"And you told her she was?"

"Sartain; and how much time she had to get there to catch the boat."

"I see. So you would know her again if you saw her."

"I jest would."

The lawyer made a move towards the door which Mr. Ransom hastened to

open. As the long vista of the hall disclosed itself, Mr. Harper turned

upon the countryman with the quiet remark:

"There were two ladies here, you know. Twins. Their likeness was

remarkable. If we show you the remaining one who now lies asleep, you

surely will be able to tell if she is like the lady you saw."

"If she looks just like her you can bet beans against potatoes on that."

"Come, then. You needn't feel any embarrassment, for she's not only sound

asleep but so deaf she couldn't hear you if she were awake. You need only

take one glance and nod your head if she looks like the other. It is very

desirable that none of us should speak. The case is a mysterious one and

there's enough talk about it already without the women hiding and

listening behind every shut door you see, adding their gossip to the

rest."

A knowing look, a twitch at the corners of a good-natured mouth, and the

man followed them down the hall, past one or two of the doors alluded to,

till they reached the one against the panel of which Mr. Ransom had

already laid his ear.

"Still asleep," his gesture seemed to signify; and with a word of caution

he led the way in.

The room was very dark. Mrs. Deo had been careful to draw down the shade

when she put her strange charge to bed, and at this first moment of

entrance it was impossible for them to see more than the outline of a

dark head upon a snowy pillow. But gradually, feature by feature of the

sleeping woman's countenance became visible, and the lawyer, turning his

acute gaze on the man from whose recognition he expected so much,

impatiently awaited the nod which was to settle their doubt.

But that nod did not come, not even after Mr. Ransom, astonished at the

long pause, turned on the stranger his own haggard and inquiring eyes.

Instead, Mr. Goodenough lifted a blank stare to either face beside him,

and, shaking his head, stumbled awkwardly back in an endeavor to leave

the room. Mr. Ransom, taken wholly by surprise, uttered some peremptory

ejaculation, but a glance from the lawyer quieted him, and not till they

were all shut up again in that convenient room at the head of the stairs

did any of the three speak.

And not even then without an embarrassed pause. Both the lawyer and his

unhappy client had a deep and, in the case of the latter, a heartrending

disappointment to overcome, and the clock on the stairs ticked out

several seconds before the lawyer ventured to remark:

"Miss Hazen's face is quite new to you, I perceive. Evidently it was not

her twin sister you met on the high road this morning."

"Nor anything like her," protested the man. "A different face entirely;

prettier and more saucy. Such a gal as a man like me would be glad to

call darter."

"Oh, I see!" assented the lawyer. Then with the instinctive caution of

his class, "You have made no mistake?"

"Not a bit of a one," emphasized the other. "Sorry I can't give the

gentleman any hope, but if the sisters look alike, it was not this

woman's twin I met. I'm ready to take my oath on that."

"Very well. One catches at straws in a stress like this. Here's a fiver

to pay for your trouble, and another for the lad who brought you here.

Good day. We had no sound reason for expecting any different result from

our experiment."

The man bowed awkwardly and went out. Mr. Harper brought down his fist

heavily on the table, and after a short interval of silence, during which

he studiously avoided meeting his companion's eye, he remarked:

"I am as much taken aback as yourself. For all he had to say about her

gay clothing, I expected a different result. The girl on the highway was

neither Mrs. Ransom nor her sister. We have made a confounded mistake and

Mrs. Ransom--"

"Don't say it. I'm going back to the room where that woman lies sleeping.

I cannot yet believe that my heart is not shut up within its walls. I'm

going to watch for her eyes to open. Their expression will tell me what I

want to know;--the look one gives before full realization comes and the

soul is bare without any thought of subterfuge."

"Very well. I should probably do the same if I were you. Only your

insight may be affected by prejudice. You will excuse me if I join you

in this watch. The experiment is of too important a character for its

results to depend upon the correct seeing of one pair of eyes."

CHAPTER XVI

"LOVE!"

She lay in the abandonment of profound slumber, one hand under her cheek,

the other hidden by the white spread Mrs. Deo had been careful to draw

closely about her. Both Mr. Harper and Mr. Ransom regretted this fact,

for each instinctively felt that in her hands, if not in her sleeping

face, they should be able to read the story of her life. If that life had

been a hard one, such as must have befallen the waif, Anitra, her hands

should show it.

But her hands were covered. And so, or nearly so, was her face; the

latter by her long and curling locks of whose beauty I have hitherto

spoken. One cheek only was visible, and this cheek looked dark to Ransom,

decidedly darker than Georgian's; but realizing that the room itself was

dark, he forbore to draw the attention of the lawyer to it, or even to

allow it to affect his own judgment to the extent it reasonably called

for.

His first scrutiny over, Mr. Harper crossed over to his old seat against

the wall. Mr. Ransom remained by the bed. And thus began their watch.

It was a long and solemn one; a tedious waiting. The gloom and quiet of

the small room was so profound that both men, for all their suspense and

absorption in the event they awaited, welcomed the sound of a passing

whisper or the careful stepping of feet in the corridor without.

If they turned to look they could just catch the outline of each other's

countenance, but this they did not often attempt. Their attention was

held by the silent figure on the bed, and so motionless was this figure

in the profound slumber in which it lay enchained, and so motionless were

they in their increasing suspense and expectation, that time seemed to

have come to a standstill in this little room. There was one break. The

lips which had hitherto remained mute opened in a quiet murmur, and Mr.

Harper, watching his client, saw him clutch the headboard in sudden

emotion before he finally rose and, with looks still fixed on the bed,

approached him with the startling announcement:

"The word she whispered was '_Love_'! It must be Georgian."

Alas! the same thought struck them both. Was this a proof? Mr. Ransom

flushed hotly and crept softly back to his post.

Again time seemed to stop. Then there came a cautious rap on the door,

followed by the hasty retreat of the person knocking. It caused Mr.

Ransom to stir slightly, but did not affect the lawyer. Suddenly the

former rose with every evidence of renewed agitation. This drew Mr.

Harper from his seat.

"What is it?" he cried, softly approaching the other and whispering,

though after events proved that he might have spoken aloud with impunity.

Mr. Ransom pointed to her temple from which her hair had just fallen

away.

"The veining here. I have often studied it. I recognize its every

convolution. It is Georgian, Georgian who lies there--ah, she's stirring,

waking! Let me go--"

He dragged himself from Mr. Harper's detaining hand, bent over the bed

and murmured softly but with the thrilling intensity of a suffering,

hoping heart, the name which at that moment meant the whole wide world

to him:

"Georgian!"

Would she greet this expression with recognition and a smile? The lawyer

half expected her to and stepped near enough to see, but the eyes which

had opened upon the white wall in front of her stared on, and when they

did turn, as they did after one halting, agonizing minute, it was in

response to some movement made by Mr. Ransom and not in reply to his

voice.

This sudden and unexpected overthrow of his secretly cherished hopes

was terrible. As he saw her rise on one elbow and meet his gaze with

one which revealed the astonishment and resentment of a wild creature

suddenly entrapped, he felt, or so he afterwards declared, as if the

viper which had hitherto clung cold and deathlike about his heart had

suddenly sprung to life and stung him. It was the most uncanny moment

of his life.

Aghast at the effect of this upon his own mind, he reeled from the room,

followed by the lawyer. As they passed down the hall they heard her voice

raised to a scream in uncontrollable shame and indignation. This was

followed by the snap of her key in the lock.

They had made a great mistake, or so the lawyer decided when they again

stood face to face in Mr. Ransom's room. That the latter made no

immediate answer was no proof that he did not coincide in the other's

opinion. Indeed it was only too evident that he did, for his first words,

when he had controlled himself sufficiently to speak, were these:

"I should have taken your advice. In future I will. To me she is

henceforth Anitra, and I shall treat her as my wife's sister. Watch if

I fail. Anitra! Anitra!" He reiterated the word as if he would fix it in

his mind as well as accustom his lips to it. Then he wheeled about and

faced Harper, whose eyes he doubtless felt on him. "Yet I am not so

thoroughly convinced as to feel absolute peace here," he admitted,

striking his breast with irrepressible passion. "My good sense tells me

I am a fool, but my heart whispers that the sweetness in her sleeping

face was the sweetness which won me to love Georgian Hazen. That gentle

sweetness! Did you note it?"

"Yes, I noted what you mention. But don't let that influence you too

much. The wildest heart has its tender moments, and her dreams may have

been pleasant ones."

Mr. Ransom remembered her unconscious whisper and felt stunned, silenced.

The lawyer gave no evidence of observing this, but remarked quite easily

and with evident sincerity:

"I am more readily affected by proof than you are. I am quite convinced

myself, that our wits have been wool-gathering. There was no mistaking

her look of outraged womanhood. It was not your wife who encountered your

look, but the deaf Anitra. Of course, you won't believe me. Yet I advise

you to do so. It would be too dreadful to find that this woman really is

your wife."

"_What?_"

"I know what I am saying. Nothing much worse could happen to you. Don't

you see where the hypothesis to which you persist in clinging would land

you? Should the woman in there prove to be your wife Georgian--" The

lawyer stopped and, in a tone the seriousness of which could not fail to

impress his agitated hearer, added quietly, "you remember what I said to

you a short time ago about _guilt_."

"Guilt!"

"No, the word was shame. But guilt better expresses my meaning. I repeat,

should the woman prove to be, not the lovely but ignorant girl she

appears, but Georgian Ransom, your wife, then upon her must fall the

onus of Anitra's disappearance if not of her possible death. No! you must

hear me out; the time has come for plain speaking. Your wife had her

reasons--we do not know what they were, but they were no common ones--for

wishing this intrusive sister out of the way. Anitra, on the contrary,

could have desired nothing so much as the preservation of her protector.

The conclusion is not an agreeable one. Let us hope that the question it

involves will never be presented for any man's consideration."

Mr. Ransom sank speechless into a chair. This last blow was an

overwhelming one and he sank before it.

Mr. Harper altered his tone. He had real commiseration for his client and

had provided himself with an antidote to the poison he had just so

ruthlessly administered.

"Courage!" he cried. "I only wished you to see that there were worse

losses to consider than that of your wife's desertion, even if that

desertion took the form of suicide. There is a reason which you have

forgotten for acquitting Mrs. Ransom of such criminal intentions and

of accepting as your sister-in-law the woman who calls herself Anitra.

Recall Mrs. Ransom's will; the general terms of which I felt myself

justified in confiding to you. In it there are no provisions made for

this Anitra. Had Mrs. Ransom, for any inexplicable reason, planned an

exchange of identities with her sorely afflicted sister, she would have

been careful to have left that sister some portion of her great fortune.

But she did not remember her with a cent. This fact is very significant

and should give you great comfort."

"It should, it should, in face of the other alternative you have

suggested as possible. But I fear that I am past comfort. In whatever

light we regard this tragedy, it all means woe and disaster to me. I have

made a mess of my life and I have got to face the fact like a man." Then

rising and confronting Mr. Harper with passionate intensity, he called

out till the room rang again:

"Georgian is dead! You hear me, Georgian is dead!"

CHAPTER XVII

"I DON'T HEAR"

The afternoon passed without further developments. Mr. Harper, who had

his own imperative engagements, left on the evening train for New York,

promising to return the next day in case his presence seemed

indispensable to his client.

That client's final word to him had been an injunction to keep an eye on

Georgian's so-called brother and to report how he had been affected by

the news from Sitford; and when, in the lull following the lawyer's

departure, Mr. Ransom sat down in his room to look his own position

resolutely in the face, this brother and his possible connection with the

confusing and unhappy incidents of this last fatal week regained that

prominent place in his thoughts which the doubts engendered by the

unusual character of these incidents had for a while dispelled.

What had been the hold of this strange and uncongenial man on Georgian?

And was his reappearance at the same time with that of a supposedly long

deceased sister simply a coincidence so startling as to appear unreal?

He had not seen Anitra again and did not propose to, unless the meeting

came about in a natural way and without any show of desire on his part.

If any suspicion had been awakened in the house by his peculiar conduct

in the morning, he meant it to be speedily dissipated by the careful way

in which he now held to his role of despairing husband whose only

interest in the girl left on his hands was the dutiful one of a reluctant

brother-in-law, who doubts the kindly feelings of his strange and

unwelcome charge.

The landlady, with a delicacy he highly appreciated, cared for the young

girl without making her conspicuous by any undue attention. No tidings

had come in of any discovery in the mill-stream or in the river into

which it ran, and there being nothing with which to feed gossip, the

townsfolk who had gathered about the hotel porches gradually began to

disperse, till only a few of the most persistent remained to keep up

conversation till midnight.

Finally these too left and the house sank into quiet, a quiet which

remained unbroken all night; for everybody, even poor Mr. Ransom, slept.

He was up, however, with the first beam entering his room. How could he

tell but that news of a definite and encouraging nature awaited him? Some

one might have come in early from town or river. All search had not been

abandoned. There were certain persistent ones who had gone as far as

Beardsley's. Some of these might have returned. He would hasten down and

see. But it was only to find the office empty, and though the household

presently awoke and the great front door was thrown open to all comers,

no eager straggler came rushing in with the tidings he equally longed and

dreaded to receive.

At half-past ten the representative of the county police called on Mr.

Ransom, but with small result. Shortly after his departure, the mail

came in and with it the New York papers. These he read with avidity. But

they added nothing to his knowledge. Georgian's death was accepted as

a fact, and the peculiarities of their history since their unfortunate

wedding-day were laid bare with but little consideration for his feelings

or the good name of his bride. With a sorer heart than ever, he flung the

papers from him and went out to gather strength in the open air.

There was a corner of the veranda into which he had never ventured. It

was likely to be a solitary one at this hour, and thither he now went.

But a shock awaited him there. A lady was pacing its still damp boards.

A lady who did not turn her head at his step, but whom he instantly

recognized from her dress, and wilful but not ungraceful bearing, as her

whom he was determined to call, nay recognize, as Anitra Hazen.

His judgment counseled retreat, but the fascination of her presence held

him, and in that moment of hesitation she turned towards him and flight

became impossible.

It was the first opportunity he had had of observing her features in

broad daylight. The effect was a confused one. She was Georgian and she

was not Georgian. Her skin was decidedly darker, her eyes more lustrous,

her bearing less polished and at the same time more impassioned. She was

not so tall or quite so elegantly proportioned;--or was it her rude

method of dressing her hair and the awkward cut of her clothes which made

the difference. He could not be sure. Resolved as he was to consider her

Anitra, and excellent as his reasons were for doing so, the swelling of

his heart as he met her eye roused again the old doubt and gave an

unnatural tone to his voice as he advanced towards her with an impetuous

utterance of her name:

"Anitra!"

She shrunk, not at the word but at his movement, which undoubtedly was

abrupt; but immediately recovered herself and, meeting him half-way,

cried out in the unnaturally loud tones of the very deaf:

"They don't bring my sister back. She is drowned, drowned. But you still

have Anitra," she exclaimed in child-like triumph. "Anitra will be good

to you. Don't forsake the poor girl. She will go where you go and be very

obedient and not get angry ever again."

He felt his hair rise. Something in her look, something in her manner of

making evident the indefinable barrier between them even while expressing

her desire to accompany him, made such a disturbance in his brain that

for the moment he no longer knew himself, nor her, nor the condition of

things about him. If she saw the effect she produced, she gave no

evidence of it. She had begun to smile and her smile transformed her. The

wild look which was never long out of her eyes softened into a milder

gleam, and dimples he had been accustomed to see around lips he had

kissed and called the sweetest in the world flashed for a moment in the

face before him with a story of love he dared not read, yet found it

impossible to forget or see unmoved.

"What trial is this into which my unhappy fate has plunged me!" thought

he. "Can reason stand it? Can I see this woman daily, hourly, and not go

mad between my doubts and my love?"

His face had turned so stern that even she noticed it, and in a trice the

offending dimples disappeared.

"You are angry," she pouted. "You don't want Anitra. Nod if it is so, nod

and I will go away."

He did not nod; he could not. She seemed to gather courage at this, and

though she did not smile again, she gave him a happy look as she said:

"I have no home now, nor any friend since sister has gone. I don't want

any if I can stay with you and learn things. I want to be like sister.

She was nice and wore pretty clothes. She gave me some, but I don't know

where they are. I don't like this dress. It's black and all bad round the

bottom where I fell into the mud."

She looked down at her dress. It showed, in spite of Mrs. Deo's effort at

cleaning it, signs of her tramp through the wet lane. He looked at it

too, but it was mechanically. He was debating in his mind a formidable

question. Should he grasp her hand, insist that she was Georgian and

demand her confidence and the truth? or should he follow the lawyer's

advice and continue to accept appearances, meet her on her own ground and

give her the answer called for by her lonely and forsaken position? He

found after a moment's thought that he had no choice; that he could not

do the first and must do the last.

"You shall come with me," said he quietly. "I will see that you have

every suitable protection and care."

She surveyed him with the same unmoved inquiry burning in her eyes.

"I don't hear," said she.

He looked at her, his lips set, his eyes as inquiring as her own.

"I don't believe it," he muttered just above his breath.

The steady stare of her eyes never faltered.

"You loved sister, love me," she whispered.

He fell back from her. This was not Georgian. This was the untutored girl

about whom Georgian had written to him. Everything proved it, even her

hands upon which his eyes now fell. Why had he not noticed them before?

He had meant to look at them the first thing. Now that he did, he saw

that he might have spared himself some of the miserable uncertainties of

the last few minutes. They were small and slight like Georgian's, but

very brown and only half cared for. That they were cared for at all

astonished him. But she soon explained that. Seeing where his eyes were

fixed, she cried out:

"Don't look at my hands. I know they are not real nice like sister's. But

I'm learning. She showed me how to rub them white and cut the nails. A

woman did it for me the first time and I've been doing it ever since, but

they don't look like hers, for all the pretty rings she bought me. Was I

foolish to want the rings? I always had rings when I was with the

gipsies. They were not gold ones, but I liked them. And Mother Duda liked

rings too and made me one once out of beads. It was on my finger when my

sister took me home with her. That is why she brought me these. She

didn't think the bead one was good enough. It wasn't much like hers."

Ransom recalled the diamonds and the rich sapphires he had been

accustomed to see on his bride's hand.

But this did not engage him long. Some method of communication must be

found with this girl, which could be both definite and unmistakable.

Feeling in his pocket, he brought out pencil and a small pad. He would

write what he had to say, and was hesitating over the words with which to

open this communication, when he saw her hand thrust itself between his

eyes and the pad, and heard these words uttered in a resolute tone, but

not without a hint of sadness:

"I cannot read. I have never been taught."

PART III

Money

CHAPTER XVIII

GOD'S FOREST, THEN MAN'S

The pencil and pad fell from Mr. Ransom's hands. He stared at the girl

who had made this astonishing statement, and his brain whirled.

As for her, she simply stooped and picked up the pad.

"You feel badly about that," said she. "You want me to read. I'll learn.

That will make me more like sister. But I know some things now. I know

what you are thinking about. You are curious about my life, what it has

been and what kind of a girl I am. I'll tell you. I can talk if I cannot

hear. I heard up to two years ago. Shall I talk now? Shall I tell you

what I told Georgian when she found me crying in the street and took me

home to her house?"

He nodded blindly.

With a smile as beautiful as Georgian's--for a moment he thought more

beautiful--she drew him to a seat. She was all fire and purpose now. The

spark of intelligence which was not always visible in her eye burned

brightly. She would have looked lovely even to a stranger, but he was not

thinking of her looks, only of the hopelessness of the situation, its

difficulties and possibly its perils.

"I don't remember all that has happened to me," she began, speaking very

fast. "I never tried to remember, when I was little; I just lived, and

ran wild in the roads and woods like the weasels and the chipmunks. The

gipsies were good to me. I had not a cross word in years. The wife of the

king was my friend, and all I knew I learned from her. It was not much,

but it helped me to live in the forest and be happy, as long as I was a

little girl. When I grew up it was different. It was the king who was

kind then, and the woman who was fierce. I didn't like his kindness, but

she didn't know this, for after one day when she caught him staring at me

across the fire, she sent me off after something she wanted in a small

town we were camping near, and when I came back with it, the band was

gone. I tried to follow, but it was dark and I didn't know the way;

besides I was afraid--afraid of him. So I crept back to the town and

slept in the straw of a barn I found open. Next day I sold my earrings

and got bread. It didn't last long and I tried to work, but that meant

sleeping under a roof, and houses smothered me, so I did my work badly

and was turned out. Then I sold my ring. It was my last trinket, and when

the few cents I got for it were gone, I wandered about hungry. This I was

used to and didn't mind at first, but at last I went to work again, and

I did better now for a little while, till one evening I saw, through the

stable window of the inn where I was working, two black eyes staring in

just as they stared across the dying embers of the gipsy camp. I did not

scream, but I hid myself, and when they were gone away stole out and

got on the cars, and gave the man my last dollar--all the money I had

earned--for a ride to New York. I did not know any better. I knew he

never went to New York, and I thought I would be safe from him there. But

of the difference between the woods and a forest of brick and stone I

never thought; of night with no shelter but the wall of some blind alley;

of hunger in the sight of food, and wild beasts in the shape of men. I

didn't know where to go or who to speak to. If any one stared at me long,

I turned and ran away. I ran away once from a policeman. He thought me a

thief, and started to run after me. But people slipped in between us and

I got away. What happened next I don't know. Perhaps I was thrown down,

perhaps I fell. I had come a long way and I was tired. When I did know

anything, I was lying on my back in a narrow street, looking up at a tall

building that seemed to go right up into the sky like the great rocks I

had sometimes slept under when I was with the gipsies. Only there were

windows in the rock, out of which looked faces, and I got looking back

at one of these faces and the face looked at me, and I liked it and got

up on my knees and held up my arms, and the face drew back out of sight,

and I felt very sorry and cried and almost laid down again. I seemed so

alone and hurt and hungry. But the children--there were crowds of

children--wouldn't let me. They got in a ring and pulled at me, and some

one cried: 'Big cheeks is coming! Big cheeks will eat her up,' and I was

angry and got up on my feet. But I couldn't walk; I screamed when I tried

to, which frightened the children, and they all ran away. But I didn't

fall; an arm was round me, a good, kind arm, and though I didn't see the

face of the woman who helped, for she had her head wrapped up in an old

shawl, I felt that it was the same which had looked out of the window

at me, and went willingly enough when she began to draw me toward the

house and up the first flight of stairs, though I could hardly help

screaming every time my foot touched the ground. At the top of the first

flight I stopped; I could go no further. The woman heard me pant, and

pushing the covering from her eyes, she turned my face towards the light

and looked at it. I thought she wanted to see if I was strong enough to

go on, but that wasn't it at all, for in a minute I heard her say, in a

voice so sweet I thought I had never heard the like, 'Yes, you're pretty;

I want a pretty girl to stay with me and go about selling my things. I

love pretty girls; I never was pretty myself. Will you stay with me if I

take you up to my room and take care of you? I'll be good to you, little

duckling, everybody about here will tell you that; everybody but the

children, they don't like me.' I moaned, but it was from happiness. It

seemed too good to hear that cooing voice in my ear. I thought of my

mother--a dream--and my arms went up as they had in the street below. 'I

will stay,' I said. She caught my hands and that is all I remember till I

found myself in bed, with my ankle bound up and a gentle hand smoothing

my hair. It was a month before I walked again. All the time this woman

tended me, but always from behind. I did not see her face--not well--only

by glimpses and then only partly, for the shawl was always over her head,

covering everything but her eyes and mouth. These were small, the

smallest I ever saw, little pig eyes, and little screwed up mouth; but

the look of them was kindly and that was all I cared about then; that and

her talk, which made me cry one minute and laugh the next. I have never

cried so much or laughed so much in my life as I did that one month. She

told such sad things and she told such funny ones. She made me glad to

see her come in and sorry to see her go out. She let no one else come

near me. I did not care; I liked her too well. I was never tired of

listening to her praises and she praised me a great deal. I even did not

mind sleeping under a roof as much as I had before, perhaps because we

were so near it; perhaps because the room was so full of all sorts of

things, I never got tired of looking at them. Pretty things she called

them, but when I saw more things, things outside in shop windows and the

houses I afterwards went into, I knew they were very cheap things and not

always pretty. But she thought they were, and used to talk about them by

the hour and tell me stories she had made up about the pictures she had

cut out of newspapers. And I learned something; I could not help it, and

even began to think a bit--something I had never done before. But when I

got on my feet again, and was given the choice of staying there all the

time, I did not know at first whether I wanted to or not. For Mother Duda

had been very honest with me, and the minute she found that I could walk

again had told me that I would have to have great patience if I lived

with her, and endure a very disagreeable sight. Then she pulled off her

shawl and I saw her as she was and almost screamed, she looked so horrid

to me, but I didn't quite, for her eyes wouldn't let me. They seemed to

ask me not to care, but to love her a little though she was a fright to

look at, and I tried but I couldn't, I could only keep from screaming.

"She had a goitre; that is what she called it, and the great pocket of

flesh hanging down on either side of her neck frightened me. It

frightened everybody; she was used to that, but she said she loved me and

felt my fear more than she did others. Could I bear to live with her,

knowing what her shawl hid? If I could she would be good to me, but if I

couldn't she would do what she could to get me honest work in some other

place. I didn't answer at first, but I did before she had put her shawl

on again. I told her that I would forget everything but her good smile,

and stay with her a little while. I stayed three years, helping her by

going about and selling the tatting work she made.

"She could make beautiful patterns and so neat, but she couldn't sell

them, on account of her awful appearance. So I was very useful to her,

and felt I was earning my meat and drink and the kind looks and words

which made them taste good. It taught me a lot, going around. I saw

people and how they lived and what was nice and what wasn't. I was only

sorry that Mother Duda couldn't go too. She loved pretty things so. But

she never went out except at a very early hour in the morning, so early

that it was still dark. It seemed a terrible hour to me, but she always

came in with a smile, and when one day I asked her why, she said, because

she saw so many other poor creatures out at this same hour, who were

worse to look at than she was. This didn't seem possible to me, and once

I went out with her to see. But I never went again. Such faces as we met;

such deformity--men who never showed themselves by day--women who loved

beauty and were hideous. We saw them on street corners--coming up cellar

steps, slinking in and out of blind alleys--never where it was light--and

they shrank from each other, but not from the policeman. They were not

afraid of his eye; they were used to him and he to them. After I had

passed a dozen such miserable creatures, I felt myself one of them and

never wanted to go out at this hour again.

"Don't you believe this part of my story," she suddenly asked, looking up

into Mr. Ransom's troubled face? "Ask the policeman who tramps about

those streets every night; he'll tell you."

The question on Ransom's lips died. What use of asking what she could not

hear.

"I wish I knew what you were thinking," she now murmured softly, so

softly that he hardly caught the words. "But I never shall, I never

shall. I will tell you now how I became deaf," she promised after a

moment of wistful gazing. "Is there any one near? Can anybody hear me?"

she continued, with a suspicious look about her.

He shook his head. It was the first movement he had made since she began

her story.

This apparently reassured her, for she proceeded at once to say:

"Mother Duda had never told me anything about herself. It scared me then

when one morning I found sitting at the breakfast table a man who she

said was her son. He was big and pale looking, and had a slight swelling

on one side of his neck which made me sick; but I tried to be polite,

though I did not like him at all and had a sudden feeling of having no

home any more. That was the first day. The next two were worse. For he

didn't hate me as I did him, and wouldn't leave the house while I was

there, saying he could not bear to be away from his mother. But he

skipped out quick enough after I was gone, so the neighbors said, and

sometimes I think he followed me. Mother Duda wasn't like her old self at

all. She loved him, he was her son, but she didn't like all he did. She

wanted him to work; he wouldn't work. He sat and stared at me as the

gipsy king used to stare, and if I grew red and hot it was from shame and

fear and horror of the great throat I saw growing from day to day, and

which would some time be like his mother's. He knew I didn't like him,

but he wasn't good like Mother Duda, and told me one day that he was

going to make me his wife, whether I wanted him to or not, and talked

about a great secret, and the big man he would be some day. This made me

angry, and I said that all the bigness he would ever have would be in his

neck. At which he struck me, right across the ear, hard, so hard that I

fell on the floor with a scream, and Mother Duda came running. He was

sorry then and threw down the thing he had in his hand; but the harm had

been done and I was sick a month and had doctors and awful pain, and when

I was well again I couldn't hear a sound with that ear. Hans wasn't there

while I was ill; I shouldn't have got well if he had been; but he came

back when I was up again and was very meek though he didn't stop looking

at me. I thought I would run away one day, and went out without my

basket, but after I had tried two whole days to get work and couldn't, I

went back. Mother Duda almost squeezed the heart out of me for joy, and

Hans went down on his knees and promised not to do or say anything more

that I didn't like. He even promised to go to work, but his work was of a

queer kind. It kept him in his little room and meant spending money, and

not getting it. Men came to see him and were locked up with him in his

little room. And if he went out, he locked the door and took the key

away, and said great times were coming and that I would be glad to marry

him some day, whether his neck was big or small. But I knew I shouldn't

and kept very close to Mother Duda and begged her to get me a new home,

and she promised and I was feeling happier, when one day Hans was called

out by a man and went away so fast that he forgot to lock his door, and

Mother Duda and I went into the room, and it was then that the thing

happened which spoiled all my life. I don't understand it. I never did,

for no one could tell me anything after that day. Mother Duda had gone

up to a table and was moving things about, trying to see what they were,

when everything turned black, the room shook, and I was whirling all

about, trying to take hold of things which seemed to be falling about me,

till I too fell. When I knew anything, there was lots of people looking

at me; people of the house, men, women, and children, but what was

strangest of all was the awful stillness. No one made any sound--nothing

made any sound, though I saw an old book-shelf tumble down from the wall

while I was looking, and people moved about and opened their lips and

seemed to be talking. Had Hans struck me again? I began to think so, and

got up from the floor where I was lying and tried to call out, but my

voice made no noise though people looked around as if it had, and I felt

an awful fright, not only for myself but for Mother Duda, who was being

carried out of the door by two men, and who did not move at all and who

never moved again. Poor Mother Duda, she was killed and I was deaf. I

knew it after a little while, but I don't know what did it; something

that Hans had; something that Mother Duda touched--a square something--I

had just caught a glimpse of it in Mother Duda's hand when the room flew

into a wreck and I became what I am now."

"Dynamite," murmured Ransom; then paused and had a small struggle with

his heart, for she was looking up into his face, demanding sympathy with

Georgian's eyes; and being close together on the short seat, he could not

help but feel her shudders and share the intense excitement which choked

her.

"Oh," she cried, as he laid his hand a moment on her arm and then took it

away again, "one minute to hear! the next to find the world all still,

always still,--a poor girl--not knowing how to read or write! But you

cannot care about that; you cannot care about me. It's sister you want

to hear about, how she came to find me; how we came here for new and

terrible things to happen; always for new and terrible things to happen

which I don't understand.

"Hans never came back. All sorts of policemen came into the house,

doctors came, priests came, but no Hans. Mother Duda was buried, I rode

in a coach at the funeral, but still no Hans. The old life was over, and

when the food was all gone from the shelves, I took my little basket and

went out, not meaning to come back again. And I did not. I sold my basket

out; got a handful of pennies and went to the market to get something to

eat. Then I went into a park, where there were benches, and sat down to

rest. I did not know of any place to go to and began to cry, when a lady

stopped before me, and I looked up and saw myself.

"I thought I was dreaming or had the fever again, as when I was sick with

my ear, and I thought it was myself as I would look in heaven, for she

had such beautiful clothes on and looked so happy. But when she talked, I

could see her lips move and I couldn't hear; and I knew that I was just

in the park with my empty basket and my onion and bread, and that the

lady was a lady and no one I knew, only so like what I had seen of myself

in the glass that I was shaking all over, and she was shaking all over,

and neither of us could look away. And still her lips moved, and seeing

her at last look frightened and angry that I didn't answer, I spoke and

said that I was deaf; that I was very sorry that I couldn't hear because

we looked so much alike, though she was a great lady and I was a very,

very poor girl who hadn't any home or any friends, or anything to wear or

eat but what she saw. At this her eyes grew bigger even than before, and

she tried to talk some more, and when I shook my head she took hold of my

arm and began drawing me away, and I went and we got on the cars, and she

took me to a house and into a room where she took away my basket and put

me in a chair, and took off first her hat, then my own, and showed me the

two heads in a glass, and then looked at me so hard that I cried out,

'Sister,' which made her jump up and put her hand on her heart, then look

at me again harder and harder, till I remembered way back in my life, and

I said:

"'When I was a little girl I had a sister they called my twin. That was

before I lived in the woods with the gipsies. Are you that sister grown

up? The place where we played together had a tall fence with points at

the top. There were flowers and there were bushes with currants on them

all round the fence.'

"She made a sudden move, and I felt her arms about my neck. I think she

cried a little. I didn't, I was too glad. I knew she was that sister the

moment our faces touched, and I knew she would care for me, and that I

needn't go back into the streets any more. So I kissed her and talked a

good deal and told her what I've been telling, and she tried to answer,

tried as you did to write, but all I could understand was that she meant

to keep me, but not in the place where we were, and that I was to go out

again. But she fixed me up a little before we went out, and she bought

me some things, so that I looked different. Then we went into another

house, where she talked with a woman for a long time, and then sat down

with me and moved her lips very patiently, motioning me to watch and try

to understand. But I was frightened and couldn't. So she gave up and,

kissing me, made motions with her hands which I understood better; she

wanted me to stay there while she went away, and I promised to if she

would come back soon. At this she took out her watch. I was pleased with

the watch, and she let me look at it, and inside against the cover I saw

a picture. You know whose it was."

The depths to which her voice sank, the trembling of her tones, startled

Ransom. Had she been less unfortunate, he would have moved to a different

seat, but he could not show her a discourtesy after so pitiful a tale.

But the nod he gave her was a grave one, and her cheek flushed and her

head fell, as she softly added: "It was the first time I ever saw a face

I liked--you won't mind my saying so,--and I wanted to keep the watch,

but sister carried it away. She didn't tell me what it meant, her having

your picture where she could see it all the time, but when she came again

she made me know that you and she were married, by pointing at the

picture and then throwing something white over her head; I didn't ask for

the watch after that, but--"

A far-away look, a trembling of her whole body, finished this ingenuous

confession. Ransom edged himself away and then was sorry for it, for her

lip quivered and her hands, from being quiet, began that nervous

interlacing of the fingers which bespeaks mental perturbation.

"I am very ignorant," she faltered; "perhaps I have said something wrong.

I don't mean to, I want to be a good girl and please you, so that you

won't send me away now sister is gone. Ah, I know what you want," she

suddenly broke out, as he seized her by the arm and looked inquiringly at

her. "You want me to tell why I jumped out of the carriage that night and

vexed Georgian and was naughty and wouldn't speak to her. I can't, I

can't. You wouldn't like it if I did. But I'm sorry now, and will never

vex you, but do just what you want me to. Shall I go up-stairs now?"

He shook his head. How could he let her go with so much unsaid? She had

talked frankly till she had reached the very place where his greatest

interest lay. Then she had suddenly shown shyness of her subject and

leaped the gap, as it were, to the present moment. How recall her to the

hour when she had seen Georgian for the second time? How urge her into a

description of those days succeeding his wife's flight from the hotel, of

which he had no account, save the feverish lines of the letter she had

sent him. He was racking his brain for some method of communicating his

wishes to Anitra, when he heard steps behind him, and, turning, saw the

clerk approaching him with a telegram.

He glanced at her slyly as he took it. Somehow he couldn't get used to

her deafness, and expected her to give some evidence of surprise or

curiosity. But she was still studying her hands, and as his eyes lingered

on her downcast face he saw a tear well from her lids and wet the cheek

she held partly turned from him. He wanted to kiss that tear, but

refrained and opened his telegram instead. It was from Mr. Harper, and

ran thus:

Expect a visitor. The man we know has left the St. Denis.

CHAPTER XIX

IN MRS. DEO'S ROOM

A prey to fresh agitation, he stepped back to Anitra's side. Surely she

must understand that it was Georgian and not herself about whom he was

most anxious to hear. But she did not seem to. The smile with which she

greeted him suggested nothing of the past. It spoke only of the future.

"I will learn to be like sister," she impulsively cried out, rising and

beaming brightly upon him. "I will forget the old gipsy ways and Mother

Duda's ways, and try to be nice and pretty like my sister. And you shall

learn me to read and write. I've known deaf people who learned. Then I

shall know what you think; now I only know how you feel."

He shook his head, a little sadly, perhaps. There were people who could

teach her these arts, but not he. He had neither the ability, the

courage, nor the patience.

"Then some one shall learn me," she loudly insisted, her cheek flushing

and her eye showing an angry spark. "I will not be ignorant always; I

will not, I will not." And turning, she fled from his side, and he was

left to think over her story and ask himself for the hundredth time what

it all meant, what his own sensations meant, and what would be the

outcome of conditions so complicated.

The possibly speedy appearance on the scene of Georgian's so-called

brother did not detract from his difficulty. He felt helpless without

the support of Mr. Harper's presence, and spent a very troubled forenoon

listening to the mingled condolences and advice of people who had no

interest in his concerns save such as sprang from curiosity and a morbid

craving for excitement.

At two o'clock occurred the event of which he had been forewarned. A

carriage drove up to the hotel and from it stepped two travelers; one

of them a stranger, the other the man with the twisted jaw. Mr. Ransom

advanced to meet the latter. He was anxious to listen to his first

inquiries and, if possible, be the person to answer them.

He was successful in this. Mr. Hazen no sooner saw him than he accosted

him without ceremony.

"What is this I hear and read about Georgian and her so-called twin?" he

cried. "Nothing that I can believe, I want you to know. Georgian may have

drowned herself. That is credible enough. But that the girl we read about

in the papers and whom she evidently induced to come to this place with

her should be the dead girl we called Anitra--why, that is all bosh--a

tale to deceive the public, and possibly you, but not one to deceive me.

The coincidence is much too improbable."

"'There are stranger things in heaven and earth'"--quoted Ransom; but

Hazen was already in conversation with the group of hotel idlers who had

crowded up at sound of his loud voice.

After a careful look which had taken in all of their faces, he had

approached one young fellow, covering the lower part of his face as he

did so.

"Halloo! Yates," he called out. "Don't you remember the day we tied two

chickens together, leg to leg, and sent them tumbling down the hill back

of old Wylie's barn?"

"Alf Hazen!" shouted the fellow, thus accosted. "Why, I thought you--"

"Dead, eh? Of course you did. So did everybody else. But I've come to

life, you see. With sad marks of battle on me," he continued, dropping

his hand. "You all recognize me?"

"Yes, yes," rose in one acclaim from a dozen or more throats after a

moment of awkward uncertainty.

"I know the eyes," vigorously asserted one.

"And the voice," chimed in another. After which rose a confused babel of

ejaculations and exclamatory questions, among which one could detect:

"How did it happen, Alf?" "What took off your jaw?" and other equally

felicitous expressions.

"I'll tell you all about that later," he replied, after silence had in a

measure been restored. "What I want to say now is this. Is it believable

that simultaneously with my own return from the grave another member of

my family should reappear before you from an older and much more certain

burying? I tell you no. The riddle is one which calls for quite another

solution and I have come to assist you in finding it."

Here he cast a sinister glance at Ransom.

The latter met the implied accusation with singular calmness.

"Any assistance will be welcome," said he, "which will enable us to solve

this very serious problem." Then, as Hazen's lip curled, he added with

dignified candor, "I scorn to retort by throwing any doubt on your

assertion of relationship to my lost wife, or the possibility of these

good people being misled by your confident bearing and a possible

likeness about the eyes to the boy they knew. But one question I will

hazard, and that before we have gone a step further. Why does it seem so

credible to you that Georgian, a much loved and loving woman, should have

leaped to a watery death within a week of her marriage? You have just

stated that you found no difficulty in that. Does not that statement call

for some explanation? All your old friends here must see that this is my

due as well as hers."

For an instant the man hesitated, but in that instant his hand slipped

from his mouth over which he had again laid it, and his whole face, with

its changed lines and the threatening, almost cruel expression which

these gave it, appeared in all its combined eagerness and force. A murmur

escaped the watchful group about him, but this affected him little. His

eyes, which he had fixed on Ransom, sharpened a trifle, perhaps, and his

tone grew a thought more sarcastic as he finally retorted:

"I will explain myself to you but not to this crowd. And not to you till

I am sure of the facts which as yet have reached me only through the

newspapers. Let me hear a full account of what has transpired here since

you all came to town. I have an enormous interest in the matter;--a

family interest, as you are well aware for all your badly hidden

insinuations."

"Follow me," was the quiet reply. "There is a room on this very floor

where we can talk undisturbed."

Mr. Hazen cast a quick glance behind him at the man who had driven up

with him and whom nobody had noticed till now. Then without a word he

separated himself from the chattering group encircling him and stepped

after Mr. Ransom into the small room where the latter had held his first

memorable conversation with the lawyer.

"Now," said he as the door swung to behind them, "plain language and not

too much of it. I have no time to waste, but the truth about Georgian I

must know."

Ransom settled himself. He felt bound to comply with the other's request,

but he wished to make sure of not saying too much, or too little. Hazen's

attack had startled him. It revealed one of two things. Either this man

of mystery had assumed the offensive to hide his own connection with this

tragedy, or his antagonism was an honest one, springing from an utter

disbelief in the circumstances reported to him by the press and such

gossips as he had encountered on his way to Sitford.

With the first possibility he felt himself unable to cope without the aid

of Mr. Harper; the second might be met with candor. Should he then be

candid with this doubter, relate to him the facts as they had unrolled

themselves before his own eyes;--secret facts--convincing ones--facts

which must prove to him that whether Georgian did or did not lie at the

bottom of the mill-stream, the woman now in the house was his sister

Anitra, lost to him and the rest of the family for many years, but now

found again and restored to her position as a Hazen and Georgian's twin.

The discovery might not prove welcome. It would have a tendency to throw

Mr. Hazen's own claim into the disrepute he would cast on hers. But this

consideration could have no weight with Mr. Ransom. He decided upon

candor at all costs. It suited his nature best, and it also suited the

strange and doubtful situation. Mr. Harper might have concluded

differently, but Mr. Harper was not there to give advice; and the matter

would not wait. Little as he understood this Hazen, he recognized that he

was not a man to trifle with. Something would have to be said or done.

Meeting the latter's eye frankly, he remarked:

"I have no wish to keep anything back from you. I am as much struck

as you are by the mystery of this whole occurrence. I was as hard to

convince. This is my story. It involves all that is known here with the

exception of such facts as have been kept from us by the three parties

directly concerned--of which three I consider you one."

As the last four words fell from his lips he looked for some change,

slight and hardly perceptible perhaps, in the other's expression. But he

was doomed to disappointment. The steady regard held, nothing moved about

the man, not even the hand into which the poor disfigured chin had

fallen. Ransom suppressed a sigh. His task was likely to prove a blind

one. He had a sense of stumbling in the dark, but the gaze he had hoped

to see falter compelled him to proceed, and he told his story without

subterfuge or suppression.

One thing, and only one thing, caused a movement in the set figure before

him. When he mentioned the will which Georgian had made a few hours prior

to her disappearance, Hazen's hand slipped aside from the wound it had

sought to cover, and Ransom caught sight of the sudden throb which

deepened its hue. It was the one infallible sign that the man was not

wholly without feeling, and it had sprung to life at an intimation

involving _money_.

When his tale was quite finished, he rose. So did Hazen.

"Let us see this girl," suggested the latter.

It was the first word he had spoken since Ransom began his story.

"She is up-stairs. I will go see--"

"No, _we_ will go see. I particularly desire to take her unawares."

Ransom offered no objection. Perhaps he felt interested in the experiment

himself. Together they left the room, together they went up-stairs. A

turmoil of questions followed them from the throng of men and boys

gathered in the halls, but they returned no answer and curiosity remained

unsatisfied.

Once in the hall above, Ransom stopped a moment to deliberate. He could

not enter Anitra's room unannounced, and he could not make her hear by

knocking. He must find the landlady.

He knew Mrs. Deo's room. He had had more than one occasion to visit it

during the last two days. With a word of explanation to Hazen, he passed

down the hall and tapped on the last door at the extreme left. No one

answered, but the door standing ajar, he pushed it quietly open, being

anxious to make sure that Mrs. Deo was not there.

The next moment he was beckoning to Hazen.

"Look!" said he, holding the door open with one hand and pointing with

the other to a young girl sitting on a low stool by the window, mending,

or trying to mend, a rent in her skirt.

"Why, that's Georgian!" exclaimed Hazen, and hastily entering he

approached the anxious figure laboriously pushing her needle in and out

of the torn goods, and pricking herself more than once in the attempt.

"Georgian!" he cried again and yet more emphatically, as he stepped up in

front of her.

The young girl failed to notice. Awkwardly drawing her thread out to its

extreme length, she prepared to insert her needle again, when her eye

caught sight of his figure bending over her, and she looked up quietly

and with an air of displeasure, which pleased Ransom,--he could hardly

tell why. This was before her eyes reached his face; when they had, it

was touching to see how she tried to hide the shock caused by its

deformity, as she said with a slight gesture of dismissal:

"I'm quite deaf. I cannot hear what you say. If it is the landlady you

want, she has gone down-stairs for a minute; perhaps, to the kitchen."

He did not retreat, if anything he approached nearer, and Ransom was

surprised to observe the force and persuasive power of his expression

as he repeated:

"No nonsense, Georgian," opening and shutting his hands as he spoke, in

curious gesticulations which her eye mechanically followed but which

seemed to convey no meaning to her, though he evidently expected them to

and looked surprised (Ransom almost thought baffled) when she shook her

head and in a sweet, impassive way reiterated:

"I cannot hear and I do not understand the deaf and dumb alphabet. I'm

sorry, but you'll have to go to some one else. I'm very unfortunate. I

have to mend this dress and I don't know how."

Hazen, who could hardly tear his eyes from her face, fell slowly back as

she painfully and conscientiously returned to her task. "Good God!" he

murmured, as his eye sought Ransom's. "What a likeness!" Then he looked

again at the girl, at the wave of her raven black hair breaking into

little curls just above her ear; at the smooth forehead rendered so

distinguished by the fine penciling of her arching brows; at the delicate

nose with nostrils all alive to the beating of an over-anxious heart; at

the mouth, touching in its melancholy so far beyond her years; and lastly

at the strong young figure huddled on the little stool; and bending

forward again, he uttered two or three quick sentences which Ransom could

not catch.

His persistence, or the near approach of his face to hers, angered her.

Rising quickly to her feet, she vehemently cried out:

"Go away from here. It is not right to keep on talking to a deaf girl

after she has told you she cannot hear you." Then catching sight of

Ransom, who had advanced a step in his sympathy for her, she gave a

little sigh of relief and added querulously:

"Make this man go away. This is the landlady's room. I don't like to have

strangers talk to me. Besides--" here her voice fell, but not so low as

to be inaudible to the subject of her remark, "he's not pretty. I've seen

enough of men and women who are--"

At this point Ransom drew Hazen out into the hall.

"What do you think now?" he demanded.

Hazen did not reply. The room they had just left seemed to possess a

strange fascination for him. He continued to look back at it as he

preceded Ransom down the hall. Ransom did not press his questions, but

when they were on the point of separating at the head of the stairs, he

held Hazen back with the words:

"Let us come to some understanding. Neither of us can desire to waste

strength in wrong conclusions. Can that woman be other than your own

sister?"

"No." The denial was absolute. "She is my sister."

"Anitra?" emphasized Ransom.

The smile which he received in reply was strangely mirthless.

"I never rush to conclusions," was Hazen's remark after a moment of

possibly mutual heart-beat and unsettling suspense. "Ask me that same

question to-morrow. Perhaps by then I shall be able to answer you."

CHAPTER XX

BETWEEN THE ELDERBERRY BUSHES

"No."

The word came from Ransom. He had reached the end of his patience and was

determined to have it out with this man on the spot.

"Come into my room," said he. "If you doubt her, you doubt me; and in the

present stress of my affairs this demands an immediate explanation."

"I have no time to enter your room, and I cannot linger here any longer

talking on a subject which at the present moment is not clear to either

of us," was the resolute if not quite affable reply. "Later, when my

conclusions are made, I will see you again. Now I am going to eat and

refresh myself. Don't follow me; it will do you no good."

He turned to descend. Ransom had an impulse to seize him by his twisted

throat and drag from him the secret which his impassive features refused

to give up. But Ransom was no fool and, stepping back out of the way of

temptation, he allowed him to escape without further parley.

Then he went to his room. But, after an hour or two spent with his own

thoughts, his restlessness became so great that he sought the gossips

below for relief. He found them all clustered about Hazen, who was

reeling off stories by the mile. This was unendurable to him and he was

striding off, when Hazen burst away from his listeners and, joining

Ransom, whispered in his ear:

"I saw her go by the window just now on her way up-street. What can she

find there to interest her? Where is she going?"

"I don't know. She doesn't consult me as to her movements. Probably she

has gone for a walk. She looks as if she needs it."

"So do you," was the unexpected retort given by Hazen, as he stepped back

to rejoin his associates.

Ransom paused, watching him askance in doubt of the suggestion, in doubt

of the man, in doubt of himself. Then he yielded to an impulse stronger

than any doubt and slipped out into the highway, where he turned, as she

had turned, up-street.

But not without a struggle. He hated himself for his puppet-like

acceptance of the hint given him by a man he both distrusted and

disliked. He felt his dignity impaired and his self-confidence shaken,

yet he went on, following the high road eagerly and watching with wary

eye for the first glimpse of the slight figure which was beginning to

make every scene alive to him.

It had rained heavily and persistently the last time he came this way,

but to-day the sun was shining with a full radiance, and the trees

stretching away on either side of the road were green with the tender

tracery of early leafage; a joy-compelling sight which may have accounted

for the elasticity of his step as he ascended one small hill after

another in the wake of a fluttering skirt.

It was the cemetery road, and odd as the fancy was, he felt that he

should overtake her at the old gate, behind which lay so many of her

name. Here he had seen her name before its erasement from the family

monument, and here he should see--could he say Anitra if he found her

bending over those graves; the woman who could not hear, who could not

read,--whose childish memory, if she had any in connection with this

spot, could not be distinct enough or sufficiently intelligent to guide

her to this one plot? No. Human credulity can go far, but not so far as

that. He knew that all his old doubts would return if, on entering the

cemetery, he found her under the brown shaft carved with the name of

Hazen.

The test was one he had not sought and did not welcome. Yet he felt

bound, now that he recognized it as such, to see it through and accept

its teaching for what it surely would be worth. Only he began to move

with more precaution and studied more to hide his approach than to give

any warning of it.

The close ranks of the elderberry bushes lining the fences on the final

hill-top lent themselves to the concealment he now sought. As soon as he

was sure of her having left the road he drew up close to these bushes and

walked under them till he was almost at the gate. Then he allowed himself

to peer through their close branches and received an unexpected shock at

seeing her figure standing very near him, posed in an uncertainty which,

for some reason, he had not expected, but which restored him to himself,

though why he had not the courage, the time, nor the inclination to ask.

She was babbling in a low tone to herself, an open sesame to her mind,

which Ransom hailed with a sense of awe. If only he might distinguish the

words! But this was difficult; not only was her head turned partly away,

but she spoke in a murmur which was far from distinct. Yet--yes, that one

sentence was plain enough. She had muttered musingly, anxiously, and with

a searching look among the graves:

"It was on this side. I know it was on this side."

Watching her closely lest some chance glance of hers should stray his

way, he listened still more intently and was presently rewarded by

catching another sentence.

"A single grave all by itself. I fell over it and my mother scolded me,

saying it was my father's. There was a bush near it. A bush with white

flowers on it. I tried to pick some."

Ransom's heart was growing lighter and lighter. She did not even know

that there had been placed over that grave a monument with her name on it

and that of the mother who had scolded her for tripping over her father's

sod. Only Anitra could be so ignorant or expect to find a grave by means

of a bush blooming with flowers fifteen years ago. As she went wandering

on, peering to right and left, he thought of Hazen and his doubts, and

wished that he were here beside him to mark her perplexity.

When quite satisfied that she would never find what she sought without

help, Ransom stepped from his hiding-place and joined her among the

grassy hillocks. The start of pleasure she gave and her almost childish

look of relief warmed his heart, and it was with a smile he waited for

her to speak.

"My father's grave!" she explained. "I was looking for my father's grave.

I remember my mother taking me to it when I was little. There was a bush

close by it--oh! I see what you think. The bush would be big now--I

forgot that. And something else! You are thinking of something else. Oh,

I know, I know. He wouldn't be lying alone any more. My mother must have

died, or sister would have taken me to her. There ought to be two

graves."

He nodded, and taking her by the hand led her to the family monument. She

gazed at it for a moment, amazed, then laid her finger on one of the

inscriptions.

"My father's name?" she asked.

He nodded.

She hung her head thoughtfully for a moment, then slipping to the other

side of the stone laid her hand on another.

"My mother's?"

Again he signified yes.

"And this? Is this sister's name? No, she's not buried yet. I had a

brother. Is it his?"

Ransom bowed. How tell her that it was a false inscription and that the

man whose death it commemorated was not only alive but had only a little

while before spoken to her.

"I didn't like my brother. He was cruel and liked to hurt people. I'm

glad he's dead."

Ransom drew her away. Her frankness was that of a child, but it produced

an uncomfortable feeling. He didn't like this brother either, and in this

thoughtless estimate of hers he seemed to read a warning to which his own

nature intuitively responded.

"Come!" he motioned, leading the way out.

She followed with a smile, and together they entered the highway. As they

did so, Ransom caught sight of a man speeding down the hill before them

on a bicycle. He had not come front the upper road, or they would have

seen him as he flew past the gateway. Where had he come from, then? From

the peep-hole where Ransom himself had stood a few minutes before. No

other conclusion was possible, and Ransom felt both angry and anxious

till he could find out who the man was. This he did not succeed in doing

till he reached the hotel. There a bicycle leaning against a tree gave

point to his questions, and he learned that it belonged to a clerk in one

of the small stores near by, but that the man who had just ridden it up

and down the road on a trial of speed was the stranger who had just come

to town with Mr. Hazen.

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE CARS

This episode, which to Ransom's mind would bear but one interpretation,

gave him ample food for thought. He decided to be more circumspect in the

future and to keep an eye out for inquisitive strangers. Not that he had

any thing to conceal, but no man enjoys having his proceedings watched,

especially where a woman is concerned.

That Hazen was antagonistic to him he had always known; but that he was

regarded by him with suspicion he had not realized till now. Hazen

suspicious of _him_! that meant what? He wished that he had Mr. Harper

at his side to enlighten him.

It was now five o'clock and he was sitting in his room awaiting the usual

report from the river, when a quick tap at his door was followed by the

entrance of the very man he was thinking about. He rose eagerly to

receive him, determined, however, to allow no inconsiderate impulse to

drive him into unnecessary speech.

"I have already said too much," he reminded himself in self-directed

monition. "It's time he did some of the talking."

Hazen seemed willing enough to do this. Taking the seat proffered him, he

opened the conversation as follows:

"Mr. Ransom, I have been doing you an injustice. I do not consider it

necessary to tell you just how I have found this out, but I am now

convinced that you are as much in the dark as myself in regard to this

unfortunate affair, and are as willing as I am to take all justifiable

means to enlighten yourself. I own that at first I thought it more than

probable you were in collusion with the girl here to deceive me. That I

wouldn't stand. I'm glad to find you as truly a victim of this mystery as

myself."

Ransom straightened himself.

"If this is an apology," he returned, "I am willing to accept it in the

spirit in which it is proffered. But I should like something more than

apology from you. Candor for candor;--your whole story in return for

mine."

"I'm afraid it would be a trifle tedious,--my whole story," smiled Hazen.

"If you mean such part of it as concerns Georgian's peculiar actions and

the complications with which we are at this moment struggling, I can only

repeat what I have already told you, both at the St. Denis in New York

and here. I am Georgian's returned brother, saved from the jaws of hell

to see my own country again. I arrived in New York on the tenth.

Naturally, after securing a room at the hotel, I took up the papers. They

were full of the approaching marriage of Miss Hazen. I recognized my

sister's name, though not her splendor, for we were the sole survivors of

a poor country family and I knew nothing of the legacy I am now told she

received. Anxious to see her, I attended the ceremony. She recognized me.

I had not expected this, and feeling old affections revive, I followed

her friends to the house and was presented to them and to you. What

I whispered to her on this occasion were my assumed name and the place

where I was to be found. My changed countenance called for explanations,

for which a bridal reception offered no opportunity. Besides, as I have

already said, I stood in sore need of a definite amount of money. I meant

her to come and see me, but I did not expect her to play a trick on you

in order to do so. This had its birth in the to me unaccountable mystery

embodied in the girl you call Anitra, but whom I'm not ready yet to name.

For when I do, action must follow conviction and that without mercy or

delay."

"Action?" repeated Ransom, with quick suspicion and a confused rush of

contradictory visions in his mind. "What do you mean by that?"

Hazen covered his chin with his hand.

"I will try and explain," he replied. "If I am abrupt in my language, it

is owing to the exigencies of the case. I have no time to waste and no

disposition to whitewash a rough piece of work. To speak to the point, I

have an intense interest in my sister Georgian. I have little or none in

my sister Anitra. Georgian's intelligence, good-will, and command of

money would be of inestimable benefit to me. Anitra, on the contrary,

could be nothing but a burden, unless--" here he cast a very sharp glance

at Ransom--"unless Georgian should have been sufficiently considerate to

leave her a good share of her fortune in the will you say she made just

before her disappearance and supposed death."

"That I can say nothing about," rejoined Ransom in answer to this feeler.

"The will is in the hands of her lawyer, but if it will help your

argument any we will suppose that she left her sister to the care of her

friends without any especial provision for her in the way of money."

The steady fingers clutching the scarred neck loosed their grip to wave

this supposition aside.

"A hardly supposable case," was the cold comment with which he

supplemented this disclaimer; "but one which would make the girl a burden

indeed; a burden which for many reasons I could not assume." Here he

struck himself sharply on the neck, with the first display of passion he

had shown. "My advantages are not such as to make it easy for me to

support myself. It would be simply impossible for me to undertake the

care of any girl, least of all of one with a manifest infirmity."

"Anitra will prosper without your care," replied Ransom, overlooking the

heartlessness of the man in the mad, unaccountable sense of relief with

which he listened to his withdrawal from concerns for which he showed so

little sympathy. "There are others who will be glad to do all that can be

done for Georgian's forsaken sister."

"Yes. That is all right, but--" Here Hazen squared himself across the top

of the table before which he had been sitting; "I must be made sure that

the facts have been rightly represented to me and that the girl now in

this house _is_ Georgian's deserted sister. I'm not yet satisfied that

she is, and I must be convinced not only on this point but on many

others, before this day is over. Business of great importance calls me

back to the city and, it may be, out of the country. I may never be able

to spend another day on purely personal affairs, so this one must tell. I

have a scheme (it is a very simple one) which, if carried out as I have

planned, will satisfy me as nothing else will as to the identity of the

girl we will call, from lack of positive knowledge, Anitra. Will you help

me in its furtherance? It lies with you to do so."

"First, your reasons for doubting the girl," retorted Ransom. "They must

be excellent ones for you to resist the evidence of such conclusive

proofs as you have yourself been witness to since entering this house. I

am Georgian's husband. I have the strongest wish in the world to see her

again at my side; yet with the exception of her wonderful likeness to my

wife, I find nothing in this raw if beautiful girl, of the polished,

highly trained woman I married. I have not even succeeded in startling

her ear--something which I should have been able to do if she were not

the totally deaf woman she appears. Confide to me then your reasons for

demanding additional proofs of her identity. If they carry conviction

with them, I will aid you in any scheme you can propose which will

neither frighten nor afflict her."

Hazen rose to his feet. Narrow as the room was, he yielded to his

restless desire to move about and began pacing up and down the restricted

quarters bounded by the edge of the table and the door. Not until he had

made the second turning did he speak; then it was with seeming openness.

"It's like putting the torch to my last ship," said he; "but this is no

time to hesitate. Mr. Ransom, I do not trust my eyes, I do not trust my

ears, nor your eyes, nor your ears, nor those of any one here, because I

have talked with a man who was on the same train with my sisters. He

noticed them because of their similar appearance and close intimacy.

They were not dressed alike, but they were veiled alike and one did not

move without the other. More than that, they not only walked about the

various stations where they waited, arm in arm, but they sat thus closely

joined in the cars all the way from New York. This interested him

especially as he noted great anxiety and incessant movement in the one,

and complete passiveness in the other. She who sat in the outer seat was

watchful, busy, and ready to press the other's arm at the least

provocation, but if either spoke it was always the other. It was not till

the quick rush and shrill whistle of a passing train made one start and

not the other, that he got the idea that one of them was deaf. As this

was the one by the window, he felt that their peculiar actions were now

accounted for, and indeed thus far it all tallied with what we might

expect from Georgian traveling with the hapless Anitra. But there

remained a fact to be told, which rouses doubt. When they reached

G---- and he saw from their quick rising that they were about to leave

the train, he naturally glanced their way again, and this time he caught

a glimpse of the inner one's neck. Her veil had become slightly

disarranged, exposing the whole nape. It was unexpectedly dark, almost

brunette in color, and quite devoid of delicacy; such a skin as one might

look for in the gipsy Anitra after years of outdoor living and a long

lack of nice personal attention, but not such as I saw and admired a few

hours ago on the neck of the woman bending over her work in the

landlady's room. Oh, I recognized the difference; I have an eye for

necks."

He paused, coming to a standstill in the middle of the room, to see what

effect his words had had on Ransom.

"I have that man's name," he continued, "and can produce him if I have

time and it seems to be necessary. But I had rather come to my own

decision without any outside interference. This is not an affair for

public gossip or newspaper notoriety. It is a question of justice to

myself. If this girl is Georgian--" His whole face changed. For a moment

Ransom hardly knew him. The quiet, self-contained man seemed to have

given way to one of such unexpected power and threat that Ransom rose

instinctively to his feet in recognition of a superiority he could no

longer deny.

The action seemed to recall Hazen to himself. He wheeled about and

recommenced his quiet pacing to and fro.

"I beg pardon," he quietly finished. "If it is Georgian, she must stand

my friend. That is all I was going to say. If it is, against all reason

and probability, her strangely restored twin, I shall leave this house by

midnight, never probably to see any of you again. So you perceive that it

is incumbent upon us to work promptly. Are you ready to hear what I have

to propose?"

"Yes."

Hazen paused again, this time in front of the door. Laying his hand

lightly on one of the panels, he glanced back at Ransom.

"You are nicely placed here for observation. Your door directly faces the

hall she must traverse in returning to her room."

"That's quite true."

"She's in her room now. Ah, you know that?"

"Yes." Ransom seemed to have no other word at his command.

"Will she come out again before night to eat or to visit?"

"There's no telling. She's very fitful. No one can prophesy what she

will do. Sometimes she eats in the landlady's room, sometimes in her

own, sometimes not at all. If you have frightened her, or she has been

disturbed in any way by your companion who shows such interest in her

and in me, she probably will not come out at all."

"But she must. I expect you to see that she does. Use any messenger, any

artifice, but get her away from this hall for ten minutes, even if it is

only into Mrs. Deo's room. When she returns I shall be on my knees before

this keyhole to watch her and observe. To see what, I do not mean to tell

you, but it will be something which will definitely settle for me this

matter of identity. Does this plan look sufficiently harmless to meet

with your approval?"

"Yes, but looks cannot always be trusted. I must know just what you mean

to do. I will leave nothing to a mind and hand I do not trust any more

fully than I do yours. You are too eager for Georgian's money; too little

interested in herself; _and you are too sly in your ways_. I overlooked

this when you had the excuse of a possible distrust of myself. But now

that your confidence is restored in me, now that you recognize the fact

that I stand outside of this whole puzzling affair and have no other wish

than to know the truth about it and do my duty to all parties concerned,

secrecy on your part means more than I care to state. If you persist in

it I shall lend myself to nothing that you propose, but wait for time to

substantiate her claim or prove its entire falsity."

"You will!"

The words rang out involuntarily. It almost seemed as if the man would

spring with them straight at the other's throat. But he controlled

himself, and smiling bitterly, added:

"I know the marks of human struggle. I have read countenances from my

birth. I've had to, and only one has baffled me--_hers_. But we are going

to read that too and very soon. We are going to learn, you and I, what

lies behind that innocent manner and her rude, uncultivated ways. We are

going to sound that deafness. I say _we_," he impressively concluded,

"because I have reconsidered my first impulse and now propose to allow

you to participate openly, and without the secrecy you object to, in all

that remains to be done to make our contemplated test a success. Will

that please you? May I count on you now?"

"Yes," replied Ransom, returning to his old monosyllable.

"Very well, then, see if you can make a scrawl like this."

Pulling a piece of red chalk from his pocket, he drew a figure of a

somewhat unusual character on the bare top of the table between them;

then he handed the chalk over to Ransom, who received it with a stare of

wonder not unmixed with suspicion.

"I'm not an adept at drawing," said he, but made his attempt,

notwithstanding, and evidently to Hazen's satisfaction.

"You'll do," said he. "That's a mystic symbol once used by Georgian

and myself in place of our names in all mutual correspondence, and

on the leaves of our school-books and at the end of our exercises. It

meant nothing, but the boys and girls we associated with thought it did

and envied us the free-masonry it was supposed to cover. A ridiculous

make-believe which I rate at its full folly now, but one which cannot

fail to arouse a hundred memories in Georgian. We will scrawl it on

her door, or rather you shall, and according to the way she conducts

herself on seeing it, we shall know in one instant what you with your

patience and trust in time may not be able to arrive at in weeks."

Ransom recalled some of the tests he had himself employed, many of which

have been omitted from this history, and shrugged his shoulders mentally,

if not physically. If Hazen noted this evidence of his lack of faith, he

remained entirely unaffected by it, and in a few minutes everything had

been planned between them for the satisfactory exercise of what Hazen

evidently regarded as a crucial experiment. Ransom was about to proceed

to take the first required step, when they heard a disturbance in front,

and the coach came driving up with a great clatter and bang and from it

stepped the lean, well-groomed figure of Mr. Harper.

"Bah!" exclaimed Hazen with a violent gesture of disappointment. "There

comes your familiar. Now I suppose you will cry off."

"Not necessarily," returned Ransom. "But this much is certain. I shall

certainly consult him before hazarding this experiment. I am not so sure

of myself or--pardon me--of yourself as to take any steps in the dark

while I have at hand so responsible a guide as the man whom you choose to

call my familiar."

CHAPTER XXII

A SUSPICIOUS TEST

"Let him make his experiment. It will do no harm, and if it rids us of

him, well and good."

Such was Mr. Harper's decision after hearing all that Mr. Ransom had to

tell him of the present situation.

"His disappointment when he learns that he has nothing to hope for from

his sister's generosity calls for some consideration from us," proceeded

the lawyer. "Go and have your little talk with the landlady or take

whatever other means suggest themselves for luring this girl from her

room. I will summon Hazen and hold him very closely under my eye till the

whole affair is over. He shall get no chance for any hocus-pocus

business, not while I have charge of your interests. He shall do just

what he has laid out for himself and nothing more; you may rely on that."

Ransom expressed his satisfaction, and left the room with a lighter heart

than he had felt since Hazen came upon the scene. He did not know that

all he had been through was as nothing to what lay before him.

It was an hour before he returned. When he did, it was to find Hazen and

the lawyer awaiting him in ill-concealed impatience. These two were much

too incongruous in tastes and interests to be very happy in a forced and

prolonged tete-a-tete.

"Have you done it?" exclaimed Hazen, leaping eagerly to his feet as the

door closed softly behind Ransom. "Is she out of her room? I have

listened and listened for her step, but could not be sure of it. There

seem to be a lot of people in the house to-night."

"Too many," quoth Ransom. "That is why I couldn't get hold of Mrs. Deo

any sooner. Anitra is having her hair brushed or something else of equal

importance done for her in one of the rear rooms. So we can proceed

fearlessly. Have you looked to see if you can get a good glimpse of her

door through the keyhole of this one?"

"Haven't you already made a trial of that? Then do so now," suggested

Hazen, drawing out the key and laying it on the table.

But this was too uncongenial a task for Ransom.

"I shall be satisfied," said he, "if Mr. Harper tells me that it can."

"It can," asserted that gentleman, falling on his knees and adjusting his

eye to the keyhole. "Or rather, you can see plainly the face of any one

approaching it. I don't suppose any of us expected to see the door

itself."

"No, it is not the door, but the woman entering the door, we want to see.

Did you ask for an extra lamp?"

"Yes, and saw it placed. It is on a small table almost opposite her

room."

"Then everything is ready."

"All but the mark which I am to put on the panel."

"Very good. Here is the chalk. Let us see what you mean to do with it

before you risk an attempt on the door itself."

Ransom thought a minute, then with one quick twist produced the

following:

[Illustration]

"Correct," muttered Hazen, with what Harper thought to be a slight but

unmistakable shudder. "One would think you had been making use of this

very cabalistic sign all your life."

"Then _one_ would be mistaken. I have simply a true eye and a ready

hand."

"And a very remarkable memory. You have recalled every little line and

quirk."

"That's possible. What I have made once I can make the second time. It's

a peculiarity of mine."

There was no mistaking the continued intensity of Hazen's gaze. Ransom

felt his color rise, but succeeded in preserving his quiet tone, as he

added:

"Besides, this character is not a wholly new one to me. My attention was

called to it months ago. It was when I was courting Georgian. She was

writing a note one day when she suddenly stopped to think and I saw her

pen making some marks which I considered curious. But I should not have

remembered them five minutes, if she had not impulsively laid her hand

over them when she saw me looking. That fixed the memory of them in my

mind, and when I saw this combination of lines again, I remembered it.

That is why I lent myself so readily to this experiment. I lent that what

you said about her acquaintance with this odd arrangement of lines was

true."

Hazen's hand stole up to his neck, a token of agitation which Ransom

should have recognized by this time.

"And her account of the use we made of it tallied with mine?"

"She gave me no account of any use she had ever made of it."

"That was because you didn't ask her."

"Just so. Why should I ask her? It was a small matter to trouble her

about."

"You are right," acquiesced Hazen, wheeling himself away towards the

window. Then after a momentary silence, "It was so then, but it is likely

to prove of some importance now. Let me see if the hall is empty."

As he bent to open the door, the lawyer, who had not moved nor spoken

till now, turned a quick glance on Ransom and impulsively stretched out

his hand. But he dropped it very quickly and subsided into his old

attitude of simple watchfulness, as Hazen glanced back with the remark: