agin' me? Ye ain't allowin' I'm keeping anythin' back from ye?"
Her face stiffened into rigidity; she dashed the tears from her eyes.
"No," she said quickly. Then after a moment she added, with a faint
laugh, "You see we haven't seen each other for so long--it's all so
sudden--so unexpected."
"But you kem here, just now, calkilatin' to find me?" said Collinson
gravely.
"Yes, yes," she said quickly, still grasping both his hands, but with
her head slightly turned in the direction of the mill.
"But who told ye where to find the mill?" he said, with gentle patience.
"A friend," she said hurriedly. "Perhaps," she added, with a singular
smile, "a friend of the friend who told you."
"I see," said Collinson, with a relieved face and a broadening smile,
"it's a sort of fairy story. I'll bet, now, it was that old Barker
woman that Chivers knows."
Her teeth gleamed rigidly together in the moonlight, like a
death's-head. "Yes," she said dryly, "it was that old Barker woman.
Say, Seth," she continued, moistening her lips slowly, "you're guarding
this place alone?"
"Thar's another feller up the trail,--a sentry,--but don't you be
afeard, he can't hear us, Sade."
"On this side of the mill?"
"Yes! Why, Lord love ye, Sadie! t'other side o' the mill it drops down
straight to the valley; nobody comes yer that way but poor low-down
emigrants. And it's miles round to come by the valley from the summit."
"You didn't hear your friend Chivers say that the sheriff was out with
his posse to-night hunting them?"
"No. Did you?"
"I think I heard something of that kind at Skinner's, but it may have
been only a warning to me, traveling alone."
"Thet's so," said Collinson, with a tender solicitude, "but none o'
these yer road-agents would have teched a woman. And this yer Chivers
ain't the man to insult one, either."
"No," she said, with a return of her hysteric laugh. But it was
overlooked by Collinson, who was taking his gun from beside the tree
where he had placed it, "Where are you going?" she said suddenly.
"I reckon them fellers ought to be warned o' what you heard. I'll be
back in a minit."
"And you're going to leave me now--when--when we've only just met after
these years," she said, with a faint attempt at a smile, which,
however, did not reach the cold glitter of her eyes.
"Just for a little, honey. Besides, don't you see, I've got to get
excused; for we'll have to go off to Skinner's or somewhere, Sadie, for
we can't stay in thar along o' them."
"So you and your wife are turned out of your home to please Chivers,"
she said, still smiling.
"That's whar you slip up, Sadie," said Collinson, with a troubled face;
"for he's that kind of a man thet if I jest as much as hinted you was
here, he'd turn 'em all out o' the house for a lady. Thet's why I don't
propose to let on anything about you till to-morrow."
"To-morrow will do," she said, still smiling, but with a singular
abstraction in her face. "Pray don't disturb them now. You say there
is another sentinel beyond. He is enough to warn them of any approach
from the trail. I'm tired and ill--very ill! Sit by me here, Seth,
and wait! We can wait here together--we have waited so long,
Seth,--and the end has come now."
She suddenly lapsed against the tree, and slipped in a sitting posture
to the ground. Collinson cast himself at her side, and put his arm
round her.
"Wot's gone o' ye, Sade? You're cold and sick. Listen. Your hoss is
just over thar feedin'. I'll put you back on him, run in and tell 'em
I'm off, and be with ye in a jiffy, and take ye back to Skinner's."
"Wait," she said softly. "Wait."
"Or to the Silver Hollow--it's not so far."
She had caught his hands again, her rigid face close to his, "What
hollow?--speak!" she said breathlessly.
"The hollow whar a friend o' mine struck silver. He'll take yur in."
Her head sank against his shoulder. "Let me stay here," she answered,
"and wait."
He supported her tenderly, feeling the gentle brushing of her hair
against his cheek as in the old days. He was content to wait, holding
her thus. They were very silent; her eyes half closed, as if in
exhaustion, yet with the strange suggestion of listening in the vacant
pupils.
"Ye ain't hearin' anythin', deary?" he said, with a troubled face.
"No; but everything is so deathly still," she said in a frightened
whisper.
It certainly was very still. A singular hush seemed to have slid over
the landscape; there was no longer any sound from the mill; there was
an ominous rest in the woodland, so perfect that the tiny rustle of an
uneasy wing in the tree above them had made them start; even the
moonlight seemed to hang suspended in the air.
"It's like the lull before the storm," she said with her strange laugh.
But the non-imaginative Collinson was more practical. "It's mighty
like that earthquake weather before the big shake thet dried up the
river and stopped the mill. That was just the time I got the news o'
your bein' dead with yellow fever. Lord! honey, I allus allowed to
myself thet suthin' was happenin' to ye then."
She did not reply; but he, holding her figure closer to him, felt it
trembling with a nervous expectation. Suddenly she threw him off, and
rose to her feet with a cry. "There!" she screamed frantically,
"they've come! they've come!"
A rabbit had run out into the moonlight before them, a gray fox had
dashed from the thicket into the wood, but nothing else.
"Who's come?" said Collinson, staring at her.
"The sheriff and his posse! They're surrounding them now. Don't you
hear?" she gasped.
There was a strange rattling in the direction of the mill, a dull
rumble, with wild shouts and outcries, and the trampling of feet on its
wooden platform. Collinson staggered to his feet; but at the same
moment he was thrown violently against his wife, and they both clung
helplessly to the tree, with their eyes turned toward the ledge. There
was a dense cloud of dust and haze hanging over it.
She uttered another cry, and ran swiftly towards the rocky grade.
Collinson ran quickly after her, but as she reached the grade he
suddenly shouted, with an awful revelation in his voice, "Come back!
Stop, Sadie, for God's sake!" But it was too late. She had already
disappeared; and as he reached the rock on which Chivers had leaped, he
felt it give way beneath him.
But there was no sound, only a rush of wind from the valley below.
Everything lapsed again into its awful stillness. As the cloud lifted
from where the mill had stood, the moon shone only upon empty space.
There was a singular murmuring and whispering from the woods beyond
that increased in sound, and an hour later the dry bed of the old
mill-stream was filled with a rushing river.
CHAPTER VIII.
Preble Key returned to his hotel from the convent, it is to be feared,
with very little of that righteous satisfaction which is supposed to
follow the performance of a good deed. He was by no means certain that
what he had done was best for the young girl. He had only shown himself
to her as a worldly monitor of dangers, of which her innocence was
providentially unconscious. In his feverish haste to avert a scandal,
he had no chance to explain his real feelings; he had, perhaps, even
exposed her thwarted impulses to equally naive but more dangerous
expression, which he might not have the opportunity to check. He
tossed wakefully that night upon his pillow, tormented with alternate
visions of her adorable presence at the hotel, and her bowed,
renunciating figure as she reentered the convent gate. He waited
expectantly the next day for the message she had promised, and which he
believed she would find some way to send. But no message was
forthcoming. The day passed, and he became alarmed. The fear that her
escapade had been discovered again seized him. If she were in close
restraint, she could neither send to him, nor could he convey to her
the solicitude and sympathy that filled his heart. In her childish
frankness she might have confessed the whole truth, and this would not
only shut the doors of the convent against him, under his former
pretext, but compromise her still more if he boldly called. He waylaid
the afternoon procession; she was not among them. Utterly despairing,
the wildest plans for seeing her passed through his brain,--plans that
recalled his hot-headed youth, and a few moments later made him smile
at his extravagance, even while it half frightened him at the reality
of his passion. He reached the hotel heart-sick and desperate. The
porter met him on the steps. It was with a thrill that sent the blood
leaping to his cheeks that he heard the man say:--
"Sister Seraphina is waiting for you in the sitting-room."
There was no thought of discovery or scandal in Preble Key's mind now;
no doubt or hesitation as to what he would do, as he sprang up the
staircase. He only knew that he had found her again, and was happy!
He burst into the room, but this time remembered to shut the door
behind him. He looked eagerly towards the window where she had stood
the day before, but now she rose quickly from the sofa in the corner,
where she had been seated, and the missal she had been reading rolled
from her lap to the floor. He ran towards her to pick it up. Her
name--the name she had told him to call her--was passionately trembling
on his lips, when she slowly put her veil aside, and displayed a pale,
kindly, middle-aged face, slightly marked by old scars of smallpox. It
was not Alice; it was the real Sister Seraphina who stood before him.
His first revulsion of bitter disappointment was so quickly followed by
a realization that all had been discovered, and his sacrifice of
yesterday had gone for naught, that he stood before her, stammering,
but without the power to say a word. Luckily for him, his utter
embarrassment seemed to reassure her, and to calm that timidity which
his brusque man-like irruption might well produce in the inexperienced,
contemplative mind of the recluse. Her voice was very sweet, albeit
sad, as she said gently:--
"I am afraid I have taken you by surprise; but there was no time to
arrange for a meeting, and the Lady Superior thought that I, who knew
all the facts, had better see you confidentially. Father Cipriano gave
us your address."
Amazed and wondering, Key bowed her to a seat.
"You will remember," she went on softly, "that the Lady Superior failed
to get any information from you regarding the brother of one of our
dear children, whom he committed to our charge through a--a companion
or acquaintance--a Mrs. Barker. As she was armed with his authority by
letter, we accepted the dear child through her, permitted her as his
representative to have free access to his sister, and even allowed her,
as an unattended woman, to pass the night at the convent. We were
therefore surprised this morning to receive a letter from him,
absolutely forbidding any further intercourse, correspondence, or
association of his sister with this companion, Mrs. Barker. It was
necessary to inform the dear child of this at once, as she was on the
point of writing to this woman; but we were pained and shocked at her
reception of her brother's wishes. I ought to say, in justice to the
dear child, that while she is usually docile, intelligent, and
tractable to discipline, and a devote in her religious feelings, she is
singularly impulsive. But we were not prepared for the rash and sudden
step she has taken. At noon to-day she escaped from the convent!"
Key, who had been following her with relief, sprang to his feet at this
unexpected culmination.
"Escaped!" he said. "Impossible! I mean," he added, hurriedly
recalling himself, "your rules, your discipline, your attendants are so
perfect."
"The poor impulsive creature has added sacrilege to her madness--a
sacrilege we are willing to believe she did not understand, for she
escaped in a religious habit--my own."
"But this would sufficiently identify her," he said, controlling
himself with an effort.
"Alas, not so! There are many of us who go abroad on our missions in
these garments, and they are made all alike, so as to divert rather
than attract attention to any individuality. We have sent private
messengers in all directions, and sought her everywhere, but without
success. You will understand that we wish to avoid scandal, which a
more public inquiry would create."
"And you come to me," said Key, with a return of his first suspicion,
in spite of his eagerness to cut short the interview and be free to
act,--"to me, almost a stranger?"
"Not a stranger, Mr. Key," returned the religieuse gently, "but to a
well-known man--a man of affairs in the country where this unhappy
child's brother lives--a friend who seems to be sent by Heaven to find
out this brother for us, and speed this news to him. We come to the old
pupil of Father Cipriano, a friend of the Holy Church; to the kindly
gentleman who knows what it is to have dear relations of his own, and
who only yesterday was seeking the convent to"--
"Enough!" interrupted Key hurriedly, with a slight color. "I will go
at once. I do not know this man, but I will do my best to find him.
