Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving that his account of the defalcation in theEventscould have been displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object.
It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney was disappointed in theEvents'people; they had not seen his proposed excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses. This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work, though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that was necessary.
"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies—"
"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked thing! So dishonorable!"
"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney.
"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and Iwon't. But if you go as a detective,goas a detective; and if you go as their friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with you; so there!"
"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter line. You won't object to that?"
"No; I won't object to that."
They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with theEvents. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said they had no statement to make.
It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially, and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved, Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to theEventswas posted. This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying, that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache, and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them, and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well; good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found it in lasting prosperity.
These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal speaker seemed to be an American; the two men who chorused him were Canadians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment of what was national as well as what was individual in his talk.
"Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau when he told about that fellow, and how he tried to start him out every day to visit his soap-mine in the 'ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip out of it, day after day, week after week, till at last Oiseau got tired, and gave him the bounce when the first boat came up in the spring. He tried to make him believe it would be good for his health, to go out prospecting with him, let alone making his everlasting fortune; but it was no good; and all the time Oiseau was afraid he would fall into my hands and invest with me. 'I make you a present of 'im, Mr. Markham,' says he. 'I 'ave no more use for him, if you find him.'"
One of the Canadians said, "I don't suppose he really had anything to invest."
"Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it; he had a belt full of thousand-dollar bills round him. They found it when he was sick; and old Oiseau was so afraid that something would happen to him, andhewould be suspected of it, that he nursed him like a brother till he got well, and as soon as he was able to get away he bounced him."
"And what do you suppose was the matter with him, that he wouldn't even go to look at Oiseau's soap-mine?"
"Well," said the American, closing his eyes for the better enjoyment of the analysis, and giving a long, slow pull at his cigar, "there might have been any one of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, and the thousand-dollar bills—there were forty or fifty of them, Oiseau says—were part of the money he got away with. Then, very likely he had no faith in Oiseau—knew it was probably a soap-mine, and was just putting him off till he could get away himself. Or, maybe his fever left him a little cracked, and he didn't know exactly what he was about. Then, again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I think that kind of fellow gets a twist simply from what he's done. A good many of them must bring money away with them, and there are business openings everywhere; but you never hear of their going into anything over here."
"Thatisodd," said the Canadian.
"Or would be if it were not so common. It's the rule here, and I don't know an exception. The defaulter never does anything with his money, except live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the Andes, is the only one who ever showed enterprise; and I never understood that it was a private enterprise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter who goes to Canada never makes any effort to grow up with the country. He simply rests on his laurels, or else employs his little savings to negotiate a safe return. No, sir; there's something in defalcation that saps a man's business energies, and I don't suppose that old fellow would have been able to invest in Oiseau's gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. He justcouldn't. I can understand that state of mind, though I don't pretend to respect it. I can imagine just how the mantrembledto go into some speculation, and didn't dare to. Must have been an old hand at it, too. But it seems as if the money he steals becomes sacred to a man when he gets away with it, and he can't risk it."
"I rather think you could have overcome his scruples, Markham, if you could have got at him," said the Canadian.
"Perhaps," Markham assented. "But I guess I can do better with our stock in England."
Pinney had let his cigar go out, in his excitement. He asked Markham for a light, though there were plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the request as an overture to his acquaintance.
"Brother Yank?" he suggested.
"Boston."
"Going over?"
"Only to Rimouski. You don't happen to know the name of that defaulter, do you?"
"No; I don't," said Markham.
"I had an idea I knew who it was," said Pinney.
Markham looked sharply at him. "After somebody in Rimouski?"
"Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean as a detective. But I'm a newspaper man, and this is my holiday, and I'm working up a little article about our financiers in exile while I'm resting. My name's Pinney."
"Markham can fill you up with the latest facts," said the Canadian, going out; "and he's got a gold mine that beats Oiseau's hollow. But don't trust him too far. I know him; he's a partner of mine."
"That accounts for me," said Markham, with the tolerant light of a much-joked joker in his eyes. With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the American which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was willing soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau's capitalist, whom he merely conjectured to be a defaulter. He said the man called himself Warwick, and professed to be from Chicago; and then Pinney recalled the name and address in the register of his Quebec hotel, and the date, which was about that of Northwick's escape. "But I never dreamt of his using half of his real name," and he told Markham what the real name was; and then he thought it safe to trust him with the nature of his special mission concerning Northwick.
"Is there any place on board where a man could go and kick himself?" he asked.
"Do it here as well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish now—yes, he has! I remember Oiseau told me—at Rimouski. You'd better look him up."
"Look him up!" said Pinney, in a frenzy. "I'lllivewith him before I'm in Rimouski twenty seconds."
He had no trouble in finding Père Étienne, but after the first hopeful encounter with the sunny surface sweetness of the young priest, he found him disposed to be reserved concerning the Mr. Warwick he had known at Haha Bay. It became evident that Père Étienne took Pinney for a detective; and however willing he might have been to save a soul for Paradise in the person of the man whose unhappiness he had witnessed, he was clearly not eager to help hunt a fugitive down for State's prison.
Even when Pinney declared his true character and mission, the priest's caution exacted all the proofs he could give, and made him submit his authorization to an English-speaking notary of the priest's acquaintance. Then he owned that he had seen Mr. Warwick since their parting at Haha Bay; Mr. Warwick had followed him to Rimouski, after several weeks, and Père Étienne knew where he was then living. But he was still so anxious to respect the secrecy of a man who had trusted him as far as Northwick had, that it required all the logic and all the learning of the notary to convince him that Mr. Warwick, if he were the largest defaulter ever self-banished, was in no danger of extradition at Pinney's hands. It was with many injunctions, and upon many promises, that at last he told Pinney where Mr. Warwick was living, and furnished him with a letter which was at once warrant and warning to the exile.
Pinney took the first train back toward Quebec; he left it at St. André, and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Pinney's spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Père Étienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to him in virtue of his children's authorization. So his heart smote him at the ghastly look he got, when he advanced upon Warwick, where he sat at the inn-door, in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, "Mr. Northwick, I believe."
It was the first time Northwick had heard his real name spoken since Putney had threatened him in the station, the dark February morning when he fled from home. The name he had worn for the last five months was suddenly no part of him, though till that moment it had seemed as much so as the white beard which he had suffered to hide his face.
"I don't expect you to answer me," said Pinney, feeling the need of taking, as well as giving time, "till you've looked at this letter, and of course I've no wish to hurry you. If I'm mistaken, and it isn't Mr. Northwick, you won't open the letter."
He handed him, not the letter which Père Étienne had given him, but the letter Suzette Northwick had written her father; and Pinney saw that he recognized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw the letter tremble in the old man's hand, and heard its crisp rustle as he clutched it to keep it from falling to the ground. He could not bear the sight of the longing and the fears that came into his face. "No hurry; no hurry," he said, kindly, and turned away.
When Pinney came back from the little turn he took, Northwick was still holding the unopened letter in his hand. He stood looking at it in a kind of daze, and he was pale, and seemed faint.
"Why, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, "why don't you read your letter? If it hadn't been yours, don't I know that you'd have given it back to me at once?"
"It isn't that," said the man, who was so much older and frailer than Pinney had expected to find him. "But—are they well? Is it—bad news?"
"No!" Pinney exulted. "They're first-rate. You needn't be afraid to read the letter!" Pinney's exultation came partly from his certainty that it was really Northwick, and partly from the pleasure he felt in reassuring him; he sympathized with him as a father. His pleasure was not marred by the fact that he knew nothing of the state of Northwick's family, and built his assertion upon the probability that the letter would contain nothing to alarm or afflict him, "Like a glass of water?" he suggested, seeing Northwick sit inert and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, apparently without the force to break the seal of the letter. "Or a little brandy?" Pinney handed him the neat leather-covered flask his wife had reproached him for buying when they came away from home; she said he could not afford it; but he was glad he had got it, now, and he unscrewed the stopple with pride in handing it to Northwick. "You look sick."
"I haven't been very well," Northwick admitted, and he touched the bottle with his lips. It revived him, and Pinney now saw that if he would leave him again, he would open the letter. There was little in it but the tender assurance Suzette gave him of their love, and the anxiety of Adeline and herself to know how and where he was. She told him that he was not to feel troubled about them; that they were well, and unhappy only for him; but he must not think they blamed him, or had ever done so. As soon as they were sure they could reach him, she said, they would write to him again. Adeline wrote a few lines with her name, to say that for some days past she had not been quite well; but that she was better and had nothing to wish for but to hear from him.
When Pinney came back a second time, he found Northwick with the letter open in his hand.
"Well, sir," he said, with the easy respectfulness toward Northwick that had been replacing, ever since he talked with Matt Hilary, the hail-fellow manner he used with most men, and that had now fully established itself, "You've got some noble scenery about here." He meant to compliment Northwick on the beauty of the landscape, as people ascribe merit to the inhabitants of a flourishing city.
Northwick, by his silence, neither accepted nor disclaimed the credit of the local picturesqueness; and Pinney ventured to add, "But you seem to take it out in nature, Mr. Northwick. The place is pretty quiet, sir."
Northwick paid no heed to this observation, either; but after sitting mute so long that Pinney began to doubt whether he was ever going to speak at all, he began to ask some guarded and chary questions as to how Pinney had happened to find him. Pinney had no unwillingness to tell, and now he gave him the letter of Père Étienne, with a eulogy of the priest's regard for Northwick's interest and safety. He told him how Markham's talk had caught his attention, and Northwick tacitly recognized the speculator. But when Pinney explained that it was the postmark on his letter to theEventsthat gave him the notion of going to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was curious to know the effect of that letter with the public. At first he thought he would let him ask; but he perceived that this would be impossible for Northwick, and he decided to say, "That letter was a great sensation, Mr. Northwick." The satisfaction that lighted up Northwick's eyes caused Pinney to add, "I guess it set a good many people thinking about you in a different way. It showed that there was something to be said on both sides, and I believe it made friends for you, sir. Yes, sir." Pinney had never believed this till the moment he spoke, but then it seemed so probable he had that he easily affirmed it. "I don't believe, Mr. Northwick," he went on, "but what this trouble could be patched up, somehow, so that you could come back, if you wanted to, give 'em time to think it over a little."
As soon as he said this, the poison of that ulterior purpose which his wife had forbidden him, began to work in Pinney's soul. He could not help feeling what a grand thing it would be if he could go back with Northwick in his train, and deliver him over, a captive of moral suasion, to his country's courts. Whatever the result was, whether the conviction or the acquittal of Northwick, the process would be the making of Pinney. It would carry him to such a height in the esteem of those who knew him, that he could choose either career, and whether as a reporter or a detective, it would give his future the distinction of one of the most brilliant pieces of work in both sorts. Pinney tried his best to counteract the influence of these ideas by remembering his promises to his wife; but it was difficult to recall his promises with accuracy in his wife's absence; and he probably owed his safety in this matter more to Northwick's temperament than to any virtue of his own.
"I think I understand how that would be," said the defaulter coldly; and he began very cautiously to ask Pinney the precise effect of his letter as Pinney had gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in Pinney's nature to give any but a rose-colored and illusory report of this; but he felt that Northwick was sizing him up while he listened, and knew just when and how much he was lying. This heightened Pinney's respect for him, and apparently his divination of Pinney's character had nothing to do with Northwick's feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on he imagined a growing trustfulness in it. Northwick kept his inferences and conclusions to himself. His natural reticence had been intensified by the solitude of his exile; it stopped him short of any expression concerning Pinney's answers; and Pinney had to construct Northwick's opinions from his questions. His own cunning was restlessly at work exploring Northwick's motives in each of these, and it was not at fault in the belief it brought him that Northwick clearly understood the situation at home. He knew that the sensation of his offence and flight were past, and that so far as any public impulse to punish him was concerned, he might safely go back. But he knew that the involuntary machinery of the law must begin to operate upon him as soon as he came within its reach; and he could not learn from Pinney that anything had been done to block its wheels. The letter from his daughters threw no light upon this point; it was an appeal for some sign of life and love from him; nothing more. They, or the friends who were advising them, had not thought it best to tell him more than that they were well, and anxious to hear from him; and Pinney really knew nothing more about them. He had not been asked to Hatboro' to see them before he started, and with all the will he had to invent comfortable and attractive circumstances for them, he was at a disadvantage for want of material. The most that he could conjecture was that Mr. Hilary's family had not broken off their friendly relations with them. He had heard old Hilary criticised for it, and he told Northwick so.
"I guess he's been standing by you, Mr. Northwick, as far as he consistently could," he said; and Northwick ventured to reply that he expected that. "It was young Hilary who brought me the letter, and talked the whole thing up with me," Pinney added.
Northwick had apparently not expected this; but he let no more than the fact appear. He kept silent for a time; then he said, "And you don't know anything about the way they're living?"
"No, I don't," said Pinney, with final candor. "But I should say they were living along there about as usual. Mr. Hilary didn't say but what they were. I guess you haven't got any cause to be uneasy on that score. My idea is, Mr. Northwick, that they wanted to leave you just as free as they could about themselves. They wanted to find out your whereabouts in the land of the living, first of all. You know that till that letter of yours came out, there were a good many that thought you were killed in that accident at Wellwater, the day you left home."
Northwick started. "What accident? What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Why, didn't you know about it? Didn't you see the accounts? They had a name like yours amongst the missing, and people who thought you were not in it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was a despatch engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. Northwick—"
"Ah! I knew it!" said Northwick. "I knew that I must have signed my real name!"
"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly, "a man is apt to do that, when he first takes another. It's natural."
"I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers for months. I wouldn't; and then I was sick—They must have believed I was dead!"
"Well, sir," said Pinney, "I don't know that that follows. My wife and myself talked that up a good deal at the time, and we concluded that it was about an even thing. You see it's pretty hard to believe that a friend is dead, even when you've seen him die; and I don't understand how people that lose friends at a distance can ever quite realize that they're gone. I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory of the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful uncertainty about it, and that was my wife's notion, too. But that's neither here nor there, now, Mr. Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of all theories to the contrary—thoughtheymust have been pretty well exploded by your letter to theEvents—and the question is what answer are you going to let me take back to your family? You want to send some word, don't you? My instructions were not to urge you at all, and I won't. But if I was in your place, I know whatIshould do."
Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face became such a blank that all Pinney's subtlety was at fault. It is doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or directed in the mute misery of Northwick's soul. It was not a sharp anguish, such as a finer soul's might have been, but it was a real misery, of a measure and a quality that he had not felt before. Now he realized how much he must have made his children suffer. Perhaps it wrung him the more keenly because it seemed to be an expression of the divine displeasure, which he flattered himself he had appeased, and was a fatal consequence of his guilt. It was a terrible suggestion of the possibility that, after all, Providence might not have been a party to the understanding between them, and that his good-will toward those he had wronged had gone for nothing. He had blamed himself for not having tried to retrieve himself and make their losses good. It was no small part of his misery now to perceive that anything he might have done would have gone for nothing in this one-sided understanding. He fetched a long, unconscious sigh.
"Why, it's all over, now, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, with a certain amusement at the simple-heartedness of this sigh, whose cause he did not misinterpret. "The question is now about your getting back to them."
"Getting back? You know I can't go back," said Northwick, with bitter despair, and an openness that he had not shown before.
Far beneath and within the senses that apprehend the obvious things, Pinney felt the unhappy man beginning to cling to him. He returned, joyously, "I don't know about that. Now, see here, Mr. Northwick, you believe that I'm here as your friend, don't you? That I want to deal in good faith with you?" Northwick hesitated, and Pinney pursued, "Your daughter's letter ought to be a guaranty of that!"
"Yes," Northwick admitted, after another hesitation.
"Well, then, what I'm going to say is in your interest, and you've got to believe that I have some authority for saying it. I can't tell you just how much, for I don't know as I know myself exactly. ButIthink you can get back if you work it right. Of course, you can't get back for nothing. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you all you've brought with you,"—Pinney watched Northwick's impassive face for the next change that should pass upon it; he caught it, and added—"and more. But I happen to know that the balance will be forthcoming when it's needed. I can't sayhowI know it, for I don't exactlyknowhow I know it. But I do know it; and you know thatit'sfor you to take the first step. You must say how much money you brought with you, and where it is, and how it can be got at. I should think," said Pinney, with a drop in his earnestness, and as if the notion had just occurred to him, "you would want to see that place of yours again."
Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesickness the words brought upon him. In a flash of what was like a luminous pang, he saw it all as it looked the night he left it in the white landscape under the high, bare wintry sky. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said, with a kind of severity.
"No," Pinney admitted, "I don't suppose any one can begin to appreciate it as you do. But I was there, just after you skipped—"
"Then Iwasthe kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly reflected—
"And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over. Why, sir, I'll bet you could go back to Hatboro' now, and be there twenty-four hours before anybody would wake up enough to make trouble for you. Mind, I don't say that's what we want you to do. We couldn't make terms for you half as well, with you on the ground. We want you to keep your distance for the present, and let your friends work for you. Like a candidate for the presidency," Pinney added, with a smile. "Hello! Who's this?"
A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly-headed, shyly approached Northwick, and said, "Diner, Monsieur."
"That means dinner," Northwick gravely interpreted. "I will ask you to join me."
"Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad," said Pinney rising with him. They had been sitting on the steps of a structure that Pinney now noticed was an oddity among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. "Why, what's this?"
"It's the studio of an American painter who used to come here. He hasn't been here for several years."
"I suppose you expect to light out if he comes," Pinney suggested, in the spirit of good fellowship towards Northwick now thoroughly established in him.
"He couldn't do me any harm, if he wanted to," answered Northwick, with unresentful dignity.
"No," Pinney readily acquiesced, "and I presume you'd be glad to hear a little English, after all the French you have around."
"The landlord speaks a little; and the priest. He is a friend of Father Étienne."
"Oh, I see," said Pinney. He noticed that Northwick walked slowly and weakly; he ventured to put his hand under his elbow, and Northwick did not resent the help offered him.
"I had a very severe sickness during the latter part of the winter," he explained, "and it pulled me down a good deal."
"At Rimouski, I presume?" said Pinney.
"No," said Northwick, briefly.
Over the simple dinner, which Pinney praised for the delicacy of the local lamb, and Northwick ate of so sparingly, Northwick talked more freely. He told Pinney all about his flight, and his winter journey up toward the northern verge of the civilized world. The picturesque details of this narrative, and their capability of distribution under attractive catch-heads almost maddened the reporter's soul in Pinney with longing to make newspaper material of Northwick on the spot. But he took his honor in both hands, and held fast to it; only he promised him that if the time ever came when that story could be told, it should be both fortune and fame to him.
They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney pulled out his watch. "What time did you say the boat for Quebec got along here?"
Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told Pinney. He knew the time well in the homesickness which mounted to a paroxysm as that hour each day came and went.
"We must get there some time in the night then," said Pinney, still looking at his watch. "Then let's understand each other about this: Am I to tell your family where you are? Or what? Look here!" he broke off suddenly, "why don't you come up to Quebec with me? You'll be just as safe there as you are here; you know that; and now that your whereabouts are bound to be known to your friends, you might as well be where they can get at you by telegraph in case of emergency. Come! What do you say?"
Northwick said simply, "Yes, I will go with you."
"Well, now you're shouting," said Pinney. "Can't I help you to put your traps together? I want to introduce you to my wife. She takes as much interest in this thing as I do; and she'll know how to look after you a great deal better,—get you to Quebec once. She's the greatest little nurse inthisworld; and, as yousay, you don't seem over and above strong. I hope you don't object to children. We've got a baby, but it's thebestbaby! I've heard that child cry justoncesince it was born, and that was when it first realized that it was in this vale of tears; I believe we all do that; butourbaby finished up the whole crying-business on that occasion."
With Pinney these statements led to others until he had possessed Northwick of his whole autobiography. He was in high content with himself, and his joy overflowed in all manner of affectionate services to Northwick, which Northwick accepted as the mourner entrusts his helplessness to the ghastly kindness of the undertaker, and finds in it a sort of human sympathy. If Northwick had been his own father, Pinney could not have looked after him with tenderer care, in putting his things together for him, and getting on board the boat, and making interest with the clerk for the best stateroom. He did not hesitate to describe him as an American financier; he enjoyed saying that he was in Canada for his health; and that he must have an extra room. The clerk gave up the captain's, as all the others were taken, and Pinney occupied it with Northwick. It was larger and pleasanter than the other rooms, and after Pinney got Northwick to bed, he sat beside him and talked. Northwick said that he slept badly, and liked to have Pinney talk; Pinney could see that he was uneasy when he left the room, and glad when he got back; he made up his mind that Northwick was somehow a very sick man. He lay quite motionless in the lower berth, where Pinney made him comfortable; his hands were folded on his breast, and his eyes were closed. Sometimes Pinney, as he talked on, thought the man was dead; and there were times when he invented questions that Northwick had to answer yes or no, before he felt sure that he was still alive; his breath went and came so softly Pinney could not hear it.
Pinney told him all about his courtship and married life, and what a prize he had drawn in Mrs. Pinney. He said she had been the making of him, and if he ever did amount to anything, he should owe it to her. They had their eye on a little place out of town, out Wollaston way, and Pinney was going to try to get hold of it. He was tired of being mewed up in a flat, and he wanted the baby to get its feet on the ground, when it began to walk. He wanted to make his rent pay part of his purchase. He considered that it was every man's duty to provide a permanent home for his family, as soon as he began to have a family; and he asked Northwick if he did not think a permanent home was the thing.
Northwick said he thought it was, and after he said that, he sighed so deeply that Pinney said, "Oh, I beg your pardon." He had, in fact, lost the sense of Northwick's situation, and now he recurred to it with a fresh impulse of compassion. If his compassion was mixed with interest, with business, as he would have said, it was none the less a genuine emotion, and Pinney was sincere enough in saying he wished it could be fixed so that Northwick could get back to his home; at his time of life he needed it.
"And I don't believe but what itcouldbe fixed," he said. "I don't know much about the points of the case; but I should say that with the friends you've got, you wouldn't have a great deal of trouble. I presume there are some legal forms you would have to go through with; but those things can always be appealed and continued andnolle prossed, and all that, till there isn't anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends stood by you as they ought to,—I don't believe you'd get more than a mere nominal sentence, if you got that."
Northwick made no reply, but Pinney fancied that his words were having weight with him, and he went on: "I don't know whether you've ever kept the run of these kind of things; but a friend of mine has, and he says there isn't one case in ten where the law carries straight. You see, public feeling has got a good deal to do with it, and when the people get to feeling that a man has suffered enough, the courts are not going to be hard on him. No, sir. I've seen it time and again, in my newspaper experience. The public respects a man's sufferings, and if public opinion can't work the courts, it can work the Governor's council. Fact is, I looked into that business of yours a little, after you left, Mr. Northwick, and I couldn't see, exactly, why you didn't stay, and try to fix it up with the company. I believe you could have done it, and that was the impression of a good many other newspaper men; and they're pretty good judges; they've seen a lot of life. It's exciting, and it's pleasant, newspaper work is," said Pinney, straying back again into the paths of autobiography, "but I've got about enough of it, myself. The worst of it is, there ain't any outcome to it. The chances of promotion are about as good as they are in the U. S. Army when the Reservations are quiet. So I'm going into something else. I'd like to tell you about it, if you ain't too sleepy?"
"Iamrather tired," said Northwick, with affecting patience.
"Oh, well, then, I guess we'll postpone it till to-morrow. It'll keep. My! It don't seem as Iwasgoing back to my wife and baby. It seems too good to be true. Every time I leave 'em, I just bet myself I sha'n't get back alive; or if I do that I sha'n't find 'em safe and sound; and I'm just as sure I'll win every time, as if I'd never lost the bet yet."
Pinney undressed rapidly, and before he climbed into the berth over Northwick's, he locked the door, and put the key under his pillow. Northwick did not seem to notice him, but a feeling of compunction made him put the key back in the door. "I guess I'd better leave it there, after all," he said. "It'll stop a key from the outside. Well, sir, good-night," he added to Northwick, and climbed to his berth with a light heart. Toward morning he was wakened by a groaning from the lower berth, and he found Northwick in great pain. He wished to call for help; but Northwick said the pain would pass, and asked him to get him some medicine he had in his hand-bag; and when he had taken that he was easier. But he held fast to Pinney's hand, which he had gripped in one of his spasms, and he did not loose it till Pinney heard him drawing his breath in the long respirations of sleep. Then Pinney got back to his berth, and fell heavily asleep.
He knew it was late when he woke. The boat was at rest, and must be lying at her landing in Quebec. He heard the passengers outside hurrying down the cabin to go ashore. When he had collected himself, and recalled the events of the night, he was almost afraid to look down at Northwick lest he should find him lying dead in his berth; when he summoned courage to look, he found the berth empty.
He leaped out upon the floor, and began to throw himself into his clothes. He was reassured, for a moment, by seeing Northwick's travelling-bag in the corner with his own; but the hand-bag was gone. He rushed out, as soon as he could make himself decent, and searched every part of the boat where Northwick might probably be; but he was not to be seen.
He asked a steward how long the boat had been in; and the steward said since six o'clock. It was then eight.
Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, and he climbed disconsolately to his hotel in the Upper Town. He bet, as a last resource, that Northwick would not be waiting there for him, to give him a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager.
It did not take his wife so long to understand what had happened, as Pinney thought it would. She went straight to the heart of the mystery.
"Did you say anything about his going back?"
"Why—in a general way," Pinney admitted, ruefully.
"Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. You broke your word, Ren, and it's served you right."
His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in her arms; and she said it was sick, and she had been up all night with it. She told Pinney he had better go out and get a doctor.
It was all as different from the return Pinney had planned as it could be.
"I believe the old fool is crazy," he said, and he felt that this was putting the mildest possible construction upon Northwick's behavior.
"He seems to have known what he was about, anyway," said Mrs. Pinney, coldly. The baby began to cry. "Oh,dogo for the doctor!"
The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the night.
A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had stolen out of it.
One of the windows yielded; the long glass door gave inward, and he stepped on the carpetless floor of the library. Then the fact of the change that must have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and he felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the change in every detail. He lit one of the little taper matches that he had with him, and, hollowing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. He passed through the doors set wide between library and drawing-room and dining-room and hall; and then from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter's rooms to satisfy himself that the whole place was empty; they were gone; but he had a fantastic expectation that in his own room he might find himself. There was nothing there, either; it was as if he were a ghost come back in search of the body it had left behind; any one that met him, he thought, might well be more frightened than he; and yet he did not lose the sense of risk to himself.
He had an expectation, born of long custom, and persisting in spite of the nakedness of the place otherwise, that he should see the pictured face of his wife, where it had looked so mercifully at him that last night from the portrait above the mantel. He sighed lightly to find it gone; her chair was gone from the bay-window, where he had stood to gaze his last over the possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment through the window, and then vanished.
Northwick knew from this that the place was inhabited; unless some homeless tramp like himself was haunting it, and it went through his confusion that he must speak to Newton, and caution him about tramps sleeping in the barns anywhere; they might set them on fire. His mind reverted to his actual condition, and he wondered how long he could come and go as a vagrant without being detected. If it were not for the action against vagrants which he had urged upon the selectmen the summer before, he might now come and go indefinitely. But he was not to blame; it was because Mrs. Morrell had encouraged the tramps by her reckless charity that something had to be done; and now it was working against him. It was hard: he remembered reading of a man who had left his family one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived there in sight of them unknown till he died: and now he could not have passed his own door without danger of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at one side of the bay; he believed that with the long white beard he wore, and his hair which he had let grow, his own children would not have known him.
It was bitter; but his mind suddenly turned from the thought, with a lightness it had, and he remembered that now he did not know where his children lived. He must find out, somehow; he had come to see them; and he could not go back without. He must hurry to find them, and be gone again before daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a match to light himself down, and he carried it still burning, toward the window he had left open behind him in the library. As soon as he stepped out on the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man.
"I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you, anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, 'Lectra."
Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word. He saw the figure of a woman beside him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it was Mrs. Newton; but he made no sort of appeal to either. He did not make the least sound or movement. The habit of his whole life was reticence, especially in emergencies; and this habit had been strengthened and deepened by the solitude in which he had passed the last half-year. If a knife had been put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for mercy; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed to him he did not breathe while Mrs. Newton was turning up the wick of the lantern for a good look at him. When the light was lifted to his face, Northwick felt that they both knew him through the disguise of his white beard. Elbridge's grip fell from him and let him stand free. "Well, I'll be dumned," said Elbridge.
His wife remained holding the lantern to Northwick's face. "What are you going to do with him?" she asked at last, as if Northwick were not present; he stood so dumb and impassive.
"I d' know as I know," said Newton, overpowered by the peculiar complications of the case. He escaped from them for the moment in the probable inference: "I presume he was lookin' for his daughters. Didn't you know," he turned to Northwick, with a sort of apologetic reproach, "lightin' matches that way in the house, here, you might set it on fire, and you'd be sure to make people think there was somebody there, anyhow?"
Northwick made no answer to this question, and Newton looked him carefully over in the light of the lantern. "I swear, he's in his stockin' feet. You look round and see if you can find his shoes, anywhere, 'Lectra. You got the light." Newton seemed to insist upon this because it relieved him to delegate any step in this difficult matter to another.
His wife cast the light of her lantern about, and found the shoes by the piazza-steps, and as Northwick appeared no more able to move than to speak, Elbridge stooped down, and put on his shoes for him where he stood. When he lifted himself, he stared again at Northwick, as if to make perfectly sure of him, and then he said, with a sigh of perplexity, "You go ahead, a little ways, 'Lectra, with the lantern. I presume we've got to take him to 'em," and his wife, usually voluble and wilful, silently obeyed.
"Want to see your daughters?" he asked Northwick, and at the silence which was his only response, Newton said, "Well, I don't know as I blame him any, for not wantin' to commit himself. You don't want to be afraid," he added, to Northwick, "that anybody's goin' to keep you against your will, you know."
"Well, Iguessnot," said Mrs. Newton, finding her tongue, at last. "If they was to double and treble the reward, I'd slap 'em in the face first. Bring him along, Elbridge."
As Northwick no more moved than spoke, Newton took him by the arm, and helped him down the piazza-steps and into the dark of the avenue, tunnelled about their feet by the light of the lantern, as they led and pushed their helpless capture toward the lodge at the avenue gate.
Northwick had heard and understood them; he did not know what secret purpose their pretence of taking him to his children might not cover; but he was not capable of offering any resistance, and when he reached the cottage he sank passively on the steps. He shook in every nerve, while Elbridge pounded on the door, till a window above was lifted, and Adeline's frightened voice quavered out, "Who is it? What is it?"
Mrs. Newton took the words out of her husband's mouth. "It's us, Miss Northwick. If you're sure you're awake—"
"Oh, yes. I haven't been asleep!"
"Then listen!" said Mr. Newton, in a lowered tone. "And don't be scared. Don't call out—don't speak loud. There's somebody here—Come down, and let him in."
Northwick stood up. He heard the fluttered rush of steps on the stairs inside. The door opened, and Adeline caught him in her arms, with choking, joyful sobs. "Oh, father! Oh, father! Oh, I knew it! I knew it! Oh, oh, oh! Where was he? How did you find him?"
She did not heed their answers. She did not realize that she was shutting them out when she shut herself in with her father; but they understood.
Northwick stared round him in the light of the lamp which Adeline turned up. He held fast by one of her hands. "What's he going to do? Has he gone for the officer? Is he going to give me up?"
"Who? Elbridge Newton? Well, I guess his wife hasn't forgot what you did for them when their little boy died, ifhehas, and Iguesshe hasn't gone for any officer! Where did you see him?"
"In the house. I was there."
"But how did he know it?"
"I had to have a light to see by."
"Oh, my goodness! If anybody else had caught you I don't know what Ishouldhave done. I don't see how you could be so venturesome!"
"I thought you were there. I had to come back. I couldn't stand it any longer, when that fellow came with your letter."
"Oh, hefoundyou," she cried, joyfully. "Iknewhe would find you, and I said so—Sit down, father; do." She pushed him gently into a cushioned rocking-chair. "It's mother's chair; don't you remember, it always stood in the bay-window in your room, where she put it? Louise Hilary bought it at the sale—I know she bought it—and gave it to me. It was because the place was mother's that I wouldn't let Suzette give it up to the company."
He did not seem to understand what she was saying. He stared at her piteously, and he said with an effort: "Adeline, I didn't know about that accident. I didn't know you thought I was dead, or I—"
"No! Ofcourseyou didn't! I always told Suzette you didn't. Don't you suppose I always believed in you, father? We both believed in you, through it all; and when that letter of yours came out in the paper I knew you were just overwrought."
Northwick rose and looked fearfully round him again, and then came closer to her, with his hand in his breast. He drew it out with the roll of bank-notes in it. "Here's that money I took away with me. I always kept it in my belt: but it hurt me there. I want you should take care of it for me, and we can make terms with them to let me stay."
"Oh, theywon'tlet you stay. We've tried it over and over; and the court won't let you. They say you will have to be tried, and they will put you in prison."
Northwick mechanically put the money back.
"Well, let them," said the broken man. "I can't stand it any longer. I have got to stay." He sank into the chair, and Adeline broke into tears.
"Oh, I can't let you! You must go back! Think of your good name, that there's never been any disgrace on!"
"What—what's that?" Northwick quavered, at the sound of footsteps overhead.
"Why, it's Suzette, of course! And I hadn't called her," said Adeline, breaking off from her weeping. She ran to the foot of the stairs, and called, huskily, "Suzette, Suzette! Come down this instant! Come down, come down, come down!" She bustled back to her father. "You must be hungry, ain't you, father? I'll get you a cup of tea over my lamp here; the water heats as quick! And you'll feel stronger after that. Don't you be afraid of anything; there's nobody here but Suzette; Mrs. Newton comes to do the work in the morning; they used to stay with us, but we don't mind it a bit, being alone here. Ididwant to go into the farmhouse, when we left our own, but Suzette couldn't bear to live right in sight of our home, all the time; she said it would be worse than being afraid; but we haven'tbeenafraid; and the Newtons come all the time to see if we want anything. And now that you've got back—" She stopped, and stared at him in a daze, and then turned to her lamp again, as if unable to cope with the situation. "I haven't been very well, lately, but I'm getting better; and if only we could get the court to let you come back I should be as well as ever. I don't believe but what Mr. Hilary will make it out yet. Father!" She dropped her voice, and glanced round; "Suzette's engaged to young Mr. Hilary—oh, he's thebestyoung man!—and I guess they're going to be married just as soon as we can arrange it about you. I thought I'd tell you before she came down."
Northwick did not seem to have taken the fact in, or else he could not appreciate it rightly. "Do you suppose," he whispered back, "that she'll speak to me?"
"Speakto you!"
"I didn't know. She was always so proud. But now I've brought back the money, all but the little I've had to use—"
There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Suzette stood a moment in the doorway, looking at her father, as if not sure he was real; then she flung herself upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, and kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She sank into his lap, with a long sigh, and let her head fall on his shoulder. All that was not simply father and daughter was for the moment annulled between them.
Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about heating the water over her lamp; and they all took up fitfully the broken threads of their lives, and tried to piece them again into some sort of unity.
Adeline did most of the talking. She told her father how friends seemed to have been raised up for them in their need, when it was greatest. She praised herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney for advice, because she remembered how her father had spoken of him that last night, and for refusing to give up the property to the company. She praised Putney for justifying and confirming her at every step, and for doing everything that could be done about the court. She praised the Hilarys, all of them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have had his way, there never would have been any trouble at all about the accounts, and she wanted her father to understand just how the best people felt about him. He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in the next room struck four, and Northwick started to his feet. "I must go!"
"Go?" Adeline echoed.
"Why must you go?" said Suzette, clinging about him.
They were all silent in view of the necessity that stared them in the face.
Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream of safety in which her words had lulled her. She wailed out, "He'sgotto go! Oh, Suzette, let him go! He's got to go to prison if he stays!"
"It's prisonthere" said Northwick. "Let me stay!"
"No, no! I can't let you stay! Oh, how hard I am to make you go! What makes you leave it all to me, Suzette? It's for you, as much as anything, I do it."
"Then don't do it! If father wants to stay; if he thinks he had better, or if he will feel easier, he shall stay; and you needn't think of me. I won'tletyou think of me!"
"But what would they say—Mr. Hilary say—if they sent father to prison?"
Suzette's eyes glowed. "Let them say what they will. I know I can trusthim, but if he wants to give me up for that, he may. If father wishes to stay, he shall, and nothing that they can do to him will ever make him different to us. If he tells us that he didn't mean anything wrong, that will be enough; and people may say what they please, and think what they please."
Northwick listened with a confused air. He looked from one to the other, as if beaten back and forth between them; he started violently, when Adeline almost screamed out: "Oh, you don't know what you're talking about! Father, tell her you don'twishto stay!"
"I must go, Suzette; I had better go—"
"Here, drink this tea, now, and it will give you a little strength." Adeline pressed the cup on him that she had been getting ready through all, and made him drain it. "Now, then, hurry, hurry, hurry, father! Say good-by! You've got to go, now—yes, you'vegotto!—but it won't be for long. You've seen us, and you've found out we're alive and well, and now we can write—be sure you write, father, when you get back there; or, you'd better telegraph—and we can arrange—I know we can—for you to come home, and stay home."
"Home! Home!" Northwick murmured.
"It seems as if he wanted tokillme!" Adeline sobbed into her hands. She took them away. "Well,stay, then!" she said.
"No, no! I'll go," said Northwick. "You're not to blame, Adeline. It's all right—all for the best. I'll go—"
"And let us know where you are, when you get there, this time, father!" said Adeline.
"Yes, I will."
"And we will come to you, there," Suzette put in. "We can live together in Canada, as well as here."
Northwick shook his head. "It's not the same. I can't get used to it; their business methods are different. I couldn't put my capital into any of their enterprises. I've looked the whole ground over. And—and I want to get back into our place."
He said these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to be light, and I'm afraid somebody'll see you, and stop you! But oh, my goodness! How are you going? You can't walk! And if you try to start from our depot, they'll know you, some one, and they'll arrest you. What shall we do?"
"I came over from East Hatboro' to-night," said Northwick. "I am going back there to get the morning train." This was the way he had planned, and he felt the strength of a fixed purpose in returning to his plan in words.
"But it's three miles!" Adeline shrieked. "You can never get there in the world in time for the train. Oh, why didn't I tell Elbridge to come for you! I must go and tell him to get ready right away."
"No, I'll go!" said Suzette. "Adeline!"
Adeline flung the door open, and started back, with a cry, from the dark, van-like vehicle before the door, which looked like the Black Maria, or an undertaker's wagon, in the pale light.
"It's me," said Elbridge's voice from the front of it, and Elbridge's head dimly showed itself. "I got to thinkin' maybe you'd want the carryall, and I didn't know but what I'd better go and hitch up, anyway."
"Oh, well, wedid!" cried Adeline, with an hysterical laugh. "Here, now, father, get right in! Don't lose a second. Kiss Suzette; good-by! Be sure you get him to East Hatboro' in time for the four-forty, Elbridge!" She helped her father, shaking and stumbling, into the shelter of the curtained carryall. "If anybody tries to stop you—"
"I'd like to see anybody try to stop me," said Elbridge, and he whipped up his horse. Then he leaned back toward Northwick, and said, "I'm going to get the black colt's time out of the old mare."
"Which mare is it?" Northwick asked.