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Show i ' : jS I I -The ;-Light in the" Clearing I1 A TALE of the NORTH COUNTRY in the TIME of SILAS WRIGHT . '6 "Prr TT? 'TMr T A OTTT-TT T T7T? Author of Ebcn Holden, D'H and I. Darrel of the V llV V Hi VJT iJi VOl iriLLlL iV Blessed Isles, Keeping Up With Lizzie, Etc., Etc V '6 & Copyright by Irvintr Bacheller J CHAPTER XII Continued. 13 "'Your fellow townsman, Silas Wright, Is now the largest (inure in Washington. We wore all worried by the resolution of Henry Clay until it bosun to crumble under the irresistible attack of Mr. Wright. On the Kith he sub-n.itted sub-n.itted a report upon it which for lucid nd accurate statements presented in the most unpretending manner won universal admiration and will be remembered re-membered alike for its intrinsic excellence excel-lence and for having achieved one of t lie most memorable victories ever gained in the United -States senate. After a long debate Clay himself, compelled com-pelled by the Irresistible force of argu-n.ent argu-n.ent in the report of Mr. Wright, was obliged to retire from his position, bis resolution having been rejected by a vote of 41 to 1.' " With what pride and joy I heard of this great tiling that my friend had accomplished ac-complished ! Going out with the crowd that evening, eve-ning, I met Sally nd Mr. and Mrs. JHinkolberg. The latter did not speak to me and when I asked Sally If I could walk home with her she answered an-swered curtly, "No, thank you." I have got a bit ahead of my history. Soon after the opening of the new year ten days or so later it may have been I had begun to feel myself encompassed en-compassed by a new and subtle force. It was a thing as intangible as heat but as real as fire and more terrible, it seemed to me. I felt it first in the attitude at-titude of my play fellows. They denied de-nied me the confidence and intimacy which I had enjoyed before. They whispered together in my presence. In all this I had not failed to observe that Henry Wills had taken a leading part. The invisible, inaudible, mysterious thing wrought a great change in me. It followed me through the day and lay down with me at night. I wondered w hat I had done. I carefully surveyed my clothes. They looked all right to me. My character was certainly no worse than it had been, now it preyed upon my peace and rest and happiness that mysterious hidden thing ! One day Uncle Peabody came down tc see me and I walked through the village with him. We met Mr. Dunkel-berg, Dunkel-berg, who merely nodded and hurried along. Mr. Bridges, the merchant, did not greet him warmly and chat with him as he had been wont to do. I saw that The Thing as I had come to think of it was following him also. How it darkened his face ! Even now I can feel the aching of the deep, bloodless wounds of that day. I could bear It better alone. We were trying to hide our pain from each other when we said good-by. How quickly my uncle turned away and walked toward the sheds ! He came rarely to the village vil-lage of Canton after thajt. May had returned a warm bright May. I had entered my seventeenth year and the work of . the term was finished. Having nothing to do one afternoon, 1 walked out on the road toward Og-densburg Og-densburg for a look at the woods and fields. Soon I thought that I heard the sound of galloping hoofs behind me. I looked back and I saw Sally rounding round-ing the turn by the river and coming toward me at full speed, the mane of her pony flying back to her face. She pulled up beside me just as I had Imagined she would do. "Bart, I hate somebody terribly," said she. "Whom?" "A man who is coming to our house on tin- stage today. Granny Barnes is tiying to get up a match between us. Father says he is rich and hopes he will want to marry me. I got mad about it. He is four years older than I am. Isn't that awful? I am goiug to be jr.-t as mean and hateful to him as I can." "I guess they're only fooling you," I said. "No, they mean it. I have heard them talking it over. "He cannot marry you." "Why ?" It seemed to me that the time had come for me to speak out, and with burning cheeks I said: "Because I think that God has married mar-ried you to me already. Do you remember re-member when we kissed each other by the wheat field one day last summer?" sum-mer?" "Yes." We had faced about and were walking walk-ing back tow ard Canton, I close by the pony's side. "May I kiss you again?" She stopped the pony and leaned toward me and our lips met in a kiss the thought of which makes me lay down my pen and bow my head a moment mo-ment while I think with reverence of that pure, sweet spring of memory in whose waters I love to wash my spirit. "I guess God has married us again," I declared. "I knew that you were walking on this road and I had to see you," said she. "People havo been saying such terrible things." "What?" "They say your tincle found the f.ooketbook that was lost and kept the money. They say be ns the first man that went up the road after It was lost." a j;;-T,y uncle never saw the pocketbook. Some money was left to him by a relative in Vermont. That's hew it happened that he bought a farm instead of going to the ijorhouse when Grimshaw put the screws to him." "I knew that your uncle didn't do it," she went on. "Father and mother couldn't tell you. So I had to." "Why couldn't your father and mother moth-er tell me?" "They didn't dare. Mr. Grimshaw made them promise that they would not speak to you or to any of your family. I heard them say that you and your uncle did right. Father told mother that he never knew a man so honest as your Uncle Peabody." Just then we cauie upon the Silent Woman sitting among the dandelions by the roadside. She held a cup in her hand with some honey on its bottom bot-tom and covered with apiece of glass. "She is hunting bees," I said as we stopped beside her. She rose and patted my shoulder with a smile and threw a kiss to Sally. Suddenly her face grew stern. She pointed toward the village and then at Sally. "She means that there is some danger dan-ger ahead of you,"" I said. The Silent Woman picked a long blade of grass and tipped its end in the honey at the bottom of the cup. She came close to Sally with the blade of grass between her thumb and finger. "She is fixing a charm," I said. She smiled and nodded as she put a drop of honey on Sally's upper lip. She held up her hands while her lips moved as if she were blessing us. "I suppose it will not save me if I brush it off." said Sally. We went on and in a moment a bee lighted on the honey. Nervously she struck at it and then cried out with pain. "The bee has stung you," I said. She covered her face with her handkerchief hand-kerchief and made no answer. "Wait a minute I'll get some clay," I said as, I ran to the river bank. I found some clay and moistened it with the water and returned. "There, look at me !" she groaned. "The bee hit my nose." She uncovered her face, now deformed de-formed almost beyond recognition, her nose having swollen to one of great size and redness. "You look like Rodney Barnes," I said with a laugh as I applied the clay to her afflicted nose. "And I feel like the old boy. I think my nose is trying to jump off and ran away." We were nearing the village. She wiped the mud from her prodigious nose and I wet her handkerchief in a pool of water and helped her to wash it. Soon we saw two men approaching us in the road. In a moment I observed ob-served that one was Mr. Horace Dun-kelberg Dun-kelberg ; the other a stranger and a remarkably re-markably handsome young man he was, about twenty-two years of age C A fell Ml We Came Upon the Silent Woman Sitting Sit-ting Among the Dandelions by the Roadside. and dressed in the height of fashion. I remember so well his tall, athletic figure, his gray eyes, his small dark mustache and his admirable manners. Both were appalled at the look of Sally. "Why, girl, what has happened to you?" her father asked. Then I saw what a playful soul was Sally's. The girl was a born actress. "Been riding in the country," said she. "Is this Mr. Latour?" "This is Mr. Latour, Sally," said her father. They shook hands. "I am glad to see you," said the stranger. "They say I am worth seeing," said Sally. "This is my friend, Mr. Baynes. When you are tired of seeing me, look at him." I shook the hand he offered me. "Of course, we can't all be good looking," Sally remarked with a sigh, as if her misfortune were permanent. Mr. Horace Dunkelberg and I laughed heartily for I had toid him in a whisper what had happened to Sally while Mr. Latour looked a little embarrassed. em-barrassed. "My face is not beautiful, but they say that I have a good heart," Sally assured the stranger. They started on. I excused myself and took a trail through the woods to another road. Just there, with Sally waving her hand to me as I stood for a moment in the edge of the woods, the curtain falls on this highly romantic roman-tic period of my life. Uncle Peabody came forme that evening. eve-ning. It was about the middle of the next week that I received this letter from Sally: "Dear Bart : Mr. Latour gave up and drove to Potsdam in the evening. Said he had to meet Mr. Parish. I think that he had seen enough of me. I began to hope he would stay he was so good looking, but mother is very glad that he went, and so am I, for our minister told us that he is one of the wickedest young men in the state. He is very rich and very bad, they say. I wonder if old Kate knew about him. Her charm worked well anyway didn't it? My nose was all right in the morning. Sorry that I can't meet you Saturday. Mother and I are packing u to go away for the summer. Don't forget me. I shall be thinking every day of those lovely things you said to me. I don't know what they will try to do with me, and I don't care. I really think as you do, Bart, that God has married us to each other. "Yours forever, "SALLY DUNKELBERG". How often I read those words so like all the careless words of the young ! CHAPTER XIII. The Bolt Falls. Three times that winter I had seen Benjamin Grimshaw followed by the Silent Woman clothed in rags and pointing with her finger. The trial of Amos came on. He had had "blood on his feet," as they used to say, all the way from Lickitysplit to Lewis county in his flight, having attacked and slightly wounded two men with a bowie knife who had tried to detain him at Rainy Lake. He had also shot at an officer in the vicinity of Lowville, where his arrest was effected. ef-fected. He had been identified by all these men, and so his character as a desperate man had been established. This in connection w7ith the scar on his face and the tracks, which the boots of Amos fitted, and the broken gun stock convinced the jury of his guilt. I remember well the look of the venerable Judge Cady as he pronounced pro-nounced the sentence of death upon Amos Grimshaw. A ray of sunlight slahting through a window in the late afternoon fell upon his gracious countenance, coun-tenance, shining also, with the softer light of his spirit. Slowdy, solemnly, kindly, he spoke the words of doom. It was his way of saying them that first made me feel the dignity and majesty of the law. The kind and fatherly fa-therly tone of his voice put me in mind of that supremest court which is above all question and which was swiftly to enter judgment in this matter mat-ter and in others related to it. Slowly the crowd moved out of the courtroom. Benjamin Grimshaw rose and calmly wdiispered to his lawyer. He had not .spoken to his son or seemed to notice him since the trial had begun, nor did he now. Many had shed tears that day, but not he. Mr. Grimshaw never showed but one emotion emo-tion that of anger. He was angry now. His face was hard and stern. He muttered as he walked out of the courtroom, his cane briskly beating the floor. The Silent Woman as ragged as ever was waiting on the steps. Out went her bony finger as he came down. He turned and struck at her with his cane and shouted in a shrill voice that rang out like a trumpet in his frenzy: "Go 'way from me. Take her away, somebody. I can't stan' it. She's kiilin' me. Take her away. Take her away. Take her away." His face turned purple and then white. He reeled and fell headlong, like a tree severed from its roots, and lay still on the hard, stone pavement. It seemed as if snow were falling on his face it grew so white. The Silent Woman stood as still as he, pointing at him with her finger, her look unchanged. un-changed. People came running toward us. I lifted the head of Mr. Grimshaw and laid it on my knee. It felt like the head of the stranger in Rattleroad. Old Kate bent over and looked at the eyelids of the man which fluttered faintly and were still. "Dead!" she muttered. Then, as if her work were finished, she turned and made her way through the crowd and walked slowly down the street. Men stood aside to let her pass, as if they felt the power of her spirit and feared the touch of her garments. gar-ments. Two or three men had run to the house of the nearest doctor. The crowd thickened. As I sat looking down at the- dead face in my lap, a lawyer who had come out of the courtroom pressed near me and bent over and looked at the set eyes of Benjamin Grimshaw and said : "She floored him at last. I knew she would. He tried not to see her, but I tell ye that bony old finger of hers burnt a hole in him. He couldn't stand it. I knew he'd blow up some day under un-der the strain. She got him at last." "Who got him?" another asked. "Rovin' Kate. She killed him pointing point-ing her finger at him so." "She's got an evil eye. Everybody's afraid o' the crazy ol' trollope." "Nonsense! ' She isn't half as crazy as the most of us," said the lawyer. "In my opinion she had a good reason for pointing her finger at that man. She came from the same town he did over in Vermont. Ye don't know what happened there." The doctor arrived. The crowd made way for him. He knelt beside Www "Go 'Way From Me. Take Her Away." the still fignre and made the tests. He rose and shook his head, saying: "It's all over. Let one o' these boys go down and bring the undertaker." Benjamin Grimshaw, the richest man in the township, was dead, and I have yet to hear of any mourners. Three days later I saw his body lowered low-ered into its grave. The little, broken-spirited broken-spirited wife stood there with the same sad smile on her face that I had noted when I first saw her in the hills. Rovin' Kate was there in the clothes she had worn Christmas day. She was greatly changed. Her hair was neatly combed. The wild look had left her eyes. She was like one whose back is relieved of a heavy burden. Her lips moved as she scattered little red squares of paper into the grave. I suppose sup-pose they thought it a crazy whim of hers they who saw her do it. I thought that I understood the curious bit of symbolism and so did the schoolmaster,- who stood beside me. Doubtless Doubt-less the pieces of paper numbered her curses. "The scarlet, sins of his youth are lying down with him in the dust," Hacket whispered as we walked away together. (END OP BOOK TWO.) |
