CHAPTER XVI.
The tender-hearted Mrs. Gray returned to her cottage after her repulse at Wheatlands in a very sad state of mind over Chester Olyphant’s strange disappearance.
In the month that he had boarded with her she had grown to appreciate him very highly for his true manliness and noble character, and, on his part, her esteem had been returned by a frank, out-spoken regard.
Toward the last he had made her his confidant, telling her his true name and position, and explaining why he had wooed Leola under a mask for the sake of romance, wishing to be loved for himself alone.
“My life has been sad in many ways in spite of great wealth,” he said. “My parents died in my early childhood, and I was brought up by an uncle and aunt who are all now dead, so that I have really no near relatives, having been an only child. But now I shall arrange to marry Leola very soon, and my beautiful home on the Hudson, Bonnie View, will have a fitting mistress in my lovely bride. As for you, my dear friend, in return for all your kindness, I want you to come to us when we are married and make your home at Bonnie View as Leola’s companion.”
He was disappointed when she declined, gently but decidedly, to accept his offer, and when he pressed for a reason the good woman said, simply:
“I cannot leave the little cottage where I came a bride, for the sweetest memories of life cluster around this humble spot. Here my two sweet children, my boy and girl, were born, and here they and my husband passed away from me to the Better Land. Here they return in spirit to brood over my lonely life in love and sympathy, and if I went away perhaps they could not find me easily, or perhaps they would not be as well pleased as here, where we were all so happy together. When my earthly life is ended they will come to soothe my last hours and bear me company to my heavenly home, so I must wait for them here, where they watch over me daily, and I am happier so than anywhere else.”
Her words sounded strange to Chester Olyphant in the glow of his love and youth, loving the world and its gay companionship, but he read on her placid features a peace and resignation he could not understand, and ceased to urge her to change her home, only stipulating that he and Leola should at least have a long visit from her at Bonnie View, to which she cheerfully assented.
So now, at his strange absence, her heart sank with dread, for last night at her window the wind in the pine tree had sobbed like ghastly voices, and she remembered that it had sounded just so before each calamity that had darkened her life, vaguely foretelling sorrow.
“Something bad has surely happened to the poor young man, for he would never have gone away like this with no explanation,” she sighed, as she went, restlessly, about her household duties, with a heart as heavy as lead.
On the next afternoon she took her knitting out on the front porch watching, eagerly, up and down the road, for a sight of the absentee, but all in vain.
Suddenly she heard childish voices, and saw four little lads coming in at her front gate—little fair-haired, blue-eyed boys, “stairsteps,” she called them—their ages ranging from eight to twelve.
Widow Gray knew all these neighbor boys very well, and had often entertained them on her front door-step with apples and ginger-bread cookies, for they were adventurous little fellows, brothers and cousins, who often stole away from their homes to explore little caves roundabout, leaving their doting mammas in wild panics over their absence.
The good woman knew that another expedition was on foot, for each boy carried a new tallow candle in hand, and wore hisworst clothes, as if on purpose, while their pretty faces looked up at her, engagingly, as George, the youngest and boldest, acting as spokesman, asked:
“Mis’ Gray, please, ma’am, may we explore the cave that opens from the hill in your back lot?”
Smiling cheerily at them, she answered, kindly:
“Bless your little hearts, there ain’t no cave there, children. My husband always told me ’twas the end of an underground passage from Wheatlands, where the Hermanns used to hide in Indian raids.”
“We’d like to see it, all the same, ma’am, please,” said the blue-eyed boy with the little pug nose, in that sweet coaxing voice that always won its way with every one.
At that she frankly gave consent, since she could see no possible danger in the adventure, but as she handed them out some currant buns for lunch she shook her head at them slyly, saying:
“I wonder if your mas know you are out on this raid?”
“Oh, they don’t care!” fibbed Willie, with a jaunty air, and then they all went around the house, disappearing presently in the hole under the hill, with their lighted candles, the four dearest and happiest little chaps in Christendom.
“Bless their little hearts,” she sighed, wiping the quick tears from her eyes as she thought of her own two darlings at rest in the little green mounds over in the Presbyterian graveyard, under the grass and flowers, and as she knit and rocked the summer wind seemed like tender childish fingers playing with the locks of white hair on her wrinkled brow.
So time slipped away for an hour or so, as she sat there in the summer stillness, lulled by the hum of bees and the song of birds, and the low breeze sighing in the pine trees, and then she started up at the sound of excited voices coming around the house.
The four cave-hunters were returning helter-skelter, their faces pale, their eyes like saucers, all shouting at once:
“Oh, Mis’ Gray, we have found a dead man!”
“A dead man!”
“A dead man!”
“If you don’t believe us, come on, and we will show you!”
It was no boyish joke, she could see from their pale, earnest little faces, so she said:
“Oh, my, how dreadful! Some Indian bones, perhaps, my dears?”
The boys, who had got in a close group together, now began to talk in loud whispers, one saying. “Oh, tell her!” another, “Oh, don’t,” while the something unexplainable in their faces made her tremble with a strange dread.
She said as calmly as she could for the wild beating of her heart:
“Out with it, boys; tell me all you know at once!”
Thereupon Georgie shouted, glibly:
“We went about five miles in the cave with our candles, an’ then we found”—
She held up a remonstrating hand, saying:
“Not five miles, oh, no; I have often heard that the underground road isn’t more than a mile.”
“Well, a mile, then,” continued George, unabashed, “an’ then we thought we heard an nawful grunt, an’ we all jumped so that our candles most went out, an’ the skin creeped on our bones, ’cause we thought it might be an Indian ghost, you see, an’ we might get tommy-hawked, an’ our mammas wouldn’t never know where we was, ’cause we sneaked away,” he broke down, with a stifled whimper, and nudged the next boy to go on.
Alex took up the story, adding:
“The little boys was scared, but we wasn’t, an’ we marched right on, an’ d’reckly we come on a dead man—not Indian bones, no, but a white man with his head all bloody, an’—an’—then we thought we better come back for you, ’cause you know him.”
With a groan she cried:
“You don’t mean my boarder—Mr. Chester!”
Perhaps the little fellows had already decided to break the news to her gently, for they nudged each other, and the oldest one said, sorrowfully:
“It looked like him, but maybe ’tain’t. Please come with us and see!”
“I will come,” she said, “but wait; you said he groaned.”
“Before we got to him it sounded like groans, but when we found him he was dead.”
“Dead as a door nail!” sobbed little Laurie, awesomely, while the eyes of the smallest one brimmed over with tears.
It needed no more to make the excited woman follow their guidance back to the cave, as they persisted in calling it, taking with her some water and a bottle of wine.
She soon found that the little boys had told her the truth.
The body of Chester Olyphant lay seemingly lifeless on the ground, the brown curls matted with blood from a wound on the side of the head.
“Oh, who has done this awful murder?” she moaned, as she listened at his heart for a throb of life.
It seemed to her there was a faint, irregular beat, and she hastened to apply her restoratives, eliciting a low sound like a gasp or sigh.
“Oh, boys, we’ll have to carry him out to the air,” she exclaimed, and by their valiant efforts they got him out of the passage just as twilight darkened the world.