“Oh, yes,” cried Mrs. Berridge, “that comical galoot what bided here las’ night, an’ this evenin’ hired our dugout an’ paddled out to the steamboat. He ain’t back yit.” She paused at the door and peered into the gathering gloom.
“Jessy Jane,” cried her husband with an accession of interest, “tell ’em all what you heard him say las’ night. Every other word was ‘Duciehurst.’”
The younger Berridge was a stalwart fellow, in attire and features resembling his father, save that his straw-tinted beard and shock of hair were not yet bleached by the river-damp and the damage of time to the dull drab hue of the elder’s locks. The woman had evidently intended to reserve such values as she had discovered for the benefit of her own, her husband and his father. But Dan Berridge, all improvident and undiscerning, was gobbling a second great supply of the cat-fish, and did not even note the expanding interest that began to illumine Binnhart’s sharp eyes as they followed her around the table while she again set on the platter. She sought to gain time and perchance to effect a diversion byinviting him to partake of the meal, but he replied that he had eaten his supper already, “and a better one,” he added as he cast a disparaging glance at the cloth. The rude jeer would have served to balk his curiosity, one might have thought,—that in resentment she would have withheld the disclosure he coveted. But the jeer tamed her. She realized and contemned their poverty, and despised themselves because they were so poor. The dignity of labor, the blessedness of content, the joy of health and strength, the relative values of the gifts of life, the law of compensation, no homilies had ever been preached here on these texts. She could not controvert nor contend. It was indeed a coarse, cheap meal brought to the door by the river, a poverty-cursed home on its fantastic stilts, where they might live only so long as the waters willed, and she was all at once ashamed of it, and of her own compact of rude comfort and quiescence with it. She had a certain spirit, however, and when the other visitors chuckled their enjoyment of her discomfiture she included them in the invitation after this wise, “Mebbe you-all ain’t too proud to take a snack with us.” The shanty-boater, who permitted nothing good to pass him, compromised on a slice of pork, eaten sandwich-wise, in a split pone of corn-bread held in his hands as he crouched over the monkey-stove at the other end of the room. Nevertheless, she was submissive and in some sort constrained to respond when Binnhart said with a suave intonation: “Yes, ma’am, we would like to hear from you about that talk of Duciehurst.”
“I dunno what you mean,” she said, still with aneffort to fence: “oh, yes, the man jus’ talks in his sleep, that’s all.”
“He’s got secrets,” said her husband, over his shoulder to Binnhart. He paused suddenly with an appalled countenance to extract from his mouth a great spiny section of fishbone, which seemed to have caught on the words. “Tell on, Jesse Jane. I can’t. I’m eatin’.”
It was obviously useless to resist. “Why,” she said, “when the baby had the croup las’ night an’ kep’ me up an’ awake—don’t you dare to look at me an’ laugh, you buzzard!” she broke off to speak to the infant, who was bouncing and crowing jovially at the end of his tether where he was tied in the bunk, “he knows I’m talkin’ about him. Why, what was I saying? Oh, I was in the back room there, an’ the man was sleepin’ in here. An’ he talked, an’ talked in his sleep, loud fur true every wunst in a while. I wonder he didn’t wake up everybody in the house.”
“What did he say?” asked Binnhart with a look of sharp curiosity.
“I didn’t take time to listen much,” replied the woman, fencing anew. “Old ‘Possum thar,” nodding at the baby, “looked like he’d choke every other minute. He’ll smell of turkentine fur a month of Sundays. I fairly soaked his gullet with that an’ coal-oil.”
“A body kin make money out of other folks’ secrets ef they air the right kind of secrets.” Binnhart threw out the suggestion placidly.
The woman hesitated. She noted her father-in-law behind the stove, almost collapsing over his pipe, so inert he might scarcely make shift to fill it; herhusband, his younger image, was still at the table, lazily chasing the last morsel of fish about his greasy plate with a bit of cornbread. Little might they hope to metamorphose the babble of a dreamer into discoveries of value. Jasper Binnhart, on the contrary, was a man of force, of action, the leader, the prime mover, in every scheme that had brought to them some measure of success and gain, and then, too, would she not be present, to aid, to hear, invested with the mystery and controlling its preservation.
She took on the air of retrospective pondering as she sank down in a chair on one side of the table, putting her bare elbows on the cloth and supporting her chin in her hands. “Lemme see,” she said, “ef I kin call any of his gabble to mind.” She glanced up to find Binnhart’s eyes, contracted to mere points of light, fixed upon her, and once more she bent her gaze on the pattern of the damask.
“’Twar mos’ly ’bout Duciehurst, all night, all night. Duciehurst was the word.”
“That sounds like something doing,” Binnhart remarked. “All my life I have heard of hidden money at Duciehurst.”
Jessy Jane ceased to pose. She lifted her head suddenly with the contempt of the uninformed, her lips thickening with a sneer. “Now, what fool would put money in that old ruined shell, instead of a bank?”
“Why, lots of folks, during the war,” explained Binnhart. “The banks were not open then, and people hid their vallybles wherever they could. After the peace some things, here and there, were never found again.”
“Why, shucks, Mrs. Berridge, the name of Duciehurst is famous for hidden treasure, has been ever since I could remember,” the shanter-boater said. “You see, Major Ducie and two of his sons were killed in the war, an’ only one was left, this passenger’s father.” He jerked his thumb toward the bar, where the boat lay so still in the night, amidst its element of surging waters. “This son, being so young at the time, just a child, didn’t know anything about where they had stowed the family silver and jewels, and a power of gold money, they say.”
“The family gave up the search more than forty years ago, and the place was sold to satisfy a mortgage,” Binnhart commented.
“But the river folks take up the search every wunst in a while, an’ go thar and dig around the walls,” said the younger Berridge.
“Sure!” exclaimed the shanty-boater. “I have been thar myself with a git-rich-quick gang.” He leered humorously at the party from behind the stove-pipe. Presently he continued reminiscently:—
“Then pirates tore all the hearths up, mighty nigh, that night. They had a stonemason along, with crowbars and chisels, an’ such like tools. He was a tombstone worker, an’ I reckon his biz queered the job, for we found nothing at all.”
“’Tain’t in a hearthstone,” said the woman, suddenly. “Is there anything about a house named pillow? He kep’ a-talkin’ about a pillow—I thought he meant the one he had his head on.”
Jasper Binnhart started as with a galvanic shock. He suddenly let down the forelegs of his chair and sat stiff and upright.
“Pillar?” he said, in a curiously muffled tone.“Has this mansion of Duciehurst got anything like a porch with posts? I have never seen the river-front of the house.”
“Posts!” exclaimed the younger Berridge. “The porch has got posts the size of a big gum tree, a round dozen, too, an’ mighty nigh as high as a gum tree.” He fell to steadily picking his teeth with a fish-bone, and idly riding his chair to and fro.
“What did he say about ‘pillars,’ Mrs. Berridge?” asked the blacksmith, eagerly.
“He talked about a base, an’ a pilaster, an’ columns, an’ a capital.”
“That’s Jackson, capital o’ Miss’ippi, seat of government, second to none in the Union,” explained her husband.
“Sometimes he would call ‘Archie, Archie.’”
“Lieutenant Archibald Ducie as sure as you are born,” said the shanty-boater, solemnly. “He died in Vicksburg, an’ he war the one rumored to have had charge of hidin’ the money.”
“This man never said nothin’ ’bout no money. Jes’ kept on ’bout docyments, an’ a chist,” persisted Mrs. Berridge, incredulously.
“Money mought have been in the chist,” remarked her husband.
“He war specially concerned ’bout a ‘pilaster’—he went back to that ag’in an’ ag’in. He’d whisper, sly an’ secret, ‘in the pilaster.’ What is a pilaster?”
There was no information forthcoming, and she presently resumed, with a drawling voice and a dispirited drooping head. “He seemed to say the docyments was there, though I thought he meant something about a pillow. I wish I had paid mo’ attention, though I had never heard ’bout a pot o’ moneybein’ hid at Duciehurst. I wish I could git the chance to hear him talk agin in his sleep.”
“But will he come back?” asked Binnhart, eagerly.
“Sure. He said so when he hired the dugout,” said the old water-rat; “but I made him pay fust, as much as it is wuth—two dollars. He’s got plenty rocks in his pocket.”
“Well, I should think he’d stay the night with the steamboat, a man of his sort,” Binnhart said. He cast a glance of gruff distaste about the squalid and malodorous place, reeking with the greasy smell of fish, and the sullen lamp. He thought of the contrast with the carpeted saloon, the glittering chandeliers, the fine pure air, the propinquity of people of high tone and good social station. Strange! Indeed, it would seem that no man in his senses would resort instead to this den of thieves and cut-throats.
“He’ll come back fast enough,” protested the elder Berridge. “There’s something queer about that man, though he made no secret o’ his name, Captain Hugh Treherne.”
“There’ll be something mighty queer about me if I don’t git a-holt of some of them rocks in his pockets ye war tellin’ about,” declared the shanty-boater.
“What ailed him to take out for the steamer?” demanded Binnhart.
“He seemed all struck of a heap when he seen old Cunnel Kenwynton through the spy-glass. He claims he knows the old Cunnel,” replied the water-rat.
“And yet he is coming back here,” exclaimed Binnhart, incredulously. “I wish I could have heard him talk.”
He rose, still with that intent and baffled look, andwent to the door staring out into the gloomy night to descry, if he might, the course of the little craft on the face of the waters and its progress; to canvass the object of the man who wielded the paddle and the nature of the business he could have with old Colonel Kenwynton; and to speculate in futile desperation as to the knowledge he might possess of the storied treasure of Duciehurst, and how this secret might be wrested from him.
Thatnight Colonel Kenwynton had a strange dream. He had come to the time of life when he had no appreciable future. His possibilities were limited to the renewal of his promissory notes secured on his mortgaged lands and the stress to feed the monster debt with its accustomed interest. Beyond these arid vicissitudes he never looked. The day bounded his scope of view. His life lay in the past, and although the present constrained his waking moments, all the furniture of his dreams had garnished the years come and gone. It was not strange to him, therefore, as he lay asleep in his berth, that he should hear in the shaking of the glass-door of his stateroom that opened on the guards the clanking of sabers. The sound was loud, assertive in the night. The wind had risen. Along the convolutions of the “great bends” it swirled, with a wide breathy resonance, the gusts seeming full of gasps. Now and then the timbers of the boat creaked and groaned and the empty chimneys towering into the gloom of the upper atmosphere sometimes piped forth sonorous blasts. No longer the somber monotony held the sky. Clouds were rolling in tumultuous surges from the south, and the wind fretted the currents into leaping turbulence as it struck upon the waves, directly against the course of the waters. Low along the horizon pale lightnings flickered. The river became weirdly visiblein these fluctuating glimmers, and anon there was only the sense of a vast black abyss where it flowed, and an overpowering realization of unseen motion—for it was silent, this stupendous concourse of the waters of the great valley, silent as the grave. In the fitful illuminations the lace-like summit of the riparian forest would show momentarily against the clouds; the big, inert structure of the boat, and long ghastly stretch of the arid sand-bar, would be suddenly visible an instant, then as suddenly sunken into darkness.
And again and again the door of Colonel Kenwynton’s stateroom shook with a clatter in its casing.
He was not a light sleeper, which is usual to old age. His robust physique was recruited by the sound slumber that might have accorded with a score less years than had whitened his hair. The lightnings, glimmering ever and anon through the glass door and into his placid, aged, sleeping face—that ere long should sleep hardly more placidly and to stir no more—did not rouse him. The violent vibrations of the glass door would scarcely have impinged upon his consciousness save that the sound suggested the clash of sabers. But all at once Colonel Kenwynton’s whole being was translated into a day of the past—a momentous day. The air blared with a trumpet’s imperious mandate; the clank of sabers filled his ears, and in the lightning’s pale flare he saw, plainly against the surging clouds of the southwest, the face of the man who had ridden close to his bridle rein in a furious cavalry charge that broke the serried ranks of a redoubtable square.
“Regiment! Draw—swords! Trot!—March!Gallop!—March!Charge!—Charge!”
The stentorian, martial cry was filling the restricted spaces of the little stateroom. Colonel Kenwynton, awakened by the sound of his own voice, had pulled himself up on his elbow and was staring in amazement at the dull, opaque black square of the glass door of his stateroom, which might be only discerned because the apartment was partially illumined through the transom of the opposite door, admitting the tempered radiance of the lights burning all night in the saloon within.
He was nettled as with a sense of ridicule. He had known an old war-horse that after peace had been degraded to cheap domestic uses, but was accustomed to prance in futile senility and in stately guise to the sound of a child’s drum. He listened to discern if his wild martial cry had reached other ears. No—the scoffers slept. Peace to their pillows. He grimly wished them rest. He—he was an old man, an old man, and not of much account any more, save at the reunions. Ah, it must have been the associations of the reunion which resurrected that face—the face of a man to whom he owed much, a man but for whom he would scarcely be here now, laying his head down in undisturbed slumber. Once more the similitude of the clank of sabers. With the thought of the possible ridicule should he again, in his dreaming, audibly refer this noisy tumult to the memory of his battles—fought anew here in the dim midnight, he leaned forward to obviate the repetition of the sound and the renewal of the hallucination. From his berth he easily reached the door to the guards, flung it open, andlay down content in the comparative quiet. The river air was dank, but this was on the lee side of the boat, and though he could hear the wind rush by he could only slightly feel its influx here. Still illusions thronged the night. The chimneys piped in trumpet tones to his dreams. The doors of neighboring staterooms clanked faintly; whole squadrons rode by, their sabers unsheathed, and suddenly he became conscious of a presence close at hand that he could not discern in his sleep. All at once he was stiff, vigilant, expectant, fired by the pulses of a day long dead!
“The parole, officer of the day,” he gasped, curiously waking, yet still in the thrall of slumber.
“Shoulder to shoulder,” came in a shivering whisper from the twilight of the stateroom.
Suddenly impressed with the reality of the experience the old man, agitated, almost speechless, breathless, struggled up on his elbow.
“Why, Captain,” he began, in a piping travesty of his wonted sonorous greeting, “when did you come aboard?”
“Colonel,” said the man standing by the bed, and even the twilight glimmer of the room showed the wild light in his eyes, “you haven’t forgotten the day when ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ was the parole?”
“Never—! Never!” Colonel Kenwynton clasped his hand on the visitor’s hand. “But for you on that day I should have been these forty odd years in hell.”
“Then follow me. I have something to say. It must be in private—something to disclose. You can trust me, Colonel—Shoulder to Shoulder!”
“Trust you? To the death—Shoulder to Shoulder!” Colonel Kenwynton cried, in a fervor of enthusiasm.
Nevertheless he was chilled while he hastily half dressed and emerged into the dank obscurity of the guards. His hand trembled as he laid it on the stair rail. “An old man,” his lips were involuntarily formulating the words, as he followed his guide, who was descending to the lower deck. “An old man,” and he drew his overcoat about him.
Colonel Kenwynton was born to authority and had had the opportunities of command. But his martial experience had taught him also to obey, and when he had once accepted a mandate he did not hesitate nor even harbor an independent thought. With his soft, broad felt hat drawn far over his brows, down the stairs thumped his groping old feet, doggedly active. The wind was surging amidst the low clouds which were flying before the blast in illimitable phalanxes in some distraught panic of defeat. There must have been a moon lurking beyond their rack and rout, for the weird night landscape was strangely distinct, the forests that restricted the horizon bowed, and bent, and rose again in definite undulations to the successive gusts. One might hardly say how the surface of the far spread of water was discerned, dark, vaguely lustrous, with abysmal suggestions, though with never a glimmer, save where the dim lights of the boat pierced the glooms with a dull ray, here and there, or lay along ripples close at hand with a limited, shoaling glister.
These shallows covered the line of the treacherous sand-bar that had been secretly a-building all summer beneath the surface with the deposits of silt and in the uncovenanted ways of the great watercourse, till now the tow-head was possibly a peninsula in lieu of the island it had once been, and the packets of the line would never again find free passage as of yore between its stretches and the bank. Accustomed eyes could see how far extended the stabilities of the tow-head and thus differentiate the definite land formation from the element of land transition, that was neither land nor water. Here the wind made great sport, shrilling along the desolate arid spaces of the pallid sand dunes defenseless against the blast. A wild night, and cold.
The tread of his guide was silent—one might almost say secret. He came to a shuddering galvanic pause as he suddenly encountered a watchman, a lantern in his hand. The big, burly Irishman gazed with round, unfriendly, challenging eyes at the foremost of the two advancing figures, then catching sight of the familiar face of the Colonel his whole aspect changed; he beamed with jovial recognition.
“Oh, the Cunnel, is ut? Faix, the top o’ the mornin’ to yez, sor, if it’s got anny top to ’t—’tis after twelve. This grisly black night seems about the ground floor of hell. The river’s risin’ a bit, sor; an’ if this wind would fall we’d sure have a rain, an’ git out o’ this, foreshortly.”
He touched his hat and moved on, the feeble halo of the lantern betokening his progress among the shadowy piles of freight, dimly visible in the dull light of the fixed lamps.
Not even a speculation did Colonel Kenwynton allow himself when suddenly his precursor put a foot on the gunwale of the boiler deck and sprang over into the darkness. The old soldier followedwithout a moment’s doubt. The unseen water surged about his feet, cold as ice, and at the swiftly flowing, unexpected impact he caught his breath with a gasp. But the guide had forgotten the lapse of time—how old a man, how feeble, was the erstwhile stalwart commander. He pressed on, the water splashing about his feet, now rising to ankle depth, now even deeper, once surging about his knees. Even Colonel Kenwynton at last had a thought of protest. This was always a good soldier, Captain Treherne, but a bit reckless and disposed to unnecessary risks. There was no word of remonstrance, however, from the elder man, and he was fairly blown when suddenly Captain Treherne paused at a considerable distance in a level space near the river’s margin where was beached a clumsy little craft which the Colonel recognized as a dug-out.
Captain Treherne seemed all unconscious of the pallid countenance, the failing breath, the halting step of the old man. For, indeed, Colonel Kenwynton was fain to catch at his companion’s arm for support as he listened, panting.
“Come, Colonel, you will come with me. I need your advice. You can wield a paddle, and together we can make the distance.”
Only the obviously impossible checked the old soldier.
“Wield a paddle against this current, my dear sir? Make the distance! You forget my age—seventy-five, sir; seventy-five years.”
“It is not life and death, Colonel. We have faced that together, you and I, and laughed at both. Dishonest possession is involved now, and legalizedrobbery, and hidden assets. AndIhave the secret of the cache, Colonel,I, alone. It must be revealed. I need your help. This is the crucial crisis of my life. My life—!” He broke off with an accent of scorn—“of lives worth infinitely more than mine. And, Colonel Kenwynton,” he laid a sudden, lean hand on the old man’s arm, “the helpless! For they know nothing of their rights. It must be revealed to one who will annul this wrong, this heinous disaster.”
He had drawn very close, and his grasp on the Colonel’s arm, that had once been so firm-fleshed and sinewy, seemed to crush the collapsed muscles into the very bone. The old man winced with the pain, but stood firm.
“I’m with you, heart and soul, always. Command me. But, my dear boy, this is impracticable. Let’s get a roustabout to row.”
The intensifying grip might really have broken the old man’s bone.
“Not for your life—never a whisper to any other living creature! Only you can do this. I—I—I should not be believed.”
“Not believed! You!” cried Colonel Kenwynton in a tone of such indignant, vicarious, insulted pride, that what self-control the other man possessed broke down; he flung his arms about the old man’s quivering frame, bowed his head on the Colonel’s shoulder and sobbed aloud.
“Not even you would believe me—if you knew—if you knew what I have been—what I am.”
“Exactly what I do know,” said the Colonel, sturdily. “You are overcome by your emotions, dear old fellow. You are overwrought. We willput an end to this, sir. Come, halloo the boat. I can’t halloo, Cap—think of that for me!—damn this cough! Halloo the boat, and tell the mate to send us a roustabout to paddle. Or, hadn’t we better take the yawl? That dug-out looks tricky—and, by God, man, it’s leaky.” He had advanced to the brink where the craft lay.
“No, no,” cried the other, “not a breath, not a whisper. It would frustrate all.” Then impressively, “Colonel Kenwynton, strange things have come about in this country because of the war. The rich are the poor; the right are the wrong; the incompetent sit bridling in the places that the capable have builded; an old paper, an old treasure, lost time out of mind, would reverse some lives, by God! AndIhold the secret, like an omnipotent fate. There must be no miscarriage of justice here, Colonel Kenwynton.”
The old man’s eyes stared through the dusk like an owl’s.
“You didn’t call me out here at this time of night to talk of titles to property and acts of justice, Hugh Treherne, in this marsh—why, there ain’t a bull-frog left here.”
He lifted his head and gazed out from the flapping broad brim of his hat at the windy waste of waters, the indefinite lines of the shore, the distant summits of the forest trees tossing to and fro against the tumultuous unrest of the clouded horizon.
Close at hand rose sheer precipitous elevations of the tow-head; seeming far away towered the great bulk of the grounded steamer, whitely glimmering through the night, her lamps a dim yellowfocus here and there, her fires extinguished, her engines sleeping and supine.
“I called you out here, Colonel, because you are the only man left in the world who respects his promise, who reverences his Maker, who trusts his friend and would go through fire and water on his summons.”
“I’ll take an affidavit to the water, dammy,” said the Colonel, grimly, stamping about as the trickling icy streams ran sleekly down his garments, over his instep. “But come to the steamboat, Hugh. We’ll have a glass of hot brandy and water, and talk this thing over in comfort.”
Captain Treherne seemed to struggle for a modicum of self-control. His voice had a remonstrant cadence such as one might use in addressing a fractious child.
“Colonel, you knew once what a council of war might mean.”
“Heigh? I did so—I did so.”
“This is secret—to be kept in the bottom of your heart. Your own thoughts must not revolve about it, lest they grow too familiar and canvass details with which you have no concern.”
“Hugh, I am an old man. I don’t believe it, as a general thing. The rheumatism has to give me a sharp pinch to remind me of the fact. I couldn’t paddle a boat to save my life—and against that current.”
It showed in the chiaro-oscuro like the solution of the problem of perpetual motion as the murky waters sped past.
“Tell me here and now. Where in all the world could we be more private?”
Captain Treherne lifted his head and looked about him,—only the bare sand of the bar, dimly visible in the vague light of the clouded moon, and of a differing tint from the dull neutral hue of the atmosphere of darkness. The steamer was absolutely silent, save as a loose chain might clank, swinging in the wind, for at this distance one could not discern the shaking of the transoms in their casings. There was no sight or sound of living creature, until a great bird, driven forth from its roost by the falling of a bough, or evicted by the wind, went screaming overhead. A shrill blast pursued his flight and presumably from the dark distance down the river one could not have distinguished the sounds of the living cry from the skirling of the restless spirit of the air.
“We crossed the river in a dug-out, under the nose of a gunboat,” Captain Treherne began, suddenly.
“Who? When? Where?” interrupted the old man, his face vaguely mowing under his big hat as he sought to compose his features.
“How can I tell where? In forty years who knows any locality in the course of this deceitful old river? All over here,” he pointed to the expanse of waters, “used to be dense cypress woods. You couldn’t find the sign of a tree now, unless some snag gets washed up by the current.”
“For the government snag-boats to pull up,” commented Colonel Kenwynton.
“Victor Ducie had been wounded, it was thought mortally, in a skirmish on the Arkansas side, and his brother, Archie, and I,—we were together in the rangers then,—slipped through the lines one darkmidnight to Duciehurst with the news. You remember the Ducies?”
“Indeed, indeed, I do. There is a gentleman of that name—”
But Treherne was going on. “Mrs. Ducie determined to go to her son Victor at once; she had only one of her children at home then, a twelve-year-old boy named Julian, and she could take him with her. The country was full of bands of wandering marauders and bushwhackers, and in leaving the house Archie placed a few of his father’s most important papers, with a lot of specie, and some family jewels, in a strong box, which we wrapped in an old knapsack and hid away.”
He had pushed his hat back from his brow and Colonel Kenwynton felt a pang of blended pity and surprise to note that the head was nearly bald. The years had trafficked with Treherne as well as with himself, hard dealings, it seemed. For they had taken his youth, his spirit, his pervasive cheer; there was something indefinable suggested that savored of deep melancholy. And had these covetous years given him full value in return—learning, in the lessons of life, just judgment, self-control, disciplined purpose, earnest effort, and, last and not least, resignation and calm and restful faith? Colonel Kenwynton was unwittingly shaking his old white head at the thought in his mind. Time had not dealt honestly by Hugh Treherne. Time had exacted usury and had paid no fair equivalent for the ineffable possession of youth. Colonel Kenwynton realized, however, that his own foible was hasty judgment, and he sought to hold his conclusions in suspension while he listened.
“We will come to the end of the story sooner if I give him his head,” he said to himself and ruefully added as he shivered in his drenched garb, “that is, if ithasany end.”
“Archie understood the value of these papers of his father’s,” Treherne resumed suddenly. “There was a mortgage on Duciehurst that had been lifted, but as all courts of record were closed by the operations of war the satisfaction had not been noted on the registered instrument. Carroll Carriton, who held the mortgage, happened to be in Mississippi at the time and he executed a formal release, and quit claim, signed and witnessed, but, of course, not registered. You know the chaotic state of courts of law at that time. The release also expressed a formal relinquishment of the promissory notes, secured on the land, for they were not returned; in fact, all the original papers were still out, having been placed for safekeeping in a bank in Nashville, Tennessee, where Carriton then resided, and which was within the Federal lines. The whole matter of the lifting of the mortgage and the full satisfaction of the debt was thoroughly understood between the principals and the witnesses, although it was a hasty transaction and in a way irregular, owing to the lack of facilities for recording the instruments in the state of war.”
“But, look here,” cried the Colonel in great excitement, “Duciehurst—you know, I was a friend of George Ducie—Duciehurst was sold to satisfy that mortgage, in behalf of the heirs of Carroll Carriton.”
“Ah, Lord. That’s why I am here, Colonel,” cried Treherne with a strange note of pathos.
“But, man alive, you ought to have been here forty years ago with Carriton’s release.”
“Ah-h, Lord, Colonel, you don’t understand.”
“But I do understand, I understand mighty well,” cried the Colonel. “Archie, God bless his soul, I remember him like yesterday, died of typhoid fever in Vicksburg, where his father was killed by the explosion of a cannon during the siege. His mother died in Arkansas, succumbed to pneumonia, contracted on the river that cold night when she crossed it to join her wounded son, and never returned to Duciehurst. Victor did not die till long afterward, he recovered from his wound and fell at last in the battle before Nashville. Not one of the family was left when the war closed except the youngest son, Julian, and although the suit on the promissory notes, brought by the executors of Carriton, was defended in his behalf, he being a minor at the time, no proof of the satisfaction of the debt could be made, and in default of payment the mortgage was foreclosed, and the magnificent estate of Duciehurst went under the hammer for a mere fraction of its value in the collapsed conditions of those disorganized times.”
“Ah-h-hh, Lord, Colonel,” Treherne was swaying back and forth as in a species of anguish.
“No time to say ‘Ah, Lord, Colonel,’”the old man muttered the words in irascible mimicry. “Where did you and Archie hide that knapsack?” and, with increasing sternness, “why have you never produced those valuables?”
Was there a fluctuating glimmer of moonlight in the rack of clouds, or did the pallid day look forth for one moment, averse and reluctant—he saw distinctlythat face which he once knew so well, with something new, strangely unrecognizable upon it. Then he had a sudden vision of a scene wreathed in the smoke of cannon and the mists of rain; the glitter of dull gray light on the polished, serried, fixed bayonets of an infantry square; the sense of the motion of a mad tumultuous gallop of a charge; the sound of trumpets wildly blowing, pandemonium, yells, shrieks of pain, hoofbeats, a gush of blood suffusing eyes, and all consciousness lost save that this man was helping him to his own horse from under the carcass of the slain charger, humbly holding by the stirrup in their mad precarious escape through the broken square.
The years since that momentous day had been something to Colonel Kenwynton, and but for this man’s courage and devotion he would not have lived them.
“Hugh, dear old boy, remember one fact. Through everything misty, I trust you; I trust you implicitly, Hugh. I know your honorable motives. Tell me anything you will, but through thick and thin I trust you.”
“The Ducie valuables are what I am coming to,” said Treherne uneasily, his voice husky, his articulation muffled, his tongue thick. “We hid ’em—Archie and I. We hid ’em at Duciehurst in the mansion. That is what I want to tell you.”
He paused to gaze about, pointing wildly, now up, now down the river.
“Then we crossed there, no, there, and landed on the Arkansas side. We had put Mrs. Ducie and Julian into the skiff, which we rowed ourselves. She had a lot of things with her that she was taking toVictor, bed-linen, blankets, clothes, medicines, wines and such like, so hard to come by in the Confederacy in those times. We landed there, no,there.”
Again he was pointing wildly from place to place. Now and then he took short, agile runs to and fro, as if he sought a better view in the windy obscurity.
“It was very cold and a pitch black night. We almost got under the hull of a Yankee gunboat—she was a vessel that had been captured from the Confederates, armored with iron rails, you know—that kind of iron-clad. As she swung at anchor I wonder the suction didn’t swamp us, but it didn’t. The look-out on deck never challenged nor heard us. We hit it like the bull’s eye, at the Arkansas landing,—Archie knew every twist and quirk in the current like an old song, born at Duciehurst, you know. And after we made it to the farm-house, where Victor was lying at the point of death it seemed, we returned to our command according to orders, our leave being expired, for we had already hid the box in the knapsack at Duciehurst. And that’s all.”
He laid his hand on Colonel Kenwynton’s shoulder and gazed wistfully into his face. Day was coming surely, for the elder man’s feebler vision read a strange fact in those eyes, a fact that made him shudder, even when half perceived, a fact against which his credulity revolted.
“Hugh, Hugh, why in the name of God have you not produced those papers, restored the gold and jewels?”
“Why, why, why,” Treherne’s voice rose to a shriek. “Why, I haveforgottenwhere they were hidden. Forgotten! Forgotten! Forgotten!”
Colonel Kenwynton was trembling like a leaf. Achill keener than the cold had set his heart a-quiver. “Forgotten,” he echoed in a vague fright. “Forgotten—impossible!”
The contradiction seemed to restore Treherne—not so much that it aroused the instinct of contention as the determination to set himself right in the eyes of his old commander.
“Do you know, Colonel, where I have been these forty years?” he demanded, quietly.
“I thought, in Paradise, dear old boy. I often asked, but could never hear a word.”
Wherever he had been it was evident he had not been happy there. The trembling clasp of Colonel Kenwynton’s arm on his shoulder brought the younger man’s face down on the soft old wrinkled neck. But now there were no tears.
“I have been at Glenrose.”
The words came from between set teeth, in the merest thread of a voice.
“Glenrose?” Colonel Kenwynton was aware that there was a significance in the reply which he had not grasped. “A beautiful little town, I am told, not far from Caxton, and growing quite into commercial importance,” he said, glibly, his instinct of courtesy and compliment galvanically astir.
“Oh, horrible! Horrible!” Hugh Treherne cried, poignantly. “Do you wonder now that I have forgotten?Ican only wonder that I remember anything. They pretend that it was the wound at Franklin—the injury to the medulla substance.”
“Hugh! Hugh!” the old Colonel was near to falling into the marshy slough at his feet. “You don’t mean—you can’t mean—the—asylum—the private sanatorium for the insane. Oh, my poorboy, my poor boy. Wait, wait, give me your hand, I shall fall, wait, wait.”
But there were sudden voices on the wind, calling here, calling there. Colonel Kenwynton heard his own name, but he did not respond. He only sought to detain his old comrade in his endearing clasp. The younger man was the stronger. Treherne wrested himself away, though not without repeated efforts, seized the paddle, pushed off the dug-out, and in a moment was lost in the gloom, for the moon was down, mists were rising from the low-lying borders of a bayou delta, and the frail craft was invisible on the face of the waters.
Colonel Kenwynton was not devoid of a certain kind of policy. He rallied his composure, realizing that the Captain of the steamboat had been alarmed by his absence on this precarious spot which the sound of his voice had betrayed, and before the emissaries sent out to seek him had reached the old man he had determined on his line of conduct. He maintained a studied reticence, the more easily since Treherne’s presence had not been observed to excite curiosity and he himself was in a state of exhaustion and cold that precluded more than a shivering gasp in reply to questions. For he was determined to take counsel within himself before he indulged in explanations. He said to himself that he could better afford misconstruction of his conduct as some fantastic freak of drunkenness than run the risk of divulging the interests of another man to his possible detriment,—this man, who had so obviously, so appealingly suffered. He steeled himself in this, although he loved the approval, or rather the admiration, of his fellows, and he felt thathis position in some sort forfeited it, not being aware how thoroughly established he was as a public favorite, so that, indeed, he could hardly incur reprobation.
“Ain’t the old Colonel game—must have been tight as a drum last night,” the Captain said to the clerk. “He was making the tow-head fairly sing when I heard him, luckily enough.”
Then to the Boots, who was looking from one to the other of the miry shoes into which he had thrust each hand: “Take his clothes and get them dried and pressed and see that you are careful about it. Colonel Kenwynton shall have the best service aboard as long as I have a plank afloat.”
He had no plank afloat now, high and dry as theCherokee Rosewas on the sand-bar, but his meaning was clear, and Colonel Kenwynton’s gear, despite its strenuous experience, seemed improved by this careful handling when once more donned, and he strode out, serene and smiling, into the outer air.
“How the old fellows stand their liquor—a body would think he was never overtaken in his life.”
The Captain possessed the grace of reticence. None of the passengers had any inkling of the incident of the previous night, either as Colonel Kenwynton knew it, or in the interpretation which the Captain had placed upon it.
Ifthe patience, the concentration, the tireless endurance with which Jasper Binnhart awaited the return of the stranger, could have been applied to any object of worthy endeavor commensurate results must have ensued. It was necessarily, even in his own estimation, a fantastic expectation to learn from him aught of value concerning the treasure hidden at Duciehurst during the Civil War. If the stranger really had knowledge of the place of its concealment it was not likely that he would divulge it, since this would require the division of the windfall. But, he argued speciously, the man might need assistance, which probably explained his singular mission to the strandedCherokee Roseto confer with Colonel Kenwynton. This confirmed the impression of the Berridge family that there was something eccentric, inexplicable about him. What he needed in such an enterprise was not a man of seventy-five, as soft as an old horse turned out to grass, but a master mechanic, such as himself, indeed, a man accustomed to the use of tools, with the dexterity imparted by constant work and the strength of muscles trained to endurance. The Colonel! Why he would be as inefficient as a baby. But perhaps only his advice was desired. Binnhart wished again and again that it had chanced that he could have seen the stranger first. More than once he despondently shook his round bullet head, with itsclosely cropped black hair,—as sleek as a beaver’s, from his habit of sousing it into the barrel of water where he tempered his steel,—as he sat on one of the steps of the rude flight that led to the door of the semi-aquatic dwelling of the water-rat’s family, and gazed across the darkling river at the orange-tinted lights of theCherokee Rose, lying high and dry on the bar. It was a pity for Colonel Kenwynton to be let into the secret at all. If the stranger had any right to possess himself of the hidden money he could boldly hire laborers and go to the spot in the open light of day. If his right were complicated or dubious, and this was most likely, or why had it lain so long unasserted, the old Colonel would clamp down on it with both feet. The Colonel had highflown antiquated ideas, unsuited to the world of to-day; Binnhart had heard him speak in public. He talked about honor, and patriotism, and fair-dealing in politics, and such chestnuts, and, although the people applauded, they were secretly laughing at him in their sleeves. No, no! Binnhart shook his head once more. It was a thousand pities to bring old Kenwynton into it at all; nothing he knew was of any value nowadays,—except the Colonel did know how a horse should be shod, and the proper care of the animal’s feet; people said he used to own fine racers in his rich days. If Colonel Kenwynton returned with the stranger there might be trouble. The old man was a hard proposition. He seemed to think himself a Goliath, and would certainly put up a stiff fight on an emergency. “I’d rather see him come back with any three men than the old Colonel,” Binnhart concluded ruefully.
This was the hour of the night when a mist beganto rise, and the orange-tinted lights from the steamer’s cabin glimmered faintly through the haze. Binnhart became apprehensive that he might not discern the tiny craft in the midst of the great river, struggling across its intricate braided currents, and thus the stranger return unaware, or perhaps give him the slip altogether. He rose and took his way down the successive terraces to the verge of the water. He must needs have heed not to walk into the river, for silent as the grave it flowed through the deep gorge of its channel, and but for some undiscriminated sense of motion in the dark landscape one might never know it was there.
Long, long he stood at gaze, watching in the direction of the bar, his ear keenly attentive, aware that he could hear from far the slightest impact of a paddle on that silent surface. But the wind was rising now; the mists, affrighted, spread their tenuous white wings and flitted away. Presently there lay visible before him, vaguely illumined by the light of a clouded moon, the vast spread of the tossing turmoils of the sky, the dark borders of the opposite bank, the swift swirling of the great river, and the white structure of the steamboat, rising dimly into the air on the sand-bar. Her lights were faint now, lowered for the night; the vague clanking of the dynamo came athwart the currents; still the surface of the waters showed no gliding craft, and listen as he might he heard no measured dip of paddle.
Once more he betook himself back to the shack and found Connover and Jorrocks seated on the outer stair. They evidently had no faith in the adage of honor among thieves, and albeit they had alternately enjoyed the refreshment of a nap in thebunks of the cabin one remained always vigilant as to the movements of Binnhart. As the night wore on and naught was developed both had taken up a position on the outer stair and alertly awaited the crisis.
Dan Berridge and his father were but poor exemplifications of the sybarite, but the paramount instincts of self-indulgence overpowered their hope of loot, and their doubt of the fair-dealing of their co-conspirators, and in their respective bunks they snored as noisily as if in the sleep of the just.
Jessy Jane alone took note of the fact that, but for their disclosure of the somnolent talk of the stranger, the others would have known naught of the possibility of the discovery of the hidden valuables at Duciehurst and she resented the chance that they would profit to the exclusion of her and hers. She remained in the dark in the back room of the little cabin, but up and dressed, now and again listening intently for any stir of movement or sound of voices. When she heard the heavy tread of Jorrocks and Connover tramping to the outer stair as they relieved each other’s watch, she would set the communicating door ajar to thrust in her tousled red head to spy upon their motions, withdrawing it swiftly. Now she perceived through the dim vista of the room the square face of Jorrocks against the gloom of the night, looking at her with calculating, narrowing eyes, evidently appreciating the full significance of her espionage, and, beyond still, a vague shadowy outline which she recognized as Jasper Binnhart’s profile. She closed the door with a bang, partly in pettishness and partly through embarrassment, at the moment that Binnhart grewstiff and rigid, motionless in excitement. He had sighted a canoe down the river, which was shining in a rift of the clouds, a mile, nay, two, below the landing for which it was bound. Thus she did not see his wild, silent gesture of discovery, his hand thrown high into the air. Its muscles became informed with a mandatory impulse as he beckoned to Jorrocks and Connover to follow and set forth in a dead run for the water’s side.
A skiff was lying there scarcely discernible in the vague light. It belonged to the shanty-boater, and into it the owner threw himself, grasping the oars, the other two with less practiced feet tumbled into the space left available, and the craft shot out from the land under the swift, strong strokes of the shanty-boater, rowing as if for a purse. There was a belt of pallor along the horizon. A sense of dreary wistfulness, of sadness, lay on the land, coming reluctantly into view. The clouds hung low and menacing, although the wind still was high. The dawn was near, or even the practiced eyes of the river pirates might not have distinguished the dugout, seeking to cross the great expanse, yet being carried by the strong current further and further down the river from its objective point.
“See her now?” asked Jorrocks, resolutely rowing and never turning his head.
“Well out todes mid-stream,” replied Binnhart. “Nigh to swampin’, too. Git a move on ye, Jorrocks, git a move on ye.”
After a contemplative moment he suddenly threw himself on another pair of oars and the combined strength of the two men sent the light boat shooting like an arrow down the surface of the riverupon the craft, evidently having shipped water and beginning to welter dangerously, showing a tendency to capsize, the trick so frequently practiced by the faithless dug-out.
“Hello, sport!” called out Binnhart, as soon as he was within earshot. “You’ll go to the bottom in three minutes unless you can swim agin the Mississippi current better than I can. Will you have a lift?”
The stranger’s exhausted face showed ghastly white in the dull, slow light. His wide, dark eyes were wild and suspicious. There was something in their expression that sent a chill coursing down the spine of the impressionable Connover, his shaken, exacerbated nerves all on edge from his constant potations, as well as from the excitements of this experience and the strain of his long vigil. The stranger scanned them successively, keeping the canoe in place by an occasional dip of the paddle. It might seem as if he debated the alternative—Davy Jones’s locker or a place among these boat-men. When he spoke his reserved gentlemanly tone struck their attention.
“I shall be much obliged,” he said, with grave and distant courtesy, evidently recognizing a vast gulf between their station and his.
“Move out of the gentleman’s way, Connover,” said Binnhart, quickly. For this was a gentleman, however water-soaked, however queer of conduct, whatever project he might have in view.
After securing the dug-out as a tow, Binnhart seated himself opposite the stranger, who was given the place of honor in the stern.
“Nothin’ meaner afloat than a dug-out,” Binnhartremarked, keenly watching the face of his guest, whose lineaments became momently more distinct as the dull dawn grew into a dreary day. “Though to be sure a dug-out ain’t used commonly for crossing the river, jes’ for scoutin’ about the banks, and in the bayous, and lakes.”
“I am not accustomed to its use,” the stranger replied.
“You come mighty nigh swampin’, an’ that’s a fact, though you couldn’t have got nothin’ better at Berridge’s, an’ I s’pose your business with Colonel Kenwynton on theCherokee Rosewouldn’t wait.”
“Colonel Kenwynton!” cried the gentleman, with a strange sharpness. “How do you know I had business with Colonel Kenwynton?”
“No offense, sir. You spoke of it at Berridge’s. He is a leaky-mouthed old chap. What goes in at his ears comes out of his jaws.”
“I spoke of it?Ispoke of it?” repeated the stranger. His voice was keyed to the cadences of despair. The modulation of those dying falls was scarcely intelligible to Binnhart; he could not have interpreted them nor even the impression they made upon his mind. But some undiscriminated faculty appraised their true intendment and on it fashioned his course. Once more he looked keenly at the stranger’s face, while the gentleman gazed with deep reflectiveness at the swift waters so near at hand racing by on either side.
“Where shall we set you ashore, sir?” Binnhart asked with respectful urbanity.
Ah, here was evidently a dilemma. Berridge’s hut was now far up stream, since the brawny practiced arms of Jorrocks had steadily continued torow the skiff down and down the current, which of itself would have been ample motive power for a swift transit. An expression of despondency crossed the stranger’s face.
“I should have noticed earlier,” he said. “I had intended to return to Berridge’s, but I cannot ask you to go so far out of your way against the current. Just set me ashore at the nearest practicable point and I can walk back.”
“All ’ight, sir. Duciehurst is the nearest safe landing, the bank is bluff an’ caving above.”
Binnhart was quick to note as the word was spoken the change of expression and a sudden sharp gasp that was not unlike a snap, so did the muscles evade control.
“You are acquainted with the old mansion, sir, spoke of it bein’ part of your business with Colonel Kenwynton to git the hidden money an’ papers an’ vallybles—take care, Colty, he’ll fall out of the boat!”
For Captain Treherne, his eyes distended, his lower jaw fallen, his face livid, had risen in the boat and stood tottering in the unsteady craft, staring aghast and dumfounded at Binnhart. “Ispoke of that?Itold you that?”
“No, sir, but you told Berridge, Josh, the old man.”
“You lie, you infamous liar! What,Ipublish abroad the secret that I have kept through thick and thin, till after forty years of acute mania I may right the wrong and establish the title. Oh, my God!” he broke forth shrilly, “am I raving now? Is this a species of hallucination, obsession,” he waved his wild hands toward sky, and woods, andsinister, silent river, “or, worse still, is it stern fact and have I betrayed my sacred trust at last?”
“He’ll turn this boat upside down,” the shanty-boater in a low voice warned the others.
“‘Liar’ is a toler’ble stiff word for me to have to take off ’n you, Mister,” said Binnhart, with affected gruffness, for his affiliations with the truth were not so close as to cause him to actually resent an accusation of divagation. “It ain’t my fault if you got absent-minded an’ told Berridge that the vallybles are hid in a pillar or a pilaster,” he broke off abruptly.
A shrill scream rent the air. It seemed for one moment as if Captain Treherne himself had made a discovery, so elated were his eyes, so triumphant was his face, changed almost out of recognition in the moment. Agitated as he was he had lost his balance and was swaying to and fro as if he might pitch head-foremost into the river.
“If you don’t want the whole water-side popilation rowing out here to see what’s the matter aboard you had better make him stop that n’ise,” the shanty-boater urged. “Gag him. Take his handhercher, or his hat,” he recommended, still swiftly rowing.
The dull, purplish twilight of the slow-coming day gave little token of stir amongst the few scattered inhabitants of the riverside within earshot; cottonpickers are never in the field till the sun has dried the dew from the plant, but Jorrocks was mindful of the fact that there are barnyard duties in an agricultural community requiring early rising; cows are to be milked, horses fed and watered, and any bucolic errand might bring to the bank an inquisitive interest in these weird cries ringing fromshore to shore in an intensity of agonized emotion. The suggestion of Jorrocks was acted upon instantly. Binnhart roughly knocked the hat from Captain Treherne’s head, crushed it into a stiff, shapeless mass, thrust it between his jaws, attempting to secure it with his large linen handkerchief, despite his strenuous resistance. The struggle was fierce, and the miscreants were dismayed by the strength the victim put forth. The two could scarcely hold him; over and again he shook off both Binnhart and Connover. The shanty-boater had great ado even with his practiced skill to keep the skiff from overturning altogether, as it listed from side to side as the weight of the combatants shifted. The stranger fought with a sort of frenzy, striking, kicking, butting with his head, even biting with his strong snapping jaws.
“He is like a maniac,” cried Binnhart, in amaze, and once more that awful cry rang upon the air, shrill, wild, freighted with demoniacal bursts of laughter, yet with an intonation more pathetic than tears.
Not until Jorrocks shipped his oars and, leaning forward, caught Treherne’s feet, throwing him on his back in the bottom of the boat, was the gag again introduced into his mouth, to be promptly and dexterously ejected as he sought to rise. Again was the semi-nautical skill of the shanty-boater of avail. A crafty knot in a rope’s end and the stranger’s arms were pinioned to his side, and while the gag was secured the surplusage of the cord was bound again and again about his legs till he was helpless, able neither to move nor to speak. Only his wild eyesexpressed his indomitable courage, his sense of affronted dignity, his resentful fury.
“I do declar’ I’m minded to spit in his face,” exclaimed Binnhart, vindictively, as panting and breathless, he towered above his victim, lying at his feet.
“Better not!” the shanty-boater admonished the blacksmith. Then, in a lower voice: “You fool you, we depend on his good will to show us the place where the swag is hid.”
“Tend to your own biz,” roughly replied Binnhart. “Look where your boat is driftin’. Bound for Vicksburg, ain’t ye?”
For, left to its own devices when the oarsman had gone to the aid of his comrades, the skiff had been carried by the swift current far down the stream and toward the bank, so close, indeed, that Binnhart apprehended its grounding. He had not an acquaintance with the river front equal to the practical knowledge of the shanty-boater, whose peregrinations made him the familiar of every bogue and bight, of every bar and tow-head for a hundred miles or more.
“Look what’s ahead of your blunt pig-snout, an’ maybe ye’ll have sense enough to follow it,” Jorrocks retorted.
For a great looming structure had appeared on the bank in the murky atmosphere, that was not so shadowy as night, yet in its obscurity could hardly assume to be day. An imposing mansion of three stories, with a massive cornice and commodious wings, stood well back on the shelving terraces. Woods on either hand pressed close about and many of the trees being magnolias and of coniferous varietiesforeign to the region, the foliage was dense despite the season, and gave the entourage a singular, sinister sense of deep seclusion. In the dim light one could hardly discern that there was no glass in the windows, but the black, gaping intervals intimated somehow vacancy and ruin, and Binnhart was quick to notice the dozen great pillars rising to the floor of the third story and supporting the roof of the long broad portico. Then he gave no further attention to the unwonted surroundings, but fixed his gaze on the face of their prisoner as his helpless bulk was lifted from the boat by the three. He was of no great weight and they bore him easily enough, inert and motionless, along the broad broken stone pavement to the deserted ruin.
A ready interpretation had Binnhart, a keen intuition. The native endowment might have wrought him good service in a better field. As it was it had been the pivotal faculty on which had turned with every wind of opportunity the nefarious successes that the thieves had achieved. He now watched the glimmer of recognition in Captain Treherne’s eyes as he, too, gazed breathlessly with intent interest at the mansion, despite his bound and gagged situation. He even made shift to turn his head that he might fix his eyes on the eastern side. Only to the east he looked, and always. Binnhart felt a bounding pulse of prideful discovery that in the east the treasure was hidden, in an eastern pilaster of the portico.
He was not familiar with the meaning of the architectural term, but just what a “pilaster” was he would know before he was an hour older, he swore to himself, if there was a carpenter or builderawake in the little town of Caxton where his shop was located and where he must needs repair for tools. There he would learn this all-significant fact, for that there was treasure hidden at Duciehurst all the country-side had been aware for forty years—the question was, where?
They bore Captain Treherne through half a dozen darkling rooms, showing as yet scant illumination from the slow coming day. The windows gave upon a gray nullity outside, and even the size and condition of the bare, echoing apartments could not be ascertained by the prisoner’s searching gaze as he was laid down on the floor at full length, watching the preparations of his captors for their temporary departure. One of them would remain, as he was assured by Binnhart, who had again adopted a tone of deference suited to the evident station and culture of the victim. Connover would stay and see to it that he was not molested in any manner whatever during the short absence of the others. Binnhart, making his words as few as possible, took his leave and once more in the boat Jorrocks pulled down the river with every pulse of energy he could command.
Captain Treherne had spent forty years of his life in an insane asylum, but the experience had not bereft him in this lucid interval of the appreciation of certain fundamental facts of human nature. He realized that although he could not use his hands, Connover was in no wise restricted. Perhaps the offer of the funds in his pocket might compass his release if he could find means to intimate this delicate proposition. Treherne waited till he heard the shuffling gait of Jorrocks and the swift assured stepof Binnhart die away in the distance before he would seek to communicate his desire by means of winks and such significant grimaces as the gag would permit. Before the others were clear of the house Connover had come and stood beside him gazing down at him with a sort of vacant curiosity on his weak, dissipated face, unmeaning and without intention. But he immediately turned away, and, repairing to a long hall hard by, began to tramp idly back and forth to while away the time of waiting.
It was likely to be a considerable time, he began to reflect discontentedly, and he had no particular liking for his commission. The other fellows would get their feed in Caxton, he argued. Jorrocks would not go without his breakfast for the United States Treasury. They would also get drinks, good and plenty. At this thought he took an empty flask from his pocket and lugubriously smelled it. He was a fool, he said to himself, and perhaps that was the only true word he had spoken that day. But, in his opinion, it applied specifically to his consent to remain here, as if he, too, were bound and gagged.
Once more he sniffed the departed delights of the empty flask. Suddenly Captain Treherne heard no more the regular impact of his steps as he tramped the long length of the vacant hall. There was a livery stable at a way-station of the railroad some eight miles distant, a goodish tramp on an empty stomach, but the odor of the flask endued him “with the strength of ten.” He was known there as an ex-jockey of some success, he was appreciated after a fashion by its employees; he could count on their hospitality and conviviality, and perhaps borrowing a rig he could return before Binnhart and Jorrockswould be here accoutered with their tools. The prisoner could not report his defection, even when liberated, for he could not know where in that great building he had seen fit to bestow himself to enjoy, perchance, what he was pleased to call, “a nap of sleep.”
Thus silence as of the tomb settled on the deserted building. The shades of night gradually wore away and the pale gray light of a sunless and melancholy day pervaded the dreary vistas of the bare uninhabited ruin.