Now that it was all explained, it seemed to Bennington de Laney to be ridiculously simple. He wondered how he could have been so blind. For the moment, however, all other emotions were swallowed up in intense mortification over the density he had displayed, and the ridiculous light in which he must have appeared to all the actors in the comedy. His companion perceived this, and kindly hastened to relieve it.
"You're wondering how it all happened," said he, "but you don't want to ask about it. I'm going to tell you the story of your life. You see, Bert and I knew the Fays very well in Boston, and we knew also that they were out here in the Hills. That's what tickled us so when you said you were coming out to this very place. You know yourself, Ben, that you were pretty green when you were in New York—you must know it, because you have got over it so nicely since—and it struck us, after you talked so much about the 'Wild West,' that it would be a shame if you didn't get some of it. So we wrote Jim that you were coming, and to see to it that you had a time."
Jim chuckled a little. "From his letters, I guess you had it. He wrote about that horse he sprung on you, and the time they lynched you, and all the rest of it, and we thought we had done pretty well, especially since Jim wrote he thought you weren't half bad, and had come through in good shape. He wrote, too, that you had run against Bill, and that Bill was fooling you up in some way—way unspecified. He seemed to be a little afraid that Bill was trifling with your young affections—how is it Ben, anyway?—but he said that Bill was very haughty on the subject, and as he'd never been able to do anything with her before, he didn't believe he'd have much success if he should try now. I suggested that Bill might get in a little deep herself," went on James, watching his listener's face keenly, "but Bert seemed inclined to the opinion that any one as experienced as Bill was perfectly able to take care of herself anywhere. She's a mighty fine girl, Ben, old man," suddenly concluded this startling youth, holding out his hand, "and I wish you every success in the world in getting her!"
"Thank you, Jeems," replied Bennington simply, without attempting to deny the state of affairs. "I'm sure I'm glad of your good wishes, but I'm afraid I haven't any show now." He sighed deeply.
"I'll give an opinion on that after I see Bill again," observed the artist sagely.
"It always struck me as being queer that two of the most refined people about here should happen to be living in the same house," commented Bennington, only just aware that it had so struck him.
"Did it, indeed?" said Leslie drolly. "You're just bursting with sagacity now, aren't you? And your Sherlock-Holmes intellect is seething with conjecture. The lover's soul is far above the sordid earthly considerations which interest us ordinary mortals, but I'll bet a hat you are wondering how it comes that a Boston girl is out here without any more restraint on her actions than a careless brother who doesn't bother himself, and why she's out here at all, and a few things like that. 'Fess up."
"Well," acknowledged Bennington a trifle reluctantly, "of course it is a little out of the ordinary, but then it's all right, somehow, I'll swear."
"All right! Of course it's all right! They haven't any father or mother, you know, and they are independent of action, as you've no doubt noticed. Bill kept house for Jim for some time—and they used to keep a great house, I tell you," said James, smacking his lips in recollection. "Bert and I used to visit there a good deal. That's why they call me Jeems—to distinguish me from Jim. Then Jim got tired of doing nothing—they possess everlasting rocks—you know their lamented dad was a sort of amateur Croesus—and he decided to monkey with mines. Bert and I were here one summer, so Bill and Jim just pulled up stakes and came along too. They have been here ever since. They're both true sports and like the life, and all that; and, besides, Jim has kept busy monkeying with mining speculation. They're the salt of the earth, that pair, if theydoworry poor old Boston to death with their ways of doing things. That's one reason I like 'em so much. Society has fits over their doings, but it can't get along without them."
"The Fays are a pretty good family, aren't they?" inquired Bennington. He was irresistibly impelled to ask this question.
"Best going. Mayflower, William the Conqueror, and all that rot. You must know of the Boston Fays."
"I do. That is, I've heard of them; but I didn't know whether they were the same."
Jeems perceived that the topic interested the young fellow, so he descanted at length concerning the Fays, their belongings, and their doings. Time passed rapidly. Bennington was surprised to see Jim coming down to them through the afterglow of sunset announcing vociferously that the meal was at last prepared.
"I've fed the old lady," he announced, "and unlocked her. She doesn't know what's up anyway. She just sits there like a graven image, scared to death. She doesn't know a relocation from a telegraph pole. I told her to get a move on her and fix us up some bunks, and I guess she's at it now."
They consulted as to the best means of guarding the prisoners. It was finally agreed that Leslie should stand sentinel until the others had finished supper.
"I want to watch the effect of this light on the hills," he announced positively, "and I'm not hungry, and Jim ought to cool off before coming out into the air, and Ben's shoulder ought to be taken care of. Get along with ye!"
Bennington accompanied Jim to the meal very cheerfully. The facts as to the latter's persecutions remained the same, but in some way they did not hold the same proportions as heretofore. The mere item that Jim Fay was Mary's brother, instead of her lover, made all the difference in the world. He chattered in a lively fashion concerning the method of work to be adopted. Suddenly he pulled himself up short.
"I think I must beg your pardon," he said. "I heard about it all from Jim Leslie. I have been very green, and you were quite right. If you still want to do so, let's go into this together as friends."
"No pardon coming to me," responded Fay heartily. "I've been a little tough on you occasionally, that I'll admit, and if I've done too much, I'm sure I begyourpardon. I saw you had the right stuff in you that day when you stuck to the horse until you rode him, and I've always liked you first-rate since then. And I wouldn't worry about this last matter. You were green to the country, and were put down here without definite instructions. You trusted Davidson, of course, and got fooled in it; but then you just followed Bishop's lead in that. He'd been trusting Davidson before you got here, and if he hadn't trusted him right along, you can bet you'd have had your directions from A to Z. He was as much to blame as you were, and you'll find that he knows it."
"I'm afraid you can't make me feel any better about that," objected Bennington, shaking his head despondently.
"Well, you'll feel better after a time, and anyway there's no actual harm done."
At this moment Bert Leslie entered.
"Bill's tickled to death," he announced. "She says she's coming up first thing in the morning. She wanted to come right off and cook supper, but I wouldn't let her. She couldn't very well stay here all night, and it's pretty late now. What you got here? Pork? Coffee? Murphies?"
He sat down and began to eat hungrily. Jim arose to relieve the sentinel at the mouth of the shaft, at the same time advising de Laney to go to bed as soon as possible.
"You're tired," he said, "and need rest. Wet that compress well with Pond's Extract, and we'll dress it again in the morning."
In the kitchen he found the strange sombre woman sitting bolt upright in silence, her arms folded rigidly across her flat bosom. She looked straight in front of her, and rocked slowly to and fro on her chair.
"You mustn't worry, Mrs. Arthur," consoled Fay kindly, pausing for a moment. "There isn't going to be any trouble. It's just a little matter of mining law. We'll have to keep your husband locked up for a few days, but he won't be harmed."
The woman made no reply. Fay looked at her sharply again, and passed out.
"Jeems," he directed that individual at the mouth of the shaft, "go get your grub. Send the kid to bed right off, and then you and Bert come down here and we'll fix up these prairie dogs of ours down the hole."
Jeems and his brother therefore helped the wounded hero to bed, and left him to a much-needed slumber; after which they returned to the spot of light in the darkness which marked the glow of Fay's pipe. That capable individual issued directions. First of all they lowered, by means of a light cord, food and water to their prisoners. The latter maintained a sullen silence, and it was only by the lightening of the burden at the end of the line that those above knew their provisions had been appropriated. Then followed blankets. The Leslies were strongly in favour of as uncomfortable a confinement as possible, and so disapproved of blankets, but Fay insisted. After that the brothers manned the windlass and let Jim down in a bowline about twenty feet, while he detached and removed two lengths of the shaft ladder. This left no means of ascent, as the walls of the shaft were smoothly timbered; but, to make matters sure, they covered the mouth with inch thick boards on which they piled large chunks of ore.
"You don't suppose they'll smother?" suggested Bert.
"Not much! There's only three of them, and often men drilling will stay down ten or twelve hours at a time without using up the air."
"Sweet dreams, gentlemen!" called the irrepressible Jeems in farewell.
"There's one other thing," said Jim, "and then we can crawl in."
He approached the cabin in which Arthur and his wife were accustomed to sleep, and listened until he had satisfied himself that Mrs. Arthur was inside. Then he softly locked the door, the key of which he had appropriated immediately after supper, and propped shut the heavy wooden shutter of the window.
"No dramatic escapes in ours, thank you!" he muttered. He drew back and surveyed his work with satisfaction. "Come on, boys, let's turn in. To-morrow we slave."
Although he had retired so early, and in so exhausted a condition, Bennington de Laney could not sleep. He had taken a slight fever, and the wound in his shoulder was stiff and painful. For hours on end he lay flat on his back, staring at the dim illuminations of the windows and listening to the faint out-of-door noises or the sharper borings of insects in the logs of the structure. His mind was not active. He lay in a semi-torpor, whose most vivid consciousness was that of mental discomfort and the interminability of time.
The events of the day rose up before him, but he seemed to loathe them merely because they had been of so active a character, and now he could not bear to have his brain teased even with their impalpable shadow.
Strangely enough, this altitude seemed to create a certain dead polarity between him and them. They lay sullenly outside his brain, repelled by this dead polarity, and he looked at them languidly, against the dim illumination of the window, with a dull joy that they could not come near him and enter the realm of his thoughts. All this was the fever.
In a little time these events became endowed with more palpable bodies which moved. The square of semilucent window faded into something indescribable, and that into something indescribable, and that into something else, still indescribable.
They moved swiftly, and things happened. He found himself suddenly in a long gallery, half in the dusk, half in the lamplight, pacing slowly back and forth, waiting for something, he knew not what. To him came a bustling motherly old woman with a maid's cap on, who said, "Sure, Master Ben, the moon is shining, and, let me tell ye, at the end of the hall is a balcony of iron, and Miss Mary will be glad you know that same." And at that he seemed to himself to be hunting for a coin with which to tip her. He discovered it turned to lead between his fingers, whereupon the old woman laughed shrilly and disappeared, and he found himself alone on the prairie at midnight.
His mind seemed to be filled with great thoughts which would make him famous. Over and over again he said to himself: "The rain pours and the people down below chuckle as they move about each under his little umbrella of self-conceit. They look up to the mountain, saying, 'The fool! Why looks he so high? He is lost in the mists up there, and he might be safe and dry with us.' But the mountain has over him the arch of the universe, and sleeps calmly in the sun of truth. Little recks he of the clouds below, and knows not at all the little self-satisfied fools who pity him," and he thought this was the sum of all wisdom, and that with it would come immortality.
Then a bell began to boom, a deep-toned bell, whose tolling was inexpressibly solemn, and poured into his heart a sadness too deep for sorrow. As though there dwelt an enchantment in the very sound itself, the dark prairies shifted like a scene, and in their stead he saw, in a cold gray twilight, a high doorway built of a cold gray stone, rough-hewed and heavy. Through its arch passed then a file of gray-cowled monks, their faces concealed. Each carried a torch, whose flickering, wavering light cast weird cowled figures on the gray stone, and in their midst was borne a bier, covered with white. And as the deep bell boomed on through all the vision, like a subtle thrilling presence, Bennington seemed to himself to stand, finger on lip, the eternal custodian of the Secret of it all—the secret that each of these cowled figures was a Man—a divine soul and a body, with ears, and eyes, and a brain; that he had thoughts, and his life that is and is to come was of these thoughts; that there beat hearts beneath that gray, and that their voices must not be heeded; that in the morning these wearied eyes awaited but the eve, and that the evening brought no hope for a new day; that these silent, awesome beings lived within the heavy stones alone with monotony, until the bell tolled, as now, and they were carried through the arched doorway into the night; and, above all, that to each there were sixty minutes in the hour, and twenty-four hours in the day, and years and years of these days. This was the Secret, and he was its custodian. None of the others knew of it; but its awfulness made him sad and stern. He checked the days, he numbered the hours, he counted the minutes rigorously lest one escape. One did escape, and he turned back to catch it, and pursued it far away from the stone doorway and the dull twilight, and even the sound of the bell, off into a land where there were many hills and valleys, among which the fugitive Minute hid elusively. And he pursued the Minute, calling upon it to come to him, and the name by which he called it was Mary. Then he saw that the square of the window had become yellow with the sun, and that through it he could hear plainly the voices of the Leslies talking in high tones.
His brain was very clear, more so than usual, and he not only received many impressions, and ordered them with ease and despatch, but his very senses seemed more than ordinarily acute. He could distinguish even by day, when the night stillness had withdrawn its favouring conditions, the borings of the sawdust insects in the logs of the cabin. Only he was very tired. His hands seemed a long distance away, as though it would require an extraordinary effort of the will to lift them. So he lay quiet and listened.
The conversation, of which he was the eavesdropper, was carried on by fits and starts. First a sentence would be delivered by one of the Leslies; then would ensue a pause as though for a reply, inaudible to any but the interlocutors themselves; then another sentence; and so on, like a man at a telephone. After a moment's puzzling over it, Bennington understood that Jim Leslie was talking to one of the prisoners down the shaft.
"You have the true sporting spirit, sir," cried the voice of Jeems. "I honour you for it. But so philosophical a resignation, while it inclines our souls to know more of you personally, nevertheless renders you much less interesting in such a juncture as the present. I would like to hear from Mr. Davidson."
Pause.
"That was a performance, Mr. Davidson, which I can not entirely commend. It is fluent, to be sure, but it lacks variety. A true artist would have interspersed those finer shades and gradations of meaning which go to express the numerous and clashing emotions which must necessarily agitate your venerable bosom. You surely mean more thandamn.Damnis expressive and forceful, because capable of being enunciated at one explosive effort of the breath, but it is monotonous when too freely employed. To be sure, you might with some justice reply that you had qualified said adjective strongly—but the qualification was trite though blasphemous. And you limited it very nicely—but the limitation to myself is unjust, as it overlooks my brother's equitable claims to notice."
Pause.
"Ibegpardon! Kindly repeat!"
Pause.
"Delicious! Mr. Davidson, you have redeemed yourself. Bertie, did you hear Mr. Davidson's last remark?"
"No!" replied another voice. "Couldn't be bothered. What was it?"
"Mr. Davidson, with a polished sarcasm that amounted to genius, advised me in his picturesque vernacular 't' set thet jaw of mine goin', and then go away an' leave it!'"
Pause.
"I beg you, Mr. Slayton, do not think of such a thing. I would not have him repressed for anything in the world. As you value our future acquaintanceship, do not end our interview. Thank you! I appreciate your compliment, and in return will repeat that, though in a pretty sharp game, you are a true sport. Our friend Arthur is strangely silent. I have never met Mr. Arthur. I have heard that either his face or his hat looks like a fried egg, but I forget for the moment which was so characterized."
Pause.
"Fie, fie! Mr. Arthur. Addison, in his most intoxicated moments, would never have used such language."
And then the man in the cabin, lying on the bed, began to laugh in a low tone. His laugh was not pleasant to hear. He was realizing how funny things were to other people—things that had not been funny to him at all. For the first time he caught a focus on his father, with his pompous pride and his stilted diction; on his mother's social creed. He cared as much for them as ever and his respect was as great, but now he realized that outsiders could never understand them as he did, and that always to others they must appear ridiculous. So he laughed. And, too, he perceived that the world would see something grimly humorous in his insistence on the girl's parentage, when all the time, in the home to which he was to bring her, dwelt these unlovable, snobbish old parents of his own. So he laughed. And he thought of how he had been fooled, and played with, and duped, and cheated, and all but disgraced by the very people on whom he had looked down from a fancied superiority. And so he laughed. And as he laughed his hands swelled up to the size of pillows, and he thought that he was dressed in a loose garment spotted all over with great spots, and that he was standing on a stage before these grave, silent hillmen. The light came in through a golden-yellow square just behind them. In the front row sat Mary, looking at him with wide-open, trusting eyes. And he was revolving these hands like pillows around each other, trying to make the sombre men and the wistful girl laugh with him, while over and over certain words slipped in between his cachinnations, like stray bird-notes through a rattle of drums.
"I have no fresh motley for my lady's amusement," he was saying to her, "no new philosophies to spread out for my lady's inspection, no bright pictures to display for my lady's pleasure, and so I, like a poor poverty-stricken minstrel whose harp has been broken, yet dare beg at the castle gate for a crumb of my lady's bounty." At which he would have wept, but could only laugh louder and louder.
Then dimly he knew again he was in his own room, and he felt that several people were moving back and forth quickly. He tried to rise, but could not, and he knew that he was slipping back to the hall and the solemn crowd of men. He did not want to go. He grasped convulsively at the blanket with his sound hand, and shrieked aloud.
"I am sick! I am sick! I am sick!" he cried louder and louder.
Some one laid a cool hand on his forehead, and he lay quiet and smiled contentedly. The room and the people became wraithlike. He saw them still, but he saw through them to a reality of soft meadows and summer skies, from which Mary leaned, resting her hand on his brow. Voices spoke, but muffled, as though by many veils. They talked of various things.
"It's the mountain fever," he heard one say. "It's a wonder he escaped it so long."
Then the cool hand was withdrawn from his brow, and inexorably he was hurried back into the land of visions.
Bennington de Laney found himself lying comfortably in bed, listening with closed eyes to a number of sounds. Of these there most impressed him two. They were a certain rhythmical muffled beat, punctuated at intervals by a slight rustling of paper; and a series of metallic clicks, softened somewhat by distance. After a time it occurred to him to open his eyes. At once he noticed two things more—that he had some way acquired fresh white sheets for his bed, and that on a little table near the foot of his bunk stood a vase of flowers. These two new impressions satisfied him for some time. He brooded over them slowly, for his brain was weak. Then he allowed his gaze to wander to the window. From above its upper sash depended two long white curtains of some lacelike material, freshly starched and with deep edges, ruffled slightly in a pleasing fashion. They stirred slowly in the warm air from the window. Bennington watched them lazily, breathing with pleasure the balmy smell of pine, and listening to the sounds. The clinking noises came through the open window. He knew now that they meant the impact of sledge on drill. Some one was drilling somewhere. His glance roved on, and rested without surprise on a girl in a rocking chair swaying softly to and fro, and reading a book, the turning of whose leaves had caused the rustling of paper which he had noticed first.
For a long time he lay silent and contented. Her fine brown hair had been drawn back smoothly away from her forehead into a loose knot. She was dressed in a simple gown of white—soft, and resting on the curves of her slender figure as lightly as down on the surface of the warm meadows. From beneath the full skirt peeped a little slippered foot, which tapped the floor rhythmically as the chair rocked to and fro. Finally she glanced up and discovered him locking at her. She arose and came to the bedside, her finger on her lips.
"You mustn't talk," she said sweetly, a great joy in her eyes. "I'm so glad you're better."
She left the room, and returned in a little time with a bowl of chicken broth, which she fed him with a spoon. It tasted very good to him, and he felt the stronger for it, but as yet his voice seemed a long distance away. When she turned to leave the room, however, he murmured inarticulately and attempted to stir. She came back to the bed at once.
"I'll be back in a minute," she said gently, but seeing some look of pleading in his eyes, she put the empty bowl and spoon on the little table and sat down on the floor near the bed. He smiled, and then, closing his eyes, fell asleep—outside the borders of the land of visions, and with the music of a woman's voice haunting the last moments of his consciousness.
After the fever had once broken, his return to strength was rapid. Although accompanied by delirium, and though running its full course of weeks, the "mountain fever" is not as intense as typhoid. The exhaustion of the vital forces is not as great, and recuperation is easier. In two days Bennington was sitting up in bed, possessed of an appetite that threatened to depopulate entirely the little log chicken coop. He found that the tenancy of the camp had materially changed. Mrs. Lawton and Miss Fay had moved in, bag and baggage—but without the inquisitive Maude, Bennington was glad to observe.
Mrs. Lawton, in the presence of an emergency, turned out to be helpful in every way. She knew all about mountain fevers for one thing, and as the country was not yet blessed with a doctor, this was not an unimportant item. Then, too, she was a most capable housekeeper—she cooked, marketed, swept, dusted, and tyrannized over the mere men in a manner to be envied even by a New England dame. Fay and the Leslies had also taken up their quarters in the camp. Old Mizzou and the Arthurs had gone. The old "bunk house" now accommodated a good-sized gang of miners, who had been engaged by Fay to do the necessary assessment work. Altogether the camp was very populous and lively.
After a little Bennington learned of everything that had happened during the three weeks of his sickness. It all came out in a series of charming conversations, when, in the evening twilight, they gathered in the room where the sick man lay. Mary—as Bennington still liked to name her—occupied the rocking chair, and the three young men distributed themselves as best suited them. It was most homelike and resting. Bennington had never before experienced the delight of seeing a young girl about a house, and he enjoyed to the utmost the deft little touches by which is imparted that airily feminine appearance to a room; or, more subtly, the mere spirit of daintiness which breathes always from a woman of the right sort. He felt there was added a newer and calmer element of joy to his love.
During the first period of his illness, then, Jim Fay and the Leslie brothers had worked energetically relocating the claims, while Mrs. Lawton and Miss Fay had taken charge of the house. By the end of the first day the job was finished. The question then came up as to the disposition of the prisoners.
"We didn't want the nuisance of a prosecution," said Fay, "because that would mean that these mossbacks could drag us off to Rapid City any old time as witnesses, and keep us there indefinitely. Neither did we want to let them off scot-free. They'd made us altogether too much trouble for that! Bert here suggested a very simple way out. I went down to Spanish Gulch and told the boys the whole story from start to finish. Well, it isn't hard to handle a Western crowd if you go at it right. The boys always thought you had good stuff in you since you rode the horse and smashed Leary's face that night. It would have been easy to have cooked up all kinds of trouble for our precious gang, but I managed to get the boys in a frivolous mood, so they merely came up and had fun."
"I should say they did!" Bert interjected. "They dragged the crowd out of the shaft—and they were a tough-looking proposition, I can tell you!--and stood them up in a row. They shaved half of Davidson's head and half his beard, on opposite sides. They left tufts of hair all over Arthur. They made a six-pointed star on the top of Slayton's crown. Then they put the men's clothes on wrong side before, and tied them facing the rear on three scrubby little burros. Then the whole outfit was started toward Deadwood. The boys took them as far as Blue Lead, where they delivered them over to the gang there, with instructions to pass them along. They probably got to Deadwood. I don't know what's become of them since."
"I think it was cruel!" put in Miss Fay decidedly.
"Perhaps. But it was better than hanging them."
"What became of Mrs. Arthur?" asked the invalid.
"I shipped her to Deadwood with a little money. Poor creature! It would be a good thing for her if her husband never did show up. She'd get along better without him."
The claims located and the sharpers got rid of, Fay proceeded at once to put the assessment work under way. In this, his long Western experience, and his intimate acquaintance with the men, stood him in such good stead that he was enabled to contract the work at a cheaper rate than Bishop's estimate.
"I wrote to Bishop," he said, "and told him all about it. In his answer, which I'll show you, he took all the blame to himself, just as I anticipated he would, and he's so tickled to death over the showing made by the assays that he's coming out here himself to see about development. So I'm afraid you're going to lose your job."
"I'm not sorry to go home. But I'm sorry to leave the Hills." He looked wistfully through the twilight toward Mary's slender figure, outlined against the window. The three men caught the glance, and began at once to talk in low tones to each other. In a moment they went out. Somehow, on returning from the land of visions, Ben found that the world had moved, and that one of the results of the movement was that many things were taken for granted by the little community of four who surrounded him. It was as though the tangle had unravelled quietly while he slept. She leaned toward him shyly, and whispered something to his ear. He smiled contentedly.
They talked then long and comfortably in the dusk—about how the Leslies had written the letter, how much trouble she had taken to conceal her real identity, and all the rest.
"I sent Bill Lawton up to warn your camp the first day I met you," said she.
"Why, I remember!" he cried. "He was there when I got back."
And they talked on of their many experiences, in the fashion of lovers, and how they had come to care for each other, and when.
"I made up my mind it was so foolish a joke," she confessed, "that I determined to tell you all about it. You remember I had something to tell you at the Pioneer's Picnic? That was it. But then you remember the girl in the train, and how, when she looked at us, you turned away?"
"I remember that well enough," replied Bennington. "But what has that to do with it?"
"It was a perfectly natural thing to do, dearest. I see that plainly enough now. But it hurt me a little that you should be ashamed of me as a Western girl, and I made up my mind to test you."
"Why, I wasn't thinking of that at all," cried Bennington. "I was just ashamed of my clothes. I never thought of you!"
She reached out and patted his hand. "I'm glad to hear that, Ben dear, after all. It did hurt. And I was so foolish. I thought if you were ashamed of me, you would never stand the thought of the Lawtons. So I did not tell you the truth then, but resolved to test you in that way."
"Foolish little girl!" said he tenderly. "But it came out all right, didn't it?"
"Yes," she sighed, with a happy gesture of the hands. They fell silent.
"I want you to tell me something, dear," said Bennington after a while. "You needn't unless you want to, but I've thought about it a great deal."
"I will tell you, Ben, anything in the world. We ought to be frank with each other now, don't you think so?"
"I don't know as I ought to say anything about it, after all," he hesitated, evidently embarrassed. "But, Mary, you know you have hinted a little at it yourself. You remember you said something once about losing faith, and being made hard, and----"
She took both his hands in hers and drew them closely to her breast. Although he could not see her eyes against the dusk, he knew that she was looking at him steadily.
"Listen quietly, Ben dear, and I will tell you. Before I came out here I thought I loved a man, and he—well, he did not treat me well. I had trusted him and every one else implicitly until the very moment when----I felt it very much, and I came West with Jim to get away from the old scenes. Now I know that it was only fascination, but it was very real then. You do not like that, Ben, do you? The memory is not pleasant to me, and yet," she said, with a wistful little break of the voice, "if it hadn't been for that I would not have been the woman I am, and I could not love you, dearest, as I do. It is never in the same way twice, but each time something better and higher is added to it. Oh, my darling, Idolove you, I do love you so much, and you must be always my generous, poeticboy, as you are now."
She strained his hands to her as though afraid he would slip from her clasp. "All that is ideal so soon hardens. I can not bear to think of your changing."
Bennington leaned forward and their lips met. "We will forgive him," he murmured.
And what that remark had to do with it only our gentler readers will be able to say.
Ah, the delicious throbbing silence after the first kiss!
"What was your decision that afternoon on the Rock, Ben? You never told me." She asked presently, in a lighter tone, "Would you have taken me in spite of my family?"
He laughed with faint mischief.
"Before I tell you, I want to askyousomething," he said in his turn. "Supposing I had decided that, even though I loved you, I must give you up because of my duty to my family—suppose that, I say—what wouldyouhave done? Would your love for me have been so strong that you would have finally confessed to me the fact that the Lawtons were not your parents? Or would you have thrown me over entirely because you thought I did not love you enough to take you for yourself?"
She considered the matter seriously for some little time.
"Ben, I don't know," she confessed at last frankly. "I can't tell."
"No more can I, sweetheart. I hadn't decided."
She puckered her brows in the darkness with genuine distress. Women worry more than men over past intangibilities. He smiled comfortably to himself, for in his grasp he held, unresisting, the dearest little hand in the world. Outside, the ever-charming, ever-mysterious night of the Hills was stealing here and there in sighs and silences. From the darkness came the high sweet tenor of Bert Leslie's voice in the words of a song:
"A Sailor to the Sea, a Hunter to the Pines,
And Sea and Pines alike to joy the Rover,
The Wood-smells to the nostrils of the Lover of the Trail,
And Hearts to Hearts the whole World over!"
Through and through the words of the song, like a fine silver wire through richer cloth of gold, twined the long-drawn, tremulous notes of the white-throated sparrow, the nightingale of the North.
"The dear old Hills," he murmured tenderly. "We must come back to them often, sweetheart."
"I wish, IwishI knew!" she cried, holding his hand tighter.
"Knew what?" he asked, surprised.
"What you'd have done, and what I'd have done!"
"Well," he replied, with a happy sigh, "I know what I'mgoingto do, and that's quite enough for me."