible for all of it, every bit of it! Why, I may as well tell you now that I, poor, weak, foolish I, bade Putney Congdon take horse and ride gaily through the world, carving people with his stout sword! And I played the same trick on you!"
"Oh, he told me all about that!" laughed Archie, glad of something to relieve the tension. "He told me without shame that he had almost fallen in love with you as a distraction from his troubles. But I didn't confess that you had started me for the penitentiary. There's the train, and you must permit me to satisfy Mrs. Congdon that her husband is in a mood for immediate reconciliation before I break the news that he is here."
Mrs. Putney Congdon more than justified the impression he had formed of her in their encounter in Central Park by the manner in which she heard his story. He told it with all brevity on the station platform. First assuring her of Edith's safety, he made a clean breast of the Bailey Harbor visit, but skipped discreetly all that had occurred between that calamitous excursion and his meeting with her in New York.
It was so incredible that it was not until he described his journey to Huddleston in Putney's company that she was able to see any humor in the series of events that had led them all into the north.
"Poor dear Putney! And he doesn't know yet that you nearly killed him!"
"Oh, there are a lot of things he doesn't know. Your father-in-law has given his solemn promise that he will not again attempt to meddle in your affairs.The umbrella that symbolized his tyranny is at the bottom of the lake and if he should die you and your children wouldn't be thrown upon charity."
"This is all too wonderful to be true," she exclaimed. "After all the misery I've endured it can't be possible that happiness is just ahead of me. I had become resigned—"
"Your resignation after Edith was snatched away from you there in the park struck me as altogether charming! Your conduct pleased me mightily. We were both awful frauds, fooling the police and running away!"
"It was delicious! I had always had a wild wicked desire to fool a policeman. Isn't that a dreadful confession! What must you think of me for admitting such a thing!"
"My own derelictions make me very humble; it's only a survival of the primitive in all of us. I shouldn't worry about it. It's terribly easy to become a lost sheep, even a black one. But this is not an hour for philosophical discussion. Let me assure you that the nasty telegram that caused you to leave Bailey Harbor in so bitter a spirit was the work of your father-in-law. Putney had nothing to do with it."
"Oh, I rather guessed that; but I ran away thinking I might rouse my husband to a little self-assertion."
"And when he asserted himself sufficiently to go back to you I was right there to shoot him!"
"You are a highly amusing person! It would interest me a good deal to know your real name and a lot of other things about you."
"In due season you shall know everything. Justnow I haven't the heart to keep you from your husband, and I'm going to send him to you immediately. And as I shrink from telling a man I like so much that I tried to kill him not so long ago, I'm going to turn that agreeable business over to you!"
That night the Governor's condition took an unfavorable turn and Dr. Mosgrove was summoned. He remained until the crisis was passed.
"We must expect progress to be retarded now and then; but now that we've got by this we may feel more confident. He hasn't been wholly conscious at any time, but he's muttered a name several times—Julia; is that the sister? Then the sight of her may help us in a day or two when his mind clears up."
Archie was beset with many fears as he waited the arrival of Mrs. Graybill. His utter ignorance of any details touching the life of his friend seemed now to rise before him like a fog which he was afraid to penetrate. And there was Ruth, with her happiness hanging in the balance; she was in love with a man of whom she knew nothing; indeed the mystery that enfolded him was a part of his fascination for her, no doubt; and if in the Governor's past life there was anything that made marriage with a young woman of Ruth's fineness and sweetness hazardous, the sooner it was known the better. But when he caught a glimpse of Mrs. Graybill in the vestibule of the train his apprehensions vanished. The poise, the serenity of temper, an unquestioning acceptance of the fate that played upon her life,which he had felt at their first meeting struck him anew.
"Our patient is doing well. The news is all good," he said at once.
"I felt that it would be; I couldn't believe that this was the end!"
"We will hope that it is only the beginning!" he said gravely.
"A capital place for a beginning, or ending!" she remarked glancing with a rueful smile at the desolate street and shabby hotel.
Putney and his wife had moved to Heart o' Dreams for a few days. It would be a second honeymoon, Putney said. Mrs. Graybill was introduced into the hotel without embarrassment. It might have seemed that she had foreseen just such a situation and prepared for it. She won Dr. Reynolds' heart by the brevity of her questions, and expressed her satisfaction with everything that had been done. When she came down to the dining-room for luncheon she avoided all reference to the sick man. In her way she was as remarkable as the Governor himself. Her arrival had greatly stirred Mrs. Leary, who, deprived of Sally's services, served the table. Archie was struck by the fact that with only the exchange of commonplace remarks the two women, born into utterly different worlds, seemed to understand each other perfectly. He had merely told Mrs. Leary that the Governor's sister was coming and warned her against letting fall any hint of her knowledge of his ways.
"I've never been in these parts before," Julia remarked to Archie; "I should be glad if you'd show me the beach. We might take a walk a little later."
The hour in which he waited for her tried his soul. The Governor was the one man who had ever roused in him a deep affection, and the dread of finding that under his flippancy, his half-earnest, half-boyish make-believe devotion to the folk of the underworld, he was really an irredeemable rogue, tortured him. These were disloyal thoughts; he hated himself for his doubts. It was impossible that a man of the Governor's blood, his vigor of mind and oddly manifested chivalry could ever have been more than a trifler with iniquity.
"I'm going to ask you to bear with me," said Mrs. Graybill when they reached the shore, "if I seem to be making this as easy for myself as possible. I know that my brother cares a great deal for you. He sent me little notes now and then—he always did that, though the intervals were sometimes long; I know that he would want you to know. Things have reached a point where if he lives he will tell you himself."
"Please don't think I have any feeling that I have any right to know. It's very generous of you to want to tell me. But first it's only fair to give you a few particulars about myself. You said in New York that you knew me and I must apologize for my failure to recall our meeting."
"It was fortunate you didn't! I've known some of your family, I think; your sister is Mrs. Howard Featherstone. Away back somewhere the Van Dorens and a Bennett owned some property jointly. It may have been an uncle of yours?"
"Yes; Archibald Bennett, for whom I was named."
"That's very odd; but it saves explanations. We are not meeting quite as strangers."
"I felt that the moment I saw the name Van Doren. I had never seen your brother until we met in Maine; he was of the greatest service to me; I was in sorry plight when he picked me up."
He was prepared to tell the story of the meeting, everything indeed that had occurred. He had imagined that she would be immensely curious as to all the phases and incidents of his relationship with her brother.
"Just now I shall be happier not to know," she said, and added with a smile: "Later, when my heart is lighter than it is today you may tell me."
She was magnificent, a thoroughbred, this woman, who walked beside him with the air of a queen who might lose a throne but never the mastery of her own soul. She was far more at ease than he, walking with her hands thrust carelessly into the pockets of her coat, halting now and then to gaze across the water.
"My brother is Philip Van Doren, and there were just the two of us. An unusual sympathy bound us together from childhood, and there was never a closer tie between brother and sister. I married his most intimate friend. My husband betrayed him; it was the breach of a trust in which they were jointly liable. It was not merely a theft, it was a gross, dastardly thing, without a single mitigating circumstance. My husband killed himself."
She spoke without a quaver of the beautiful voice, meeting his gaze as she uttered the last sentence as though anxious to spare herself nothing in her desire to convince him of her perfect composure. One might have thought her an amiable woman attempting to entertain a dull companion by summarizing atale she had read that had not interested her particularly.
"It broke Philip's heart; it broke his spirit! It destroyed his generous faith in all men. He was a brilliant student in college and promised to go far in the law; but he felt keenly the dishonor. The financial part of it he of course took care of; that was the least of it. There was always a strain of mysticism in him; and he had gone deeply into astrology and things like that; and when the dark hour came he pretended to find consolation in them. He was born under an evil star, he said, and would not be free of its spell until he had passed through a period of servitude. It sounds like insanity, but it was only a grim ironic distortion of his reason. He said that if honor was so poor a thing he would seek a world that knew no honor. I dread to think how he has spent these years!"
"I have found him the kindest, the most loyal, the most lovable of men. He has simply mocked at life—the life he used to know."
"Yes; I suppose that was the way of it," she said pensively. "In one of his brief messages he spoke of a young woman who had interested him, but I never can tell when he's serious—"
Archie met the question promptly.
"A charming young girl, Ruth Hastings, whose antecedents and connections are the best. You need have no fears on that score. You shall see her, very soon."
She permitted him to describe the meeting with Ruth and Isabel at Rochester, and her face betrayed relief and pleasure as he made it clear that the Governor's romance was in no way discreditable.
"It is curious, and in his own way of looking at things may be significant, that your telegram reached me on the day following the seventh anniversary of the beginning of his exile."
"He had looked forward to the seventh anniversary as marking the end of the dark influences; he believed there would be a vast change in his affairs."
"If only he lives!" she exclaimed. "Is it possible that he can ever step back into the world he left?"
"You may be sure he has planned a return, with marriage at the very threshold."
"Then God grant that he may live!" she said fervently.
The following evening, after Dr. Mosgrove's visit had left their hopes high, Archie carried her to Heart o' Dreams. Happiness shone in the stars over the northern waters. Putney Congdon and his wife were enjoying to the full the peace that followed upon the storms of their married life. They had established themselves in a tent on the outskirts of the camp and declared that they might remain there forever. A girl bugler sounded taps and the lights went out, leaving tired and happy youth to the fellowship of dreams.
Isabel gave Archie no opportunity to speak to her alone, and he found her aloofness dismaying. Her scruples against hearing protestations of love from a man she believed she had injured were creditable to her conscience, but Archie was all impatient to shatter them. She made a candid confession to Mrs. Congdon, with Putney and Archie standing by.
"With malice aforethought I practiced my vampirish arts upon these two men! And, Alice, the crudest thing you could do would be to forgive me!I couldn't bear it. I flirted with Mr. Congdon; not only that but I took advantage of his distress over his father's efforts to estrange you two to counsel him to lead a reckless, devil-may-care existence. And I tried the same thing on Mr. Bennett, only he was much more susceptible than your husband and took me more seriously. I want you, one and all, to be sure that I hate myself most cordially!"
"The end justified the means, I think," said Mrs. Congdon.
"I found a friend I'm not going to lose as one result," said Putney. "And if the sick man across the bay recovers I hope I have another lifelong friend there."
"Oh, it's all so strange!" cried Mrs. Congdon. "One might think that we must suffer tribulation before we know what perfect happiness is! And I never expect to understand all that has happened to you men. Is it possible that you'll ever settle down again?"
"That depends—" Archie remarked, glancing meaningfully at Isabel,—a glance which Mrs. Congdon detected and appraised with that prescience which makes every woman a match-maker.
On the wharf they lingered, like a company of old friends reluctant for even a brief parting; Ruth, lantern in hand, stood beside Mrs. Graybill, looking like a child beside the stately woman. As Archie cried "All aboard," Julia caught Ruth in her arms and kissed her.
"Good night, little girl!" she said softly.
It was like a benediction and the very graciousness of act and word lightened Archie's vigil as all night he watched outside the Governor's door.
On the eighth day Dr. Mosgrove announced that his visits were no longer necessary; he ran up to Huddleston, he told Archie, for the pleasure of meeting the agreeable people he found there. The Governor was making an extraordinary recovery, and the bracing northern air would soon set him up. Someone was always on the water between Leary's hotel and Heart o' Dreams, and clouds no longer darkened the bay.
Dr. Mosgrove had made a careful examination of Carey, and recommended that he be sent to a sanatorium for treatment. Perky undertook to carry him to a private institution near Chicago suggested by the doctor, and this became another of the series of strange errands that fell to the lot of theArthur B. Grover. Eliphalet Congdon had been importuning Archie to release him, but it had seemed wise to give the erratic millionaire more time in which to meditate upon his sins.
When the tug returned Archie found that the old gentleman had taken advantage of a day's parole in Chicago to do considerable shopping. In a new suit of clothes he really looked, as Perky said, like a white man; but the change in him was not merely as to his outward person. He opened a bag on deck and displayed with pride a pearl necklace he had purchased for his daughter-in-law, a handsome watch for young Edith and another for his grandson, whom Mrs. Congdon had left with a friend in the east.
"I guess I haven't been square with Putney," he remarked, "and now's a good time to let himknow how I feel about it. Here," he continued, producing a bulky envelope, "is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in government bonds that he may use as he likes."
"Grand; perfectly bully!" cried Archie. "Please consider yourself discharged from the ship. We'll go right over to Heart o' Dreams and spread the glad tidings."
Though so many vistas were brightening, Archie was still troubled by Isabel's persistent refusal to see him alone, or to give him any opportunity to break down the barriers she had raised against him. After luncheon at the camp, where Eliphalet Congdon proved himself a very likable human being, he sought her as she was leaving the dining hall.
Her young charges were skipping gaily about her; there was no question of their admiration and affection for her. He caught the spirit of their gaiety and took advantage of a moment when Isabel emerged smiling from an adoring group to plant himself before her.
"You are running away from me!" he said sternly. "And that's not fair."
"Oh, this is my busiest day! You mustn't think a place like this runs automatically."
"I think nothing of the kind. But your studied efforts to escape from me are embarrassing. Ruth, the Congdons, Mrs. Graybill—everybody is noticing it!"
"Certain matters are one's personal affair," she answered. "Really I must ask you to excuse me."
"I refuse to be snubbed again! You are trampling me under foot, and I refuse to be stepped on any more. I wish to assure you, Miss Perry, that my love for you is not to be spurned with impunity!"
"Please be careful! Those girls over there are watching us."
"A wonderful opportunity for them to see a desperate man making love; an invaluable part of their education! They will never forget how I fell upon my knees and declared myself!"
"Oh, you wouldn't! You really wouldn't! You forget that these children are highly impressionable!"
"So am I, and extremely sensitive. It would be fine if you'd join me in a little walk. If you refuse I shall follow you the rest of the day singing. The Governor and I did a good deal of singing in our travels and—"
As he filled his lungs as though about to burst into song she hastily turned toward the wood.
"You seem to forget that I'm mistress here while you're merely a guest! I hate to say it, but you're in serious danger of becoming a nuisance."
"You're not resentful and hateful enough yet to frighten me away.
"It's a fact we can't escape from that you and I are not free agents and we haven't been from the very moment we met at May's house. And the lines converge here; you've got to admit that!"
"But they lead away again in quite opposite directions. It is cruel of you to insist—"
"I insist that I love you! That's the only thing that matters!"
"Except," she corrected, "your cheerful assumption that I reciprocate the feeling, when—"
"Let me begin all over again," he interrupted hastily. "You must realize that all the odd happenings that followed our meeting in Washington have come out pretty well; only this little affair of ours—"
"You call it an affair! Calamity would be a better term for it."
This silenced him for some time. Tradition held that the trail they followed was an inheritance from Indian times; it was like an ineffaceable line drawn in the forest by the red men in assertion of their permanent title to the soil.
As she walked before him, carrying her head high, his heart ached with love for her. It would be best perhaps not to urge her further; to wait until the camp closed and then see her in a different environment. It might be that his sister would arrange this for him, and he took courage from the thought.
"It has been in my mind for a day or two that May must be wondering what's become of me. I always write to her, you know; and she imagines me in the Rockies. There must be a stack of mail waiting for me at Banff; I must wire to have it forwarded."
"You needn't necessarily give up the trip—"
She turned her head to dodge an overhanging bough and he caught a glimpse of her face; she was crying; and new and world-shaking emotions were stirred in him by the sight of her tear-wet cheek.
"Do you know," he said, "when we talk about clearing up things I'd forgotten about that buriedtreasure. I think it would be a mistake for me to leave without exhausting all the possibilities of finding your grandfather's buried gold. I wonder if poor Carey knew any more about it than you do!"
"I'm sure he didn't. There are holes here and there in these woods that he dug in his search. He had an idea that it might be found in the ruins of grandfather's house, but that stood where I built the camp hall and I had the old cellar thoroughly explored. Why!" she exclaimed, stopping short and glancing about thoughtfully, "that's strange."
"We're lost, I hope!"
"Not lost; but there was a fork in the trail and I must have made the wrong turn. I don't remember that I ever saw that fallen tree before."
At some time, perhaps several years earlier, a storm had evidently centered its fury about the place where they stood, and a big hemlock crushing in its fall several smaller trees lay prone across the trail.
"That old fellow must have made a mighty crash when he went down. I'm sure that I never came this way before."
"Here's an old scar," said Archie, "where some one must have blazed the tree years and years ago. It's the mark of an ax or hatchet. And look! Three other big trees bear the same mark. They define a square and must have been made for some purpose!"
Discussion of the markings brought them immediately into accord. Isabel was perplexed to find herself in a spot she had never visited before though she had spent the previous summer on the land,planning the camp, and thought she knew every foot of it. She peered into the pit torn by the roots of the huge tree. The sunlight glinted brightly upon something that lay half hidden in the earth.
"Oh, how wonderful!" she cried and placed a gold piece in his hands.
They knelt together, tearing up the weeds and loosening the earth. It was Archie who quickly found a second coin, a ten-dollar gold piece stamped 1859. With a stick he dug into the hole and soon they had made a little heap of bright coins, laughing like children with each discovery. A deeper probe resulted in the unearthing of a splintered cedar plank evidently torn from a chest that had contained the money.
"Of all the astonishing things that ever happened this is the most utterly paralyzing!" exclaimed Archie jubilantly.
Using the board as a spade he scooped out a capful of coins—gold, American, English and French, which the Southerner had buried in the northern wilderness.
"It won't do to leave this place unprotected, and we must stop or we'll have more than we can carry. We must bring Putney back to help. It's my guess that there's a chest of money at the foot of each of these blazed trees."
"And pretty good hiding places, too, where the gold might have remained forever if—"
"If you hadn't been hating me so that you lost your way!"
They stood with the heap of gold between them, the bewilderment of discovery in their eyes.
"This is the end of the rainbow and the gold liesat our feet!" he said, and he took her hands, and the one still wearing the bandage he held very, very gently. "Love we know to be better than much fine gold; and wouldn't it be a pity for the finding of these coins to mark the very end, with nothing beyond! And life is so big and wonderful I want your help to make mine of some use—"
She looked at him long and searchingly, and her eyes were so grave, their questioning seemed so interminable, that he did not know until she spoke that her lips had trembled into a smile.
"If you can forgive me," she said; and she laid her hands upon his shoulders, lightly as though by their touch she were investing him with her hope in life renewed and strengthened, and giving pledge that they would walk together thereafter to the end of their days.
During his convalescence the matter of the sixty thousand dollars taken from Seebrook at Cornford troubled the Governor greatly. While he had not personally profited by that transaction it was, he said, his nearest approach to actual larceny and he wished to make reparation, the more particularly as Eliphalet complained that the sale of his stock was frustrated by the mysterious substitution of Leary's stolen bills for the money in Seebrook's trunk. Whereupon Archie bought the stock from Eliphalet and sent it with ten thousand dollars in cash to Seebrook, enclosing in the packet he confided to Briggs for delivery a note explaining that the theft had been a mere bit of pleasantry for which the guilty person offered the sincerest apologies.
Before he left the North the Governor made generous provision for all who had shared his fortunes. Perky sold theArthur B. Groverto a dredging company in Chicago and the proceeds were divided among the crew. To each man's share the Governor made a substantial addition with the stipulation that the recipient should engage thereafter in some honorable calling. It may be said that in every instance of which the present chronicler has knowledge the man thus endowed invested wisely in a lawful business and so far has kept his promise.
When he closed the hotel Leary took Perky to his home further up the lake, and as Mrs. Leary was perfectly capable of managing the confectionery alone, the two old friends purchased a garage, where in the abundant leisure of the long northern winters they discuss the exploits of their lawless days and read the newspaper reports of the performances of their successors in the predatory arts, deploring, of course, the ineptitude of the new generation. The underground trail ceased to exist with the passing of the Governor, and as you tour the Green Mountain State you may pause at Bill Walker's farm and enjoy a glass of buttermilk on his veranda without fear of a raid by the constabulary.
Eliphalet Congdon is at peace with all the world, and wherever a chess tournament is forward he may be observed, sometimes an interested spectator, but not infrequently a participant and a shrewd and dangerous adversary.
Sally Walker deserves and shall receive a final word. When Mrs. Graybill left Huddleston, happy and wholly at ease as to her brother's future, shetook Sally with her, with every intention of adopting the girl and carrying her abroad for a protracted stay. As Pete Barney was killed late in the summer while attempting to escape from the Ohio penitentiary, Sally was quite free to enter upon a new life, and from all accounts she is realizing fully the expectations of her benefactress.
In the loveliest of Colorado's valleys you may, if you exercise your eyes intelligently, note three houses in the Spanish style, with roads that link them together as though publishing the fact that the owners of the surrounding ranches are bound by the closest and dearest ties. As an adjunct of his residence Putney Congdon maintains a machine shop where he finds ample time for experiment. The Archibald Bennetts are learning all there is to know about fruit culture; and they are so happy that they are in danger of forgetting the existence of cities. Farthest of the three homes from the railroad, and where the hills begin, Philip and Ruth Van Doren chose their abode. And you may see them any day that you care to penetrate to their broad pastures, riding together, viewing with contemplative eyes the distant peaks or the cattle that are the Governor's delight, a link, he says, between the present and the olden times when the world was young. And often at night, when they are not with the Congdons or the Bennetts, they ride for hours in silence, so great is their happiness, so perfect their understanding, so deep their confidence in the stars.
Books byMeredith Nicholson
Lady Larkspur
"This is pure comedy carried on in high spirits and mingled with the charm of romance."—Outlook.
"There is a gracefulness to the dialogue and an artistic balance in the characterization that keep one reminded that this is an author who is also an artist down to the last word."—Philadelphia Press.
"Mr. Nicholson keeps us entertained and uncertain to the end."—Boston Herald.
The MadnessofMay
Illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele
"May to Mr. Nicholson is neither a person nor a month. It is a state of mind and an intoxication of spirit. The little tale is a gay and joyous fantasy that plays with the imagination like the wind through new-leafed trees."—New York Sun.
"No one who wishes to be charmed out of himself or herself for an hour or so should neglect to read the story."—Philadelphia Ledger.
"Meredith Nicholson has written nothing more charmingly fanciful or more filled with the spirit of the springtime than 'The Madness of May.'"—St. Louis Republic.
ByMeredith Nicholson
The ValleyofDemocracy
Illustrated by Walter Tittle
"It is a book which could have been written only by a Westerner; and it is a book for every American, Westerner and Easterner, Northerner and Southerner, to read, mark, ponder, and inwardly digest."—New York Times.
"The book radiates the spirit that makes the West fascinating."—Outlook.
"His chapters are set forth with that same easy facility in letters which has marked his works in fiction."—New York World.
"A notably serious and thoughtful study of the American mind, character, and tendencies in the Middle West.... It is a book of fascinating interest and of the greatest possible civic and patriotic value."—New York Tribune.
"Meredith Nicholson has done a great work in this masterly study of the Middle West. It is a national, nay, more, an international service which is performed in these illuminating pages, for in interpreting America to Americans the author is also interpreting America, or a very considerable section of it, to the world at large."—San Francisco Chronicle.
"It is a study of the Middle West—which is the 'Valley' indicated—a portrayal of its people, its life, and its activities so vivid as to have almost the effect of a moving picture."—Indianapolis Star.
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York