"Who's talking of Woodlawn? Just where I came from, and if the fronds of those ferns aren't as fine-cut as petals, then I don't know an oak from a gooseberry bush."
"Dr. Silsby—Inspector McCausland."
The men clasped hands.
"Didn't meet a maniac with a gash in his forehead on the way back, did you?" laughed McCausland.
"Maniac—well, no; but I've rooted out a peeping Tom there, that's been frightening the women."
"How was that?" asked Shagarach.
"It was those ferns did it. Aren't they beauties, though? Feel! Silky! Maidenhair! Rare variety."
"They helped you find the peeping Tom?" said Shagarach, who knew the botanist's tendency to forget.
"Oh, yes," said Dr. Silsby. "I was just about to tell that story. You know the hemlock forest back of the blue hills in Woodlawn—marshy place thereabouts, lots of clay in the soil—some of it on those boots, eh? Well, those ferns came from there. Didn't walk in of themselves, I guess. No, I had to wade for them. Pretty boggy, but not quite up to the Dismal swamp. Well, I was feeling about, pulling up things, when I came on the hut."
"A hut?"
"I call it a hut by courtesy. Begging your pardon, said I, and tumbled in the sides of it. Hadn't any door that I could see—only two loose boards—and was mighty poor carpenter work all over. Just a roof and three sides, the whole thing backed against a pudding-stone ledge that juts out into Hemlock lake."
"Had it an occupant?" asked Shagarach.
"Three squirrels," answered Dr. Silsby, "investigating a can of corn."
"Nothing else?"
"Some old newspapers, a blanket, a stool and a mighty ugly collection of instruments, I tell you, including this article, which I confiscated."
He removed a pistol which lay at the bottom of his basket, handling the specimens as carefully as if they had been wounded kittens.
"Is it loaded?" asked McCausland, taking it in his hand and unhinging the butt. The backs of three cartridges stared out from the cylinder.
"You kept the second bullet, Shagarach, I believe," said McCausland, removing a cartridge. Shagarach rolled out a flattened bullet from a pen box in his drawer.
"Same caliber," said McCausland. "This looks like the pistol that was aimed at you that evening."
"So you know peeping Tom, then?" asked Dr. Silsby.
"Mr. McCausland and I have two of the three bullets that round out his pistol's complement," answered Shagarach, "and the third is lodged in my ceiling at home too deep for the probe to reach."
"I thought the hut had a human atmosphere. There were fresh tracks around, and the station-master spoke to me about a scoundrel that's been frightening the country-folks—frightening them by running away from them, as far as I could see. But you don't suppose he was fern-gathering down in that swamp, do you?"
"Hardly," said McCausland. "Could you take us there now?"
"Now? I've my lecture at Hilo hall—A Study in Ingratitude; or, the Threatened Extinction of the Great Horned Owl."
"It is an important piece of evidence in the Floyd case," said Shagarach, though McCausland still smiled incredulously. "We want the occupant of that hut."
"Robert's case. Command me," said Dr. Silsby. "Sorry Mr. Hutman wasn't at home when I called. I'd have had him here dead or alive."
"Wolf!" said McCausland. The great dog started up, wagging his tail. "Smell." He offered him the revolver butt. The hound barked and smelled his way to the door again, but McCausland pulled him back.
"It is our man," he said, thrusting the paper-weight in his pocket.
"My pathfinder, Aronson," said Shagarach, who sprung to his desk.
"The next train for Woodlawn doesn't leave till 4:03."
"We can go more quickly by team," said McCausland. "I will have one here in ten minutes."
Then he departed with his hound, and Shagarach sent Aronson to announce at Hilo hall that an imperative summons compelled the defender of the great horned owl to neglect for once the cause of that calumniated biped.
"This is where I left the road," cried Dr. Silsby, an hour later. "A good, smart journey lies before us."
"It's uncertain when we'll return," said McCausland to the driver. "Probably not before 6 at the earliest. You'd better drive home. We'll take the train into town."
The driver wheeled his team and drove away, while the party of three—Shagarach, McCausland and Silsby—crossed a bush-skirted meadow with the bloodhound still in leash. But they were not destined to remain long unattended. The curious folk had got wind of their intention to unearth the peeping Tom, and the sight of an officer in buttons emboldened many to follow in their wake. Several men offered to help in the search, and McCausland did not refuse their assistance.
"The more the merrier," he said, whereupon not only men but women trailed behind them.
Among these followers was one young woman, familiar to two of the three leaders of the party.
"Good evening, Miss Wesner," said Shagarach and McCausland almost together, and the great inspector was not above entertaining that somewhat vulgar curiosity many of us feel as to the relationship of any chance couple we meet. For Miss Wesner was attended by an exceedingly attentive young man. Courting? Engaged? Married? The question rises as naturally as a bubble in water. In this case the truth lay midway. What more natural than that she should spend her afternoon off with Hans Heidermann at the picnic park in Woodlawn?
"Now you've left the cheap bombast of the town behind you," said Dr. Silsby, looking at the great trees as if he would embrace them one and all. "Isn't this grand? Isn't this Gothic? Pillars, gloom, fretted roof—don't tell me art's cathedrals are any improvement on nature's."
The bloodhound interrupted his rhapsody.
"We may leave Dr. Silsby behind, if he chooses, as well as the town bombast," said McCausland. "We shall not need his guidance any farther. Wolf has caught the trail again."
Two or three times on the march the inspector had held the glass paper-weight out so that the dog might smell the blood-clot on its edge. His joyful bark and eager straining at the leash announced that he had scented the fugitive.
"Not I," said Dr. Silsby.
Pulled on by the hound, McCausland and his two companions were soon trotting far ahead of the plodding laggards behind them. Their talk had died away. The heart of each was tense. Not a sound broke the mid-forest silence save the harsh screams of purple jays resenting their intrusion, and the snapping of twigs and branches.
"There are the ferns," said Dr. Silsby.
"Are we near?" asked McCausland.
"Within a hundred yards, I should say. This is the hemlock grove."
"Step on the moss. It will deaden our footfalls," said the detective. "Slow, Wolf, slow!"
He reined in the impetuous animal as best he could and his companions crept behind him softly.
"I see it," whispered Shagarach, pointing through the trees. It was nearly 5 o'clock and the light was beginning to slant more dimly through the aisles of the forest. But following his finger, the eye of the detective made out a rude shelter, sharply distinct by the smoothness of its boarded walls from the rough bark surfaces around. It seemed to lean against the steep ledge which Dr. Silsby had described and the roof derived most of its support from the projecting arms of two great trees whose roots spread up into the crevices of the rock. Osiers and strong withes took the place of nails, and the chinks were stopped with moss. No log cabin or camper's shed was ever more roughly joined. It had every appearance of being recent and temporary.
"We must surround it," said McCausland. The loud barking of the hound, re-echoing in the stillness, had betrayed their presence to the occupant. Shagarach and Dr. Silsby stationed themselves each at one side, the former empty-handed, the latter clubbing his stout cane. McCausland waited for the followers to arrive through the woods, but most of them hung back at a safe distance, only three or four of the men coming close to the besiegers.
"Who is inside there?" asked the detective loudly.
The silence succeeding his question was intense and prolonged.
"We have come to take you in the name of the law, and we will take you, living or dead," said the detective.
There was no response but the rustling of the leaves. Song-birds were few in the deep recesses, and these few had been frightened from their nests. A creeping fear entered the hearts of the ring in the background and they edged farther away. For the gloom was gathering swiftly. Only one patch of sky was visible, above the steep ledge, and that lay toward the darkening east.
"I prefer that he should be taken alive, if possible," said Shagarach in a low voice to the detective. The latter gave three strong raps with a bough on the trunk of a mighty tree, then cried again to the secreted fugitive:
"Once more, I will state our errand. We are officers of the law. You are wanted for the murderous attacks you have made on Meyer Shagarach——"
A hoarse snarl of rage burst from within the hut, causing some of the distant spectators to turn in alarm. But it angered the bloodhound, as the spur a proud horse, and with an answering roar he burst loose from his leash and sprung at the hut, forcing a loose plank in with his impetus. Then a sharp tool was seen to descend in the opening—apparently an adze—and the hound's head sunk under the blow. He leaped from side to side in agony, and as he ran back whining to his master the blood dripped into his eyes from a hideous wound that had bared the bone of the skull. McCausland swore furiously and the lingering shadow of a smile vanished from his face. He unwound the rope which he had brought along and secured one circle of a double handcuff to his left wrist.
"We'll march home Siamese fashion or my name is Muggins," said the inspector, between his teeth. Then he began gathering brushwood in a heap before the hut.
"What are you at, man?" cried Dr. Silsby.
"Smoke him out," said McCausland.
"And fire these woods? Are you crazy?" The botanist was greatly excited.
"Confound your woods! Good Wolf! Poor Wolf!" said the inspector, alternately petting the hound, who, amid all his pain, licked his master's hand, and throwing fagots on his pyre.
"But—but—name o' conscience, man," stammered Dr. Silsby. "This is the finest hemlock grove this side of the White mountains."
"We could demolish the walls, I think," said Shagarach, "and capture him with a rush."
"Where are the axes?" asked McCausland.
"Poles will do." There were heavy boughs and light saplings lying about, which would make excellent impromptu crowbars. Without a word Shagarach seized one of these and wedged it into the crack between two of the boards. The roar of rage within told them the occupant was watching.
"Fall to!" said McCausland, scattering his brush-heap with an angry kick. The three men began prying the boards apart. Several of them creaked and gave way, and soon nearly the whole front lay in ruins.
"Surrender!" cried the inspector, pointing his revolver into the cave-like gloom. There was no reply. The three men peered in, then entered. The hut was empty!
Suddenly a shout from the onlookers behind called them back to the breach.
"The roof!" they cried. "He is climbing out by the roof!"
McCausland and Silsby stepped back to see the top of the hut, while Shagarach rushed in once more and reached at the ceiling with his bough.
There on the top of the hut, his body half emerging where the planks had been shoved aside, McCausland for the first time saw the long-missing oaf, and Dr. Silsby his peeping Tom. But Shagarach was groping within, vainly smashing upward in the darkness.
With wonderful strength the fugitive raised himself erect, sprung from the insecure footing of the slippery boards, and began clambering up the ledge.
"After him, Wolf!" cried McCausland, and the bloodhound, nerved by his tones, tore up the ledge in the monster's wake. McCausland and Silsby clambered as best they could on all fours, and presently Shagarach, hearing the outcry, followed them. The crack of the inspector's revolver was heard once, but the fugitive had turned like lightning and hurled his adze. McCausland uttered a sharp cry as the pistol was struck from his hand. The fugitive then stood for a moment on the crest, twenty feet above them, outlined in hideous distinctness against the pale patch of sky. But, espying the hound at his heels, he had given a mad plunge, and the onlookers, who had drawn nearer, heard a heavy splash behind the ledge. The bloodhound paused at the summit.
"After him, Wolf!" urged McCausland, and the dog's plunge was heard, as heavy as the man's.
"It is a pool," said Shagarach, gazing into the black water below him.
"Hemlock lake," answered Dr. Silsby. "The land beyond it is marshy for miles."
"And no boat?" asked McCausland.
"One at the upper end, a mile or so, kept by a farmer."
"Then it all depends upon Wolf," muttered the detective. The water side of the precipice afforded no stair for descent, and the party slowly picked its way down the ledge which it had climbed, and made a circuit, so as to stand on the grassy edge of the pool.
"Wolf!" cried McCausland. The dark heads of man and dog had long vanished from sight. No answer came but the night sighing of the trees that fringed the dark lake. A pale quarter-moon arose in the open sky and lent a translucent gloss to its opaque surface. The swallows twittered high in air, reduced to the size of a bee-swarm. But the lake gave back no tale of the two that had entered it.
"Wolf!" cried McCausland, again and again. He whistled till the woods echoed. He clapped his hands with a hollow reverberation. A plash close by startled the listeners. But it was only a pickerel rising to his food or a bullfrog plunging in. Again the mysterious terror invaded the hearts of the pursuers, and the women clung nearer to the men, clutching their bosoms.
Had man and dog reached the other side in safety, there to continue their terrible race? Had they fought their death struggle in the water, and one or both of them sunk to his doom? Who could tell? The lake guarded its secret.
"It is dark," said Shagarach, but McCausland lingered on the bank, shading his eyes with his right hand. In his left the empty handcuff clanked.
"We have failed," said Dr. Silsby. Then McCausland started with a jerk.
"To-morrow," he said. "To-morrow may tell."
"The way back will be hard to find," said Shagarach.
"Light these," said Dr. Silsby, cutting a pitch-pine bough. It blazed up almost at the touch of a match, and as the others followed his example the forest was strangely illuminated, weird shadows playing about the party. One coming upon them might have taken them for some brigand band en route to their mountains with plunder.
"We'll miss the guidance of the hound going home," said Shagarach, and the women shuddered at the prospect of being lost in the forest at nightfall. It was an unfrequented place. But there were boys present whose holiday ramblings might now be turned to good account.
"Yes, we shall miss Wolf," said McCausland, looking behind him, as if still hoping for a signal from his faithful hound.
"Let us explore the hut," proposed Shagarach, entering.
"And tear it to pieces," cried Dr. Silsby.
Instantly the roof was torn from the rude pile, and its remaining timbers, hardly more than rested on end, almost fell asunder of themselves. A strange heap was revealed by the flickering torches. A stool, a sheet of tin laid over a clam-bake oven, some cans of prepared food, half-empty, an old coat, a blanket and a collection of knives, spikes and other weapons, picked up or stolen, that would have made a formidable array in the belt of a pirate. One of the lads, who had lighted a dry rush for a torch, was about to touch off the newspapers that lay about in great profusion, when McCausland sharply checked him.
"Bundle those up," he said, and the boys obeyed, while the inspector curiously scanned one of them by Dr. Silsby's torch.
"I thought so," he cried in triumph, motioning to Shagarach. "This is dated, like the others, only two days back—a New York paper again. The——" he pointed to the name. "He knew where to look for sensations, you see."
"A vitriol-throwing case?" asked Shagarach.
"Read it for yourself," said the detective.
"At my leisure. We may as well start."
"Has any one a compass?" asked McCausland.
"Nonsense," replied Dr. Silsby. "Do I need a compass with the flora to guide me? There is the fern bed ahead of us, and, by the way, I think I'll gather a few more specimens."
"Not now, doctor," remonstrated Shagarach, and the frightened women echoed him.
"Tut, tut," said the botanist. "Have I slept out o' night in the woods since I was so high to be frightened by a little miscalculation of time? Who asked you to come?" he said to the followers, and the coolness with which he rooted up several ferns actually reassured his timid companions. "I'll take your newspapers to wrap them in," said he to one of the boys, but McCausland interposed.
"Something else, doctor."
"My hands, then," said the botanist, cheerfully. And in fact he guided them out by his trained remembrance of the vegetation he had passed almost as quickly and surely as the hound had led them in by his scent.
It was then Miss Senda Wesner proved to Shagarach that for all her reputation as a chatterbox she could be prudent on occasion. For she selected a moment when Shagarach was bringing up the rear, to slip off the arms of her escort and pluck the lawyer's sleeve.
"Do you know who he was, Mr. Shagarach?" she asked.
"Who?"
"The crazy man, I saw him plainly on the top of the rock. It was the peddler in the green cart that used to come to Prof. Arnold's."
"What will remind me of the summer while you are away, dear?" Robert had said to Emily one morning, little thinking that the sweet girl would treasure the saying for a whole day and end with a pitiful accusation to herself of "selfishness" for leaving him. Could she have consulted her own wish she would have put off the excursion then and there, but a stateroom had already been booked in the Yarmouth, Beulah Ware was looking forward joyfully to the trip and Dr. Eustis' orders had been imperative. So good Mrs. Barlow sensibly stamped her foot at the notion of her daughter's withdrawal and the maternal fiat went forth finally and irrevocably that Emily must go.
But Emily determined that while she was away the bare cell in murderers' row should not wholly lack touches of the midsummer of whose passing glories Robert, their loyal votary, was cruelly denied a glimpse.
And so one day the carpenter came and plotted off a space over a foot wide at the side of the cell, and the florist followed with a load of beautiful long sods rolled up like jelly cake, and little potted plants all in bloom. And the sods were laid down in the trough the carpenter had made, and places scooped out with a trowel for the roots of the plants, and presto, there was a flower bed all along the side that got the sunshine, for Robert's window faced toward the south.
There were twiggy verbenas and fuchsias of tropic coloring, the nappy-leaved rose geranium, less highly rouged than its scarlet-flowered sisters, and blue oxalis along the border, plaintively appealing for notice with its spray of tiny stars. And lest these should not insinuate the odor of the country sufficiently into Robert's senses a pot of sweet basil was suspended from the ceiling to give out fragrance like the live coal in an acolyte's censer. Robert had complained of sleeplessness. What was better for this than a pillow stuffed with prunings of a fir-balsam at night and a sweet-clover cushion by day, when he sat at his table and wrote down his thoughts on "The Parisian Police Theory of Concentration of Crime," or some other such momentous topic.
But the last day, when the finishing touch had been placed on this narrow bower, over which the shadow of the scaffold so imminently hung, while Emily was sprinkling the beds with her watering-jar, Robert had laid aside his pen and was drawing forth sweet music from the violin.
"How divine it will be, Emily," he said. "The ocean sail and the week at beautiful Digby!"
"I wish you were coming, Robert," she answered, sadly.
"We may arrange a voyage in September. That is the month of glory in the provinces."
Robert had never admitted entertaining a doubt as to his acquittal. It must have been the confinement and the ignominy that had worn him down and converted his nights into carnivals of restless thought.
"But I will be with you in imagination," he added, while Emily silently poured the fine spouting streams over thirsty leaf and flower. Poor little green prisoners! They, too, would miss the air and the sunshine and, perhaps, would reproach her, when she returned, with wilted stalks and withering petals.
While she hung her head a far-away voice stole over the high jailyard wall, through the narrow cell window, into the lover's ears. It was a tenor voice, not without reminiscences of bygone sweetness, though worn, and still powerful as if from incessant use. Something in its tones told the listeners that it was no common youth of the city trolling a snatch. For when do such sing, except in derision of song, with grating irony that is ashamed of the feelings to which true song gives expression? We are ashamed of our best impulses and proud of our worst, we cynical city folk! But this was a street singer, a minstrel, musical and sincere. Straining their attention, the lovers caught here and there the import of this ballad. Or was it a ballad repeated by rote? Was it not rather a recitative improvised as the impulse came, both words and music?
He sang of the southward march of armed battalions. Their ranks were full, their banners untattered, and the men shouted watchwords of joy when they beheld the battle-ground before them. A great chieftain stood mounted and motioned them into place with his brandished sword. Grant! Grim Grant! They echoed his name. Then came the thunder of artillery from distant hills, and the lines of the enemy's rifles were seen glistening as they advanced. The defenders did not linger, but rushed forward to meet them and their embrace was the death-lock of Titans. Hurrah, the chivalry of the south give way! It is cavalry Sheridan who routs them! Then the sun stood at its meridian. It was the noon of all glory, for the northern crusaders, doing battle in the just cause. Oh, the chase, the rallies, the heroic stands, and the joyful return, with plunder! But the corpse-strewn field checked their paean. Sire and son lay clasped in death, facing each other. The garb of one was gray, of the other blue. Ambulances issued empty from the hospital tents, and rode back groaning with the wounded. Nurses knelt with water cups at the dying hero's side. And until night closed over, sorrow mingled with joy in that bivouac by the fresh-fought field.
A loud salvo of applause told that the singer was done. Emily could see in her mind's eye the ring at the sidewalk edge, arrested in the course of meaner thoughts or idle vacuity by his heart-moving story. The gift of Homer, in a humble degree, was his; and men to-day are not unlike what they were 3,000 years ago. Robert had long since hushed his violin and stood with bow suspended in air.
"Emily!" he said in a strange tone.
She looked at him and started. He was eying her so eagerly.
"Emily!" he repeated.
The bow dropped from his hand. He reached forward as if he would touch her.
"What is it, Robert?" she asked.
"The water-lily. You are still wearing it?"
"Still wearing it, Robert. I put it on this morning."
Robert uttered a cry.
"It comes back! It comes back!" he said. "The old singing soldier that I met at the park gate. He is blind and wears a brown shade over one eye. His hair is white when he takes off his cap and passes among the crowd. I see him again! I see it all!"
Robert's gaze was far away. He was not looking at Emily, yet he heard her voice.
"When was this all, Robert?"
"That day, the day of the fire. I could not remember before."
She repressed a throb of joy. Was it indeed returning? God was good. He had at last answered her prayers.
"And the water-lily, Robert?"
"Do you not remember, Emily, that I brought you one that evening? It was the first of the season, I told you."
"I do—I do!"
"Search out the old gardener, who lives in the lodge at the west angle of the park. He will remember. 'This is the first of the season,' he said. He will remember the date. He will have kept some memorandum."
"And you talked with him, Robert?"
"We are friends of old. He will remember the incident—our stroll into the glen where the little pond glistens, my noting the one white flower floating among the pads, our poling the flat-bottomed boat from the bank and the courteous speech of presentation he made. 'For your sweetheart,' he said. Oh, it is as plain to me now as the sound of my own voice, Emily. How could I ever have forgotten?"
"It is Providence who sent us the old singing soldier," said Emily. "Let us thank Him for His mercy."
Then Robert ran over detail after detail of that afternoon, when he rambled from the house, burdened with the fresh grief of his uncle's death—seeing little, hearing little, mechanically following a familiar route, all his outer senses muffled, as it were. The great shock of the calamity when he came home late at night had canceled even the feeble impressions that lingered, and not till the voice of the old singing soldier came to his ears once more was the impediment removed.
Now the events rushed upon him, few in number, but clearly, microscopically outlined. The sight of the lily brought up the image of the gardener. He could no longer be suspected of hiding himself after the fire or of secret escape with confederates, or of other conduct that might require concealment and a mask of affected forgetfulness.
"The last link of his chain is broken," said Emily, joyfully, meaning, no doubt, the great inspector's. This happy turn of affairs reconciled her more than anything else to her vacation trip, and it was a gladsome farewell the sweethearts took that day.
On her way through the city she heard again the chant of the old singing soldier and a gush of gratitude impelled her to follow him. He was indeed blind and wore the brown shade as Robert had described. A little girl clung to his coat and guided him when he walked, and the cap he held out bore the initials of the Grand Army and was ribboned with silver cord. The bystanders stared at the sweet-faced lady who laid a bill in the maiden's hand and hurried off without waiting for her "Thank you," hurried off to acquaint Shagarach of the glad, good news.
It was not until she reached the upper flight of the office stairs that she remembered that it was Shagarach's suggestion that she wear a pond-lily now and then so as to start if possible the clogged wheels of her lover's recollection, as we shake a stopped watch to make it go.
There was a similar case, too, in "The Diseases of Memory."
"But it was heaven," she said, "that brought us the old singing soldier."
"Tristram!"
The artist started at his sister's voice. He had been lounging over the steamer's side watching a full-rigged ship in the offing. Its majestic sails glistened as white as snow, but the heaving motion from bow to stern was apparent even at that distance. For the sea was all hills and hollows, and the Yarmouth herself lay darkened under the shadow of a cloud.
"Let me break in on your reverie. This is my brother—Miss Barlow—Miss Ware."
"We shall have a storm," said Tristram, after the formalities.
"Oh, I hope not," cried all three ladies. They had become acquainted while watching the patent log on the saloon-deck stern, which Beulah Ware, who knew almost everything, had explained for Rosalie's information.
"It was due when we started," said Tristram.
"And you never told me," cried Rosalie.
"You would have postponed the trip, my dear."
"Make everything tight," came the cheery voice of the captain. "Get your wraps on, ladies. It's going to pour in a hurry."
"Do let us remain outside," cried Beulah. "I've nothing on that will spoil, under a waterproof."
The others assented, and Tristram and Beulah disappeared for a few moments, returning with mackintoshes and rubber cloaks.
"There, you look like fisher folk," said Tristram, when the ladies had pulled the cowls of their glazed garments over their heads.
"And romantic for the first time, I suppose," said Rosalie. "Tristram is a great stickler for barbarism, you know."
"Esthetically," said Tristram.
"He has positive ideas."
"Of negative value."
The rain had begun to spatter the deck beneath them and the cool wind was working its own will with their garments. They were almost alone on the quarter-deck. An officer eyed them loftily.
"That is the first mate," said Tristram.
"How can you tell?" asked Rosalie.
"Because he is so far off. The captain is always approachable. The first mate is rather distant, the second mate more so. The third mate is rarely visible to the naked eye."
"Hear that bell," cried Emily.
A ding-dong clangor resounded through the ship.
"Supper! All hands to supper!" piped the steward. "Early supper! Captain's orders! Early supper!"
"Hang the captain's orders!" said Tristram. "This is better than supper."
But the foamy crest of a great wave that was level with the bow was caught just then by the wind and hurled up in their faces. The ladies sputtered, drenched with the spray, and the water seethed at their feet. Of course they shrieked and there was nothing for it but to descend and repair to their staterooms to prepare for the supper.
The dishes were clattering and dancing like marionettes. Capt. Keen had acted wisely in ordering an early supper. If the sea increased it would soon be impossible to eat at all.
"Isn't this superb?" cried the enthusiast again, as the vessel perceptibly rose under them, but she fell so suddenly that he probably bit his tongue. At least for a moment his eloquence abated.
"Now to go above again," he said when at last the tipping of the dishes made satisfactory eating no longer possible. "What a rare quality portability is! The portable arts—music and poetry; the portable instruments—fiddles, flutes, etc.; the portable eatables (excuse the unhappy jingle)—oranges, bananas, biscuits."
Suiting the word to the action, he laid in a liberal supply himself and pressed as much more on each of the ladies. He was not so unpractical as he seemed, our friend Tristram, with all his badinage and transparent sophistries.
"But you are not seriously going out on deck?" cried his sister in some alarm, when he made for the stairs.
"And surely you are not going to remain in?" answered Tristram in feigned astonishment. "Lose this glorious sea picture? Atmosphere, nature's own murk; canvas, infinity; music furnished by old Boreas himself, master of Beethoven and Rubinstein; accompaniments, night, sleet, danger and the lightning."
"I fear we are philistines," said Beulah Ware; "we prefer painted storms and the mimic thunders of the symphony."
"Accompaniment, dry dresses," added Rosalie. Whereupon Tristram gallantly saw the ladies housed in his sister's cabin and left them, lunching on his portable eatables, but not a little anxious while he himself climbed up to his perch on the quarter-deck. The sea tumbled over the steamer when she cut her way into a billow, but Tristram had drawn on thick boots and felt prepared to rough it.
"Better lash yourself down," cried the captain warningly. The artist's answer was lost in the tempest.
There was little sleep for the passengers on the Yarmouth that night. Stewards and matrons passed about reassuring them. The boat was seaworthy; everything was locked in; they could lie on their pillows with an absolute certainty of rising on the morrow with the Nova Scotia shore in view. Only they wouldn't. They dared not. And as Rosalie looked as timid as any one, her new acquaintances conspired to remain with her in her stateroom, all three sharing the two cots and getting what naps they could.
They had run out of talk and were almost drowsing when the great crash came. Have you felt your heart jump when a pistol-shot smites the silence? No crack of land ordnance could inspire the fear that resounding bump did in the breasts of the apprehensive girls.
"A rock!" was the thought of each, but they only expressed their terror in an inarticulate shriek. Then the whimpering of women and the cries of men were heard in the saloon.
"We are sinking!" cried some one, and the girls rushed out. A hundred white-clad forms darted to and fro like gnats in a swarm, or clung together, wringing their hands in misery. Some of the men fought to unbar the doors. But they were bolted from the outside. The whole cabin was penned in there to drown. Then each one felt for his dearest.
"Tristram!" moaned Rosalie, knocking at his stateroom door. "Tristram!" But there came no answer. "He is out on the deck! He is swept away and drowned!" she cried, with truer tears than the imagined sorrows of Desdemona had ever drawn from her eyes. But Tristram was safe in the pilot's box, where Capt. Keen was signaling the engineer to reverse his engines; and the engineer, shut in amid the deafening clangor of his machinery, ignorant of what had happened but trained to his duty, obeyed promptly his bell and forced the great vessel back.
The headlights of the Yarmouth had been doused out long before, and there was no lantern that could live in that surge, even if it were possible to hang a second one aloft From time to time the captain had ordered a rocket sent up, to warn approaching vessels, for the air was densely opaque. Only out of the gloom before them, just before the shock came, Tristram could see a long row of lights, feeble and flickering. His imagination constructed the broadside of a steamship about them and once it seemed that he really did catch a vague, shadowy outline. But the reality became certain to another sense. Before the Yarmouth's engines were reversed and her bow disengaged itself, a wail of terror reached him out of the night, and a tearing as of parted timbers. Then hoarse shouts were heard from the emptiness soaring high above the wind.
"We stove in her side," said the captain. Then a signal rocket, hissing into the quenching rain, told him of his fellow's distress. The Yarmouth still receded. The double row of lights was withdrawn into the gloom. But the wailing increased and from the covered cabin below rose the responsive clamor of the passengers.
"Say that we have struck a vessel," telephoned the captain to the steward. After several repetitions the message was understood and it quieted the half-clad throng a little. But anxiety was legible on every face.
Twice more the signal of distress went up and the captain answered it, though helpless to assist. Then the air was blank.
"Head her east," said the captain to the pilot. He knew by the lights that the other vessel was pointed to the larboard when she crossed his bow. He could not back forever or heave to in that sea. He must circumnavigate the vessel or the vortex if she were sunk. So he nosed his prow oceanward into the teeth of the wind. Under these circumstances the headway of his boat was slow.
"Ahoy!"
Was it a voice from the darkness? A huge wave rose over them like a cliff and hurled itself against the strong glass of the pilot's window. In a moment they were soused and the wind blowing in upon them told them that their brittle sheath was shattered. But the electric globes still cast their white gleams over the foredeck and revealed a dark object that was not there before.
"A boat!" cried Tristram.
"Save them!" shouted Capt. Keen, rushing down the steps, with the artist at his heels. It was indeed a lifeboat, which had been carried on the crest of a billow clear over the Yarmouth's gunwale and left high, if not dry. Only five forms could be seen—three of them stirring, the other two motionless. All were men.
"Climb!" shouted Keen, seizing one of the limp bodies in his arms. Tristram caught up the other and staggered back in the direction of the light, the three wrecked men following and grappling at them in their bewilderment. Another wave like the last and they were lost, all seven. But these great surges come in rhythmic intervals. Rescuers and rescued reached the pilot house in safety.
"Who are you, shipmates?" asked the captain, pouring brandy down the mouths of the unconscious men. The others answered in German.
"The Hamburg liner, Osric," translated Tristram. "She broke her rudder and was driven off her course by the gale."
"Heaven save us from meeting any more such driftwood," said the pilot unsteadily with a hiccough.
"Were any other boats out?" asked Capt. Keen. Tristram interpreted question and answer.
"Two others, but they were swamped. All on board are lost."
A thrill went through the strong men. Usage does not render sailors callous to the perils of the sea. Death under the ocean is still the most awe-inspiring of fates—the doom of the irrecoverable body, of the skeleton lying on the bottom, like a coral freak.
"Mostly immigrants from Germany and Sweden," answered the spokesman to the next question. All five were common sailors. They had waited their turn and the captain had ordered them into the lifeboat when it came. He himself had stood by his sinking ship to the end.
In a lull of the breaking seas, Tristram and Capt. Keen picked their way down into the cabin. The captain's appearance was a signal for a cheer. He addressed the passengers briefly, outlined the terrible event and assured them that, as lightning never strikes twice in the same spot, they might turn in and count on a clear voyage oceanward for the rest of the night. He could not control the weather or promise them sleep. But he felt so safe himself that he had just come down to retire for his own spell of slumber.
This little lie was one of those which the recording angel will blot away with tears. The old salt would no more have slept that night than he would have taken a dose of poison. Even for the few minutes he was below he had been as uneasy within as a young mother when she sees her baby in the arms of some one whose carelessness she has good reason to dread. The pilot was in liquor, and Capt. Keen, making a quick tour aft so that every one might get a view of him and a cheery word, together with a brazen repetition of his salutary invention, simply turned into the cook's room forward and swung himself out by its skylight-hatch. Meanwhile Tristram elbowed his way through the crowd to Rosalie. His reappearance soothed her, but she was still hysterical, and the good offices of the other two ladies were found seasonable during the night.
Daylight rose, gray and hollow-eyed, on the Atlantic. The sun was merely a moving brightness in the sky. Ocean, the blind Titan, still heaved and roared, playing his part in some grander drama than ours of flesh and blood—ingulfing sailor or bark as we crush the poor gnat toward whom neither pagan sage nor Christian doctor enjoins mercy—cruel without enmity, indifferent without contempt, divider or uniter of continents according to his chance-born mood.
The storm had scarcely begun to die. But with a clear outlook forward it was possible once more for the sturdy Yarmouth to resume her course. With Capt Keen himself at the wheel, she steamed into the narrow harbor of the little city whose name she bore, situated on the nearest eastward tip of the Nova Scotia peninsula, half a day late, but with her 300 passengers safe and sound.
Several days later, our party of four were peacefully rowing across the calm waters of Digby bay—that isleless harbor of purest ultramarine, where the Bay of Fundy has cloven its way through peaks still wooded to the water's edge and lifts and lowers its huge tides as far north as Annapolis, at the head of the valley of Evangeline. Chance would have it that this resort was the destination of the Marches as well as Emily and Beulah; and the acquaintance made on shipboard under such unusual circumstances was already ripening into something like friendship—perhaps more than friendship—between Tristram and Beulah Ware.
She was his opposite, his complementary color, as he said to Rosalie, and so she harmonized with him and perhaps comprehended him, as Rosalie at times did not. In only one thing did she agree with Tristram's sister. She misunderstood his irony; for her own speech was yea, yea.
"Let us cross over to the camp of the Micmacs," proposed the artist, resting on his oars.
"Are they real Indians?" asked Emily.
"Full-blooded. See their tepees." A cluster of conical tents could be seen rising from the dark foliage on the hillside. For Digby rises from the water with a slope like a toboggan slide all the way up to the white cottages on its crest.
"There is a specimen," said Tristram, as a canoe skimmed by them. "Isn't he noble? The great face, the grim mouth, the high cheek-bones, the straight hair—it is a bronze mask of Saturn. I may utilize him."
"When?"
"When I carve my life group for the Academy's grand prize."
"Have you chosen your subject?"
"Driftwood Pickers at the Sea Level."
Beulah Ware looked up. She had suggested it the day before, while strolling alone with the man of hazy purposes.
The boat was beached without difficulty and the ladies stepped ashore—Beulah Ware collectedly, as usual, but Emily and Rosalie as warily as you may have seen a lame pigeon alighting.
"Let us follow my leader," said Tristram, meaning the brown canoeist, who had shouldered his craft and was climbing the beach.
"What is that?" cried Emily, pointing to an object that was tossing on the sands.
"A body," said the others, recoiling, but Tristram walked in the direction indicated. It proved on closer inspection to be the body of a woman, stout and tall. Her long yellow hair floated in the surf, but the features were swollen beyond recognition. It was impossible to tell whether she was old or young. Only her clothing, which was thick and of foreign style, denoted a woman of the poorer class.
"Is it a body?" asked Rosalie, apparently doubting the evidence of her eyes. The quick assemblage of a crowd rendered an answer unnecessary. There were men and women watching all along the Nova Scotia coast in those weary days. Schooners and smacks had put out before the storm, perhaps to be blown far out of their course and suffer the hardships of hunger and shipwreck, perhaps to founder in midocean and never to return. So the body rolling in the surf at the water's edge had been espied by others before the party of four landed, and there was a converging stream of searchers from bush and cottage, and even from the lonely tepees.
"Search her pockets," said one, and the woman's dress was torn open. A packet of papers came out, but the ink had run and the paper was as soft as jelly.
"She has been in the water a week," cried another.
"Perhaps it is a body from the Osric," suggested a boy.
The party of four shrunk in greater horror. There were rumors of lifeboats that had been launched and swamped from the sunken steamer. Could one of the bodies have been carried up the Bay of Fundy on its swift-running tide, forced by a current through Digby Gut, and cast ashore on this unfrequented beach?
"See if her linen is marked?" asked a woman who held a baby. But the search proved fruitless. No stenciled initials, not even a brand on the shoes, to identify the unfortunate. A truck was suggested to carry her up to the town.
"One moment," said Tristram, "her ring may be engraved."
The slender gold circlet was deeply imbedded in the flesh, but a fisherman ruthlessly cut it loose with his knife. Tristram held it up to the light and read a name from the inside.
"Bertha Lund," he read.
Emily Barlow turned pale and glanced at Beulah Ware. If she could have looked across the ocean to the city just then and seen Inspector McCausland closeted with the district attorney, she would have been confirmed in her fears. The detective was scanning a list of the passengers on the Osric.
"Bertha Lund, Upsala, Sweden. That is her birthplace. She was to return on the Osric," he said, uneasily.
"Then it must be she," answered the district attorney. "It is most unfortunate. However, we have her testimony at the hearing. We do not rely solely upon her."
But Emily did rely solely upon Bertha's knowledge, and her heart sunk within her. Without Bertha, there was only Robert to describe the room as she wished it described. And would people believe Robert in so novel, so miraculous, a junction of circumstances as her theory demanded?
"Read that again, please," she cried to Tristram.
"Bertha Lund," Tristram seemed puzzled a moment by the third word, "Bertha Lund, Upsala."
"So to-morrow is the day of the trial, Miss Barlow?"
Mrs. Riley was pinning the bandage on Walter's neck, while Emily buttoned his jacket. She and the quondam Whistler had become fast friends, especially since the day of the struggle in Shagarach's office, and now that his burns were healing and he was able to get out they had arranged a Sunday afternoon excursion to Hemlock grove, with some vague hope of visiting the site of the demolished hut, if Walter's strength could carry him so far. There would be no lack of guides, for the spot had already become locally famous.
"Yes," answered Emily, "the talesmen have been sifted down to twelve at last."
"May the good Lord put mercy in their hearts," prayed Mrs. Riley.
"I wish it was a jury of ladies," said Walter.
"Why, ladies are never selected for the jury," cried his mother.
"Jurywomen is a word not yet included in the dictionaries," smiled Emily.
"But they are all so kind," said Walter simply, but in such a way that his mother and Emily might each take half of the compliment. The bright slum boy was already losing all trace of his plebeian associations, as the innate aristocracy of his nature asserted itself. How luckily he was placed, if he could have foreseen. To begin at the lower-most round of the ladder, but with the unconquerable instinct in him to climb; and so at last, on the topmost round, to have the whole of life for a retrospect.
Mrs. Riley bade them a proud good-by and watched them from her window boarding the car. The down-town ride on a Sunday is always curious, for the desertion of the usually crowded streets gives them a foreign appearance. Emily was commenting on this when Walter called her attention to something in the sky.
"Look, it's a man," he said, pointing almost vertically upward.
"Where?" she asked, leaning forward.
"On the top of the Amory building. He is calling for help."
The Amory building was the tallest structure in the city, the tenants in the sixteenth story enjoying a view that swept in the entire harbor and flattened the men walking in the avenues below to the dimensions of crawling flies.
"We can change cars here, Walter. Let us get off and see."
From the sidewalk Emily could distinguish the minute figure of a man leaning over the parapet around the roof, and shouting through his hands to attract attention.
"Perhaps it is on fire," she said in alarm, framing the thought that lay uppermost in her mind.
"I think he wants to get down," suggested Walter, although not a word of the man's vociferations could be heard.
"Let us speak to the policeman," said Emily, just as a large hat came sailing down on Walter's head. It crossed her mind that the broad brim had a familiar look. The patrolman followed her index finger with his glance and presently there was a knot of passers-by doing likewise. Then the knot grew to a crowd, and the crowd to a multitude. Meanwhile the officer had hunted up the janitor of the building and both entered through the great carved doors. About five minutes later they came down, with a heavily laden, portly gentleman, who seemed taken aback when the crowd hurrahed him.
"Dr. Silsby!" cried Emily. He looked about in surprise.
"Miss Barlow," he said, shaking his head, "here's a to-do. I suppose you'll go right over and tell that Rob."
"Tell him what?"
"Tell him I got lost in the heart of the city I was born in," grumbled the botanist so that she could hardly help laughing. "Well, what are you sniggling at?" he shouted at the crowd, who fell back a little at this.
"And were you lost up there?"
"Haven't had a bite to eat since yesterday noon. Made a call on that ninny, Hodgkins, about his confounded will. Judge is going to decide against him and we'll have our academia after all."
"Good! Good!" cried Emily, clapping her hands.
"Office on the sixteenth floor. Ninny was out. Took my specimens up to the roof. Got worked up. Scribbled notes for my new lecture on——"
"I know. Rob told me. On the beneficent activity of the great horned owl. How interesting!"
Dr. Silsby glared.
"Janitor missed me. Didn't notice the time. Locked out. Slept four hours all night, and now I'm hoarse from bawling ten. What's the matter with Sleepy Hollow? Are they all in bed?"
"Why, this is Sunday morning," explained Emily, repressing her merriment.
"They ought to have ladders up there, so a man could climb down," grumbled Dr. Silsby.
Walter thought this a somewhat unreasonable demand.
"You might have descended by the mail chute," said Emily, laughing outright, "and then the postman would have collected you just before breakfast."
The learned doctor made no reply, so they left him shuffling away in search of a restaurant.
"I do hope Judge Dunder will allow the will," she said; and it took the whole ride to explain the why of this hope to her eager auditor.
At Woodlawn they were directed to Hemlock grove and wandered among its dark trees, peace-breathing in themselves, but haunted for them by the vague pervasive shadow of a tragedy. The hut was too far for Walter's strength, so they turned off at an angle, following a footpath which they knew would lead to some road. Once or twice they heard a murmur of voices, seeming to come from the left. It was very deep and indistinct and not unlike the mooing of a cow. But her bell would have tinkled if it had really been a stray tenant of the milk-shed.
"What is it, Walter?" asked Emily. It had sounded again, this time more humanly and close to their ears. They had been moving toward it unawares.
Walter only clutched her arm in answer.
"Look!" he said, and she saw his eyes white with distension of the lids. "It is the oaf."
Through a parting in the boughs Emily saw the sight. There was a little cemetery near by, unpretending but neat with scattered headstones. In the midst of it, kneeling with his forehead bared and his eyes up-lifted, was the human monster who had woven himself into their life so terribly. What was he doing? Should she run? Her first impulse was to fly, but a fascination held her. The oaf's face was averted and they were screened from his gaze.
Looked at now, the creature's countenance was less repulsive than she had thought. Emily had only seen it convulsed with murderous passion, and those who had described it to her had beheld it under similar circumstances. Yet at best it was horribly misshapen.
"Is he crying?" asked Walter. Strange to say, the oaf seemed to be shedding tears and the quick sympathy went out from Emily's bosom, in spite of the past.
"Hark!"
Emily pulled Walter back, as he leaned forward too eagerly to catch what he was saying.
The oaf moaned in a guttural tone that swelled to its close, crescendo. Then he threw himself on the mound before which he knelt.
It was a grave. No headstone covered it. The mourners of the dead who house there were either forgetful or poor. But strange little bunches of withered wild flowers were strewn upon it. And a heap of fresher flowers lay at one side. What was the monster doing?
With his fingers he scooped out hollows in the earth, then lifted the cut daisies and buttercups he had brought, with many a late violet and honeysuckle, and laid their stalks one by one in the cavities. Holding them in place, he propped them up with the loosened earth, till all along the narrow mound there was a bloom of red and yellow and blue. Then the oaf rose and looked down upon his work, with a childish pleasure.
"Does he think they will grow that way?" asked Walter, but Emily put her finger on her lips. The oaf began muttering in a low, indistinct murmur, like one soothing a child.
Suddenly he drew his soiled hands across his brow. The streaks of earth added to his hideousness and his expression had changed. Some new current of thought was in his mind. He ground his teeth, as Walter had seen him in Shagarach's office, and roared with fists clenched at some invisible adversary.
"Run, run," called Walter, dragging Emily with him along the little footpath—on, on. They could hear their own footsteps echoed behind, but the roars did not appear to be gaining on them.
"Faster! Faster!" urged Emily, as Walter weakened. The briers scratched her dress, the boughs brushed in her face, but what were these to the monster behind them? She dared not turn, lest his fierce eyes should be glaring into hers and his grimy hands clutch at her flying hair.
"I cannot keep up," cried Walter breathing hard, when they had covered a quarter of a mile.
"Oh, Walter, try!" cried Emily, dragging him in her turn.
"I cannot. I can only walk. He is not behind us," he added. Emily slowed up and peeped around timidly. The expected image did not confront her. The woods had a less lonely look here, but they were perfectly still.
"Have we escaped him?" she said, all flushed and out of breath. Without the wings of fear, she could not have run a third of the distance.
Walter held his breath to listen before he answered. There was not a stir in the woods save the sighing of the leaves.
"Let us walk on fast," he said, and Emily was glad to moderate her pace. But they had not proceeded twenty steps, when again she started off, dragging Walter by the hand. This time the sound was on their right. The oaf had crossed the path and was tearing through the woods. With the advantage of the smooth path they might outstrip him and get to the road, where succor could be had.
"Oh, I cannot go farther," cried Emily, fainting. "Leave me, Walter, and bring help as soon as you can." The elastic sinews of the boy had recovered their strength and he was now the fresher of the two.