Part I

[Illustration: "There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you"]

The Wild Olive

A Novel

By the author of

The Inner Shrine

Illustrated by

Lucius Hitchcock

New York

Grosset & Dunlap

Publishers

Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers

Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers

All Rights Reserved

Published May, 1910

Printed in the United States of America

Part I

Ford

I

Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long,

straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering

Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and

barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but

all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and

down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of

forest. It was only a summer wind, soft and from the south; but its murmur

had the sweep of the eternal breath, while, when it waxed in power, it

rose like the swell of some great cosmic organ. Through the pines and in

the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of

effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses.

There were minutes when he felt that not only the four country constables

whom he had escaped were about to burst upon him, but that weird armies of

gnomes were ready to trample him down.

Out of the confusion of wood-noises, in which his unpractised ear could

distinguish nothing, he waited for a repetition of the shots which a few

hours ago had been the protest of his guards; but, none coming, he sped on

again. He weighed the danger of running in the open against the

opportunities for speed, and decided in favor of the latter. Hitherto, in

accordance with a woodcraft invented to meet the emergency, and entirely

his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in

order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious

protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space

between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they

might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have

covered it too, since they were men born to the mountains, while he had

been bred in towns. His hope lay in the possibility that in this

wilderness he might be lost to their ken, as a mote is lost in the

air--though he built something on the chance that, in sympathy with the

feeling in his favor pervading the simpler population of the region, they

had given negative connivance to his escape. These thoughts, far from

stimulating a false confidence, urged him to greater speed.

And yet, even as he fled, he had a consciousness of abandoning

something--perhaps of deserting something--which brought a strain of

regret into this minute of desperate excitement. Without having had time

to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the

fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the

resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was

told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that

morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be

carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice

between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The

one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification;

the other short and speedy, with the accepted imputation of guilt. He had

chosen the latter--instinctively and on the spur of the moment; and while

he might have repeated at leisure the decision he had made in haste, he

knew even now that he was leaving the ways and means of proving his

innocence behind him. The perception came, not as the result of a process

of thought, but as a regretful, scarcely detected sensation.

He had dashed at first into the broken country, hilly rather than

mountainous, which from the shores of Lake Champlain gradually gathers

strength, as it rolls inland, to toss up the crests of the Adirondacks.

Here, burying himself in the woods, he skirted the unkempt farms, whose

cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep

farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled

low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall,

tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pumpkin vines, gave him

cover, till he regained the shelter of the vast Appalachian mother-forest

which, after climbing Cumberlands, Alleghanies, Catskills, and

Adirondacks, here clambers down, in long reaches of ash and maple, juniper

and pine, toward the lowlands of the north.

As far as he had yet been able to formulate a plan of flight, it was to

seek his safety among the hills. The necessity of the instant was driving

him toward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon

his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly

spiriting from bunk-house to bunk-house would baffle pursuit. Once he had

gained even a few hours' security, he would be able to some extent to pick

and choose his way.

He steered himself by the peak of Graytop, black against the last

coral-tinted glow of the sunset, as a sailor steers by a star. There was

further assurance that he was not losing himself or wandering in a circle,

when from some chance outlook he ventured to glance backward and saw the

pinnacle of Windy Mountain or the dome of the Pilot straight behind him.

There lay the natural retreats of the lynx, the bear, and the outlaw like

himself; and, as he fled farther from them, it was with the same frenzied

instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern

from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one

imperative necessity--to go on--to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it

took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the

handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In

his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded.

Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even

the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way.

Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose

soil gave way beneath his steps in miniature avalanches of stone and sand,

over which he crept, clinging to tufts of grass or lightly rooted

saplings, to rise at last with hands scratched and feet bleeding. Then, on

again!--frantically, as the hare runs and as the crow flies, without

swerving--on, with the sole aim of gaining time and covering distance!

He was not a native of the mountains. Though in the two years spent among

them he had come to acknowledge their charm, it was only as a man learns

to love an alien mistress, whose alternating moods of savagery and

softness hold him with a spell of which he is half afraid. More than any

one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the

rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of

this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling

leaf or a dissolving cloud. Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's

protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother;

it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern,

where the darkness only conceals dangers.

After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted

wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort. It not only

made his flight swift and easy, but it had been marked out by man, for

man's purposes and to meet man's need. It was the result of a human

intelligence; it led to a human goal. It was possible that it might lead

even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became

conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present

he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two

worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The

electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate.

But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the

perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders

sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten.

For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long his strength

would hold out.

It was then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the

north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two

its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending

toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean

that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not

been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's

door and ask for bread. So far as he knew, he would never venture to any

man's door again; nevertheless, he kept on, down-hill, and down-hill

nearer and nearer the lake, and farther and farther from the mountain and

the lairs of safety.

Suddenly, at a turning, when he was not expecting it, the wood-road

emerged into a rough clearing. Once more he stopped to reflect and take

his bearings. It had grown so dark that there was little danger in doing

so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with

the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he

made out a few acres that had been cleared for their timber, after which

Nature had been allowed to take her own way again, in unruly growths of

saplings, tangles of wild vines, and clumps of magenta fireweed.

Without quite knowing why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his

way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and

clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman.

Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred

his path--a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once

sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren

element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with

masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the

planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the

two degrees of brightness he knew there must lie the bosom of the lake. He

had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of

Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the

mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as

though distrusting the ruggedness of both.

It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human

dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle,

he must slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking

up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him,

mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which

it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red

glare in it.

He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring

upward. Where was he going? Where _could_ he go? The question presented

itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a

kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that

seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask

himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he

was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the

moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie

Ford, could never have a home at all--that there was scarcely a spot

within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him

out.

This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him

stock-still, gazing into space. He was free--but free only to crawl back

into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.

"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man--with

human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"

He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights

glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some

little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and

interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim

upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to

the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down

among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had

been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of

balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from

compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from

their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head

went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any

of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old

root-hedge and leaped it.

He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he

made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and

horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another

degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place.

Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope,

making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and

came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a

patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on

a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the

foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that

clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while

its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.

Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming

from the open doors and windows of a house.

It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high

timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he

came within the precincts of a town--a house whose outward aspect, even at

night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its

occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze

of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily massed

garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to

the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.

The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of

sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a

fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this

feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of

recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against

the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging

above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor

yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change of

outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell

of gazing.

Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it

so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the

rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He

perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden

front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common

in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open

French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting

the rest of the garden into gloom.

To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped

foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him

no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for

the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human

society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a

rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has

formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him

from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were

only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people

could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind

of wonder.

When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a

better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to

still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the

night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew

the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and

steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly

on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.

With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the

home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung--one where old

engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers

and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a

modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children,

seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin,

might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell

over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess

at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page

before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It

was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one

sitting within the shadow.

"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you

stay up as late as this at home."

"Oh yes, they do," came Billy's answer, given with sturdy assurance. "I

often stay up till nine."

"Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night."

With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step

of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little

scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs,

and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the

shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in

a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but

broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long

window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and

motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and

danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence

that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.

Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the

terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his

movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse

matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this

dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he

himself could see what passed within. He would only, he said, look once

more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.

He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid

reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty

little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one

clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent

her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He

made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to

the window. He was in informal evening dress--a circumstance that, in this

land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He

was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received

the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.

His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a

newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially

familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember

where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent

past.

As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that

they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.

The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them

little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If

he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to

some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to

inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of

aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small

comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a

sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her

cue.

"I don't see why you should feel so about it," she said, making an effort

to control a cough. "You must have foreseen something of this sort when

you took up the law."

The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import

from the response.

"True," she returned, when he had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one

thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to

nerve one for the necessity when it comes."

Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but

again her reply told him what it meant.

"The right and the wrong, as I understand it," she went on, "is something

with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not

to judge of how it works."

Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more

the lady's speech enlightened him.

"That's the worst of it? Possibly; but it's also the best of it; for since

it relieves you of responsibility it's foolish for you to feel remorse."

What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a

strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open

door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that

followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his demand for

food, when a sound from behind startled him. It was the sound which, among

all others, caused him the wildest alarm--that of a human footstep. His

next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to

take refuge in a church--eager only for the instant's safety. He had

sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room,

before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least

be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had

entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heedless of the

astonished eyes fixed upon him. It was not till some seconds had gone by,

and he realized that he was not followed, that he glanced about the room.

When he did so it was to ignore the woman, in order to concentrate all his

gaze on the little, iron-gray man who, still seated, stared at him, with

lips parted. In his own turn, Norrie Ford was dumb and wide-eyed in

amazement It was a long minute before either spoke.

"You?"

"You?"

The monosyllable came simultaneously from each. The little woman got to

her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror in her

face--inquiry to which her husband felt prompted to respond.

"This is the man," he said, in a voice of forced calmness,

"whom--whom--we've been talking about."

"Not the man--you--?"

"Yes," he nodded, "the man I--I--sentenced to death--this morning."

II

"Evie!"

Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had

nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in

curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of

fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of

their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with

strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and

delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was

able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the

tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who

passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the

pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville.

It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before

the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was

nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive

should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne

seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which

she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.

"What did you come here for?"

Ford looked at her for the first time--in a blankness not without a dull

element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen

anything so dainty--not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times

his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she

repeated her question with a show of increased severity.

"I came here for protection," he said then.

His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still

astonished hosts.

"Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an

excitement, he strove to subdue.

The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into

play.

"No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who

sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."

Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees,

but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he

answered:

"You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of

all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you

to be innocent."

Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had

risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly

at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.

"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,

"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your

convictions--after your charge."

"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was

because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When

those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers--"

Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in

it.

"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced

against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their

town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"

"The law assumes all men to be equal--"

"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent--only they're not. The law

is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five

times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to

death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit

that your theory doesn't work."

He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate

situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of

dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray

eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder

man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which

at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was

forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before

bracing himself to reply.

"I can't keep you from having your opinion--"

"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt

upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more

appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied,

healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm

half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life--and

you're responsible for it all."

It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.

"I had my duty to perform--"

"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're

something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before

you were a judge. With your convictions you should have come down from the

bench and washed your hands of the whole affair. The very action would

have given me a chance--"

"You mustn't speak like that to my husband," Mrs. Wayne broke in,

indignantly, from the doorway. "If you only knew what he has suffered on

your account--"

"Is it anything like what I've suffered on his?"

"I dare say it's worse. He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he

would have to pass that dreadful sen--"

"Come! come!" Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an

end to a useless discussion. "We can't spend time on this subject any

longer. I'm not on my defence--"

"You _are_ on your defence," Ford declared, instantly. "Even your wife

puts you there. We're not in a courtroom as we were this morning.

Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where

you're no longer the judge, as I'm no longer the prisoner. We're just two

naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights--and I

claim mine."

"Well--what are they?"

"They're simple enough. I claim the right to have something to eat, and to

go my way without being molested--or betrayed. You'll admit I'm not

asking much."

"You may have the food," Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without

compassion. "I'll go and get it."

For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped

down a passage. Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as

though in an effort to clear his mental vision.

"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're

demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws--"

Ford sprang up.

"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the

law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely

you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one."

"I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large."

"But do you?"

"That's my affair. Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged

your case, I must accept their verdict."

"In your official capacity--yes; but not here, as host to the poor dog who

comes under your roof for shelter. My rights are sacred. Even the wild

Arab--"

He paused abruptly. Over Wayne's shoulder, through the window still open

to the terrace, he saw a figure cross the darkness. Could his pursuers be

waiting outside for their chance to spring on him? A perceptible fraction

of a second went by before he told himself he must have been mistaken.

"Even the wild Arab would think them so," he concluded, his glance

shifting rapidly between the judge and the window open behind him.

"But I'm not a wild Arab," Wayne replied. "My first duty is toward my

country and its organized society."

"I don't think so. Your first duty is toward the man you know you've

sentenced wrongly. Fate has shown you an unusual mercy in giving you a

chance to help him."

"I can be sorry for the sentence and yet feel that I could not have acted

otherwise."

"Then what are you going to do now?"

"What would you expect me to do but hand you back to justice?"

"How?"

There was a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic

question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man

doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder

toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and spoke

quickly:

"Yes; you could ring up the police at Greenport, but I could strangle you

before you crossed the floor."

"So you could; but would you? If you did, should you be any better off?

Should you be as well off as you are now? As it is, there is a possibility

of a miscarriage of justice, of which one day you may get the benefit.

There would be no such possibility then. You would be tracked down within

forty-eight hours."

"Oh, you needn't argue; I've no intention--" Once more he paused. The same

shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a

distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one

getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in

words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from

the trap in which he was taken.

"I've no intention of doing violence unless I'm driven to it--"

"But if you are driven to it--?"

"I've a right to defend myself. Organized society, as you call it, has put

me where it has no further claim upon me. I must fight against it

single-handed--and I'll do it. I shall spare neither man nor woman--nor

_woman_"--he raised his voice so as to be heard outside--"who stands in my

way."

He threw back his head and looked defiantly out into the night. As if in

response to this challenge a tall, white figure suddenly emerged from the

darkness and stood plainly before him.

It was a girl, whose movements were curiously quick and silent, as she

beckoned to him, over the head of the judge, who sat with his back toward

her.

"Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you,"

Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening. His attention was

wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering

for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing

suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token

that he should follow her. She had repeated her action again and again,

beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his

mind.

"I don't say that I refuse to help you," Wayne was saying. "My sympathy

with you is very sincere. If I can get your sentence commuted--In fact, a

reprieve is almost certain--"

With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was

out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which

were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over

grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming

through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the

night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. He

was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on

with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping

up with the shadow fleeing before him.

He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down

the lane leading to the pasture. At the point where he had entered it from

the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and

parallel with the lake. There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no

sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.

Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a

hillside between patches of Indian corn. The girl sped over it so lightly

that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to

time she had not paused and waited. When he came near enough to see the

outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a

mountain wraith.

From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its

girdle of lamp-lit towns. Here the woodland began again; not the main body

of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley,

twisting its way in among villages and farm lands. That which had been a

path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of

habit and familiarity.

In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view

Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance

they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes

on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for

him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a

direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same

time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and

that they were beating their way round it.

All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing--a grassy ledge on the slope.

Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a

vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the

serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him

forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause

of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the

door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the

surrounding darkness.

"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits

somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."

Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold

and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard

the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she

sped away.

III

From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds

that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that

he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento

rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of

wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of

what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he

was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised

himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.

The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret

of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly

spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the

mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the

mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between

which hung a view of the city of Quebec. On a lay-figure in a corner was

thrown carelessly the sort of blanket coat worn by Canadians during winter

sports. Paints and palettes were arranged on a table by the wall, and on a

desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More

books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable

reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled

last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door

immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got

up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only

from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north

window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed

or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The

arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a

view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the

simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one"

was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery

of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty

hours' thirst.

Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk

curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had

guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched

broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills

rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from

this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of

lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and

saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of

purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's

Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in

New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up

jade-colored peaks into the electric blue--the scarred pyramid of Graytop

standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran

sentinel.

In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had

become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place

again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem

more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long

was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him

like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she

was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her

father's plan of handing him back to justice--and yet his mind refused to

connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or

betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have

fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.

He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the

wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first

sketch was of a nun in a convent garden--the background vaguely French,

and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing

a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of

wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns;

then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It

occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the

voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed

drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a

sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings

across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a

woman, apparently the same woman as in the preceding sketch, had fallen in

the midst of a blinding storm, while a tall man of European

aspect--decidedly not the voyageur--was standing beside her with a baby in

his arms. These were clearly fancy pictures, and, so it seemed to Ford,

the work of one who was trying to recapture some almost forgotten memory.

In any case he was too deeply engrossed by his own situation to dwell on

them further.

He wheeled round again toward the centre of the room, impatiently casting

about him for something to eat. The tin box, from which he had devoured

all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate

hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small

dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see,

the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor

ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been

built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed

something from the fact that there was no visible attempt to sketch the

scene before the door, though the site had evidently been chosen for its

beauty.

He had nothing by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours

which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at

the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out,

where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in

spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was

convinced that, once in the open, he could elude capture. He pulled back

the curtain again in order to reconnoitre. It was well to be as familiar

as possible with the immediate lay of the land, so as to avail himself of

any advantages it might offer.

The colors of sunrise had disappeared, and he judged that it must be

seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was

flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of

shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the

last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left,

the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze of

heat.

With an effort to get back the woodcraft suddenly inspired by his first

dash for freedom, he ran his eye over the landscape, noting the points

with which he was familiar. To the west, in a niche between Graytop and

the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the

north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining coves, the prison of

Plattsville was waiting to receive him. Farther to the north was Canada;

and to the south the great waterway led toward the populous mazes of New

York.

With an impatience bordering on nervousness he realized that these general

facts did not help him. He must avoid the prison and the county-town, of

course; while both New York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But

his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he

could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of ash and pine. The rapidity

of instinct by which last night he had known exactly what to do gave place

this morning to his slower and more characteristic mental processes.

He was still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond

the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed

closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom

he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest,

followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly,

carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she

motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping to the door as

she unlocked it, in order to relieve her of her burden.

"You mustn't do that," she said, speaking quickly. "You mustn't look out

of the window or come to the door. There are a hundred men beating the

mountain to find you."

She closed the door and locked it on the inside. While Ford lifted her

basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain

hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could

catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious

silence that marked her acts. The dog emitted a low growl.

"You must go in here," she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the

inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tell you. I'll bring

you your breakfast presently. Lie down, Micmac."

The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling

rather than commanding. Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was

standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid

quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the hint of dark

eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness--eyes that drew

their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.

But he brushed that impression away as foolish. Her words had the

unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her

to be a lady. He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was

according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas;

and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there was in her

tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal

nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element

in its beauty.

He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again,

carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.

"I'm sorry it's only this," she smiled, as she placed it before him; "but

I had to take what I could get--and what wouldn't be missed. I'll try to

do better in future."

He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding

words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the

moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood

off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness

that characterized all her motions.

He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.

"I've brought you these," she said, not without a touch of shyness,

against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible.

"I shall bring you more things by degrees."

On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of

slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.

He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.

"I can't take anything of Judge Wayne's--" he began to stammer; but she

interrupted him.

"I understand your feelings about that," she said, simply. "They're not

Judge Wayne's; they were my father's. I have plenty more."

In his relief at finding she was not Wayne's daughter he spoke awkwardly.

"Your father? Is he--dead?"

"Yes; he's dead. You needn't be afraid to take the things. He would have

liked to help a man--in your position."

"In my position? Then you know--who I am?"

"Yes; you're Norrie Ford. I saw that as soon as I chanced on the terrace

last night."

"And you're not afraid of me?"

"I am--a little," she admitted; "but that doesn't matter."

"You needn't be--" he began to explain, but she checked him again.

"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all

day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be

painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep

still."

Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving

him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him,

he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness

of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing

at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the

easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its

peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to

set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that,

whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear

alert in his defence.

Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her

up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had

received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a

girl--certainly not twenty--and yet she acted with the decision of

maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild

origin--that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized

life--which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it

in fact.

Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her

through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her

words.

"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He

won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day,

but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further

hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm

quite alone."

Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the

passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when,

a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that

seemed more natural to her had returned.

"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no

suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped

away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your

lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will

have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this

room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure

it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case

you're chilly in the night."

She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.

"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"

"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.

He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to

the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no

more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what

seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung

her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac

rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and

locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she

sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his

nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.

IV

The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning

she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she

thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change

of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the

transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her

smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept

him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave

features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the

instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.

"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with

satisfaction.

"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to

penetrate the mystery of her personality.

"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They

were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it

was--for this."

"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.

"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the

admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of

embarrassment, "I never saw him--not that I can remember."

"Then he died a long time ago?"

Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:

"Not so very long--about four years ago now."

"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"

"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."

He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in

to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to

escape from this particular subject.

"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.

Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in

confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he

recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.

"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.

"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It

wouldn't do you any good to know it."

"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as

that for me."

"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for

more."

Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left

with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness

brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to

his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl

should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so

much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its

strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as

she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of

the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was

clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the

case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours

of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate

about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because

of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.

"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she

entered his cell.

She paused with a look of surprise.

"At home? Where do you mean?"

"Why--where you live; where your mother lives."

"My mother died a few months after I was born."

"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"

"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."

"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too

much of your time."

"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help

you to escape."

"Why? Why should you care about me?"

"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."

"Oh, then you're helping me just--on general principles?"

"Quite so."

"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"

"Because I don't like the law."

"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?--or--or this law in

particular?"

"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added,

resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now.

Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've

given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber

camps, but all the same we must be careful still."

He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at

the cabin little more than an hour.

"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him

before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt

altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of

Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that

you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be

helping you would be the last in their minds."

"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"

She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased

to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel

remorse for helping any one to evade the law."

"You seem to have a great objection to the law."

"Well, haven't you?"

"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."

"So it is in mine--if you only knew."

"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as

any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."

He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in

silence, he continued.

"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."

He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.

"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit.

The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."

Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of

expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse

over her eyes.

"He was very cruel to you--your uncle?--wasn't he?" she asked, at last.

"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him

in his sleep--whatever I may have said when in a rage."

"I should think it might be."

He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would

have laughed.

"Are you so bloodthirsty--?" he began.

"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father

wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have

killed two or three."

Ford whistled under his breath.

"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law

is--hereditary."

"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of

injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."

"And your aim is to defeat them?"

"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of

voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you

are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look

out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step

outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be

impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your

escape."

But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the

plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and

give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a

day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some

clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been

allowed to venture out.

"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about

as I choose."

"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be

wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me

is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."

"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the

whole thing out beforehand."

His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"

"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build

the studio--last year--I've imagined how easy it would be for some--some

hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to

fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."

"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he

observed, glancing about the cabin.

"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I

couldn't do without a studio--till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm

afraid it's generally been to--to indulge in day-dreams."

"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's

fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."

"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in

self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."

"Good for her! Who was she?"

Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was

surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.

"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be

making up her mind to give the information.

In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.

"That's like the old story of Gilbert à Becket--Thomas à Becket's father,

you know."

The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the

small task she had in hand.

"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her

enlightenment.

She raised her head and faced him.

"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert à Becket," she said, quietly.

It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of

this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the

flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called

the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own

turn, making matters worse.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought--"

"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her

breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that

it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't

answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one

does--who knows me."

Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the

chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:

"You're quite right. I meant that--for them."

They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come

from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain

protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation

she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her

pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his

head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.

"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated

herself with a palette in her hand.

"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur.

I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their

families generally have."

Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the

matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color

into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a

distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the

clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of

training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully

cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that,

notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it

overcame his prompting to spare her.

"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be

assimilating the information she had given him--"and yet I don't see how

that explains _you_."

"I suppose it doesn't--not any more than your situation explains you."

"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."

"Well, so am I--in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the

daughter of my parents."

"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your

fault."

"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer

with the parents I have than be happy with any others."

"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.

"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light

touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the

effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."

"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.

"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn't like

it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and

so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when

they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no

people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very

shores of Hudson Bay."

"But you didn't stay there?"

"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my

father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me

again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."

"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?--or anything

like that."

"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."

It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she

rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this

morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an

immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines

of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have

been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows

from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of

sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was

her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar

fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading,

apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand

at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like

blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow

died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne

saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.

"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they

wouldn't take me."

"Oh? So he had money?"

"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian

northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a

journey--like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it

changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that--but

he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one

of the pioneers of that country--one of the very first to see its

possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it

to me. I believe it's a good deal."

"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."

"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of

them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to

realize--who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy

until I was among people of my own kind."

"And how did you get there?"

She smiled faintly to herself before answering.

"I never did. There are no people of my kind."

Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance,

he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.

"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"

"I should like it well enough if he did--that is, if his wife did. You

see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that,

but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to

her--its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in

a way, it's a trial to me to stay."

"Why do you stay, then?"

"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law

tells me."

"I see. The law again!"

"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."

"Such as--?"

"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the

greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that

loves me."

"What's her name?"

The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford

followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just

perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting

of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile

and sensitive--lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the

inner spirit softened them with a tremor--or it might have been a

light--of gentleness.

"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection.

"It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."

"Still--if I escape--I should like to know them."

"If you escape, you may be able to find out."

"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to

tell me--"

Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him

the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only

was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong,

but his pleasure in talking to a lady--a girl--was undeniable. Sometimes

in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not

his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine

society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any

one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only

because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit

and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.

"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"

She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with

which she answered him--

"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's

just this: they're not very well off--so I can help. Naturally I like

that."

"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it,

but everybody wouldn't."

"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help

in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather

that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they

shouldn't need me at all."

"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness.

"That's what."

"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're

glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his

wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that

they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."

"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without

you, Heaven only knows. It's curious--the effect imprisonment has on you.

It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a

baby. You want to be free--and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."

He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of

his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element

in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke

without looking up.

"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."

"That's easy to say."

"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued

to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd

go to the Argentine."

"Why not say the moon?"

"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."

"So is the Argentine--for me."

"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."

"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."

"Some of them were probably in worse."

There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while

Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.

"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.

"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the

country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little

girl I was speaking of just now--whom I'm so fond of--was born there. Her

father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."

He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound,

just above his breath.

"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's

Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard

that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many--stranded people."

"I should be just his sort, then."

His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible

subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless

darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions

of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the

law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In

her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded

him of something he had read--or heard--of the wild olive being grafted

into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course

of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He

was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself

might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her

name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have

chosen for a heroine--Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them

seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan

possibly--or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as

he fell asleep, it might be--the Wild Olive.

V

As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and

more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his

own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care

with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them,

the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through

incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would

have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which

helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred

his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not

his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which

the situation imposed.

It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the

openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief

in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was

seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case

before her.

He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy

New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university,

where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters

that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for

himself--his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his

parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the

ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved

fatal.

Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as

"the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber

business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly

believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue,

old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and

time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford

neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with

the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious,

too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to

come into being--the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to

make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the

counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his

great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed

out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on

his apprenticeship.

In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served

other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught

nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his

great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed

hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness

reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had

outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought

to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff

and his comrades gave Prince Hal.

The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of

his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris

Ford was found dead in his bed--shot in his sleep. On the premises there

had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the

crime--Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had

been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them

beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered,

was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became

easy after that--the more respectable people of the neighborhood being

agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn.

The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so

thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the

clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen,

admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never

suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting

chance for freedom.

The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though

it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport

during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But

when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly.

Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting,

while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless

gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were

wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which

his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him

to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.

"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged

for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help

me."

"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it

or not."

"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently,

"to know that I didn't."

"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."

"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded---"just to oblige me."

"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind

to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."

Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his

guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate

escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she

spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of

attention.

"I think the time has come for you to--go."

If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of

his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive

with interrogation.

"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"

"To-morrow."

"How?"

"I'll tell you that then."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you

will."

"Then there are objections to be raised?"

"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't

expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in

advance."

"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"

"You'll have plenty of time for preparation--after you've started. If that

seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come

to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."

With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless

night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.

She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog.

The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough

material instead of her usual linen or muslin.

"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.

"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I

built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll

do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one

would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."

It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her

voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the

spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under

his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.

"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better

start."

He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin

he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now

transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later

he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible

path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.

It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like

ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath

the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that

no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods

could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet.

But it was there, and she traced it--never pausing never speaking, and

only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in

sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.

They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below,

Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff

of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.

"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.

They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It

was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of

the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were

suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by

light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was

bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit

was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the

twilight.

"The steamer _Empress of Erin_," the girl said, with what seemed like

abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec

on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St.

Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she

reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."

There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling

information.

"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.

"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake,

"your way is there."

There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long,

rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded

into a mist of bluish-green and gold.

"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."

"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this."

From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your

ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you

what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping

a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship

from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not

looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners.

They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they

expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're

driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."

"But I shan't be," he said, simply.

"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it.

You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."

She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it,

reddening, but made no attempt to take it.

"I can't--I can't--go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.

"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a

woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man.

It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me

to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me--just to spend--but I

never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here,

take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it

isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."

With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at

her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in

him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed

his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with

lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be

stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.

"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have

gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his

astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me

from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored--and I

am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them.

Here are the keys."

He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.

"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things

in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to

prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little

thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters

on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've

put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till

you feel it safe to take your own again."

"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket

out of its envelope.

"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name--any name. You can

look at it afterward. We'd better go on."

She made as though she would move, but he detained her.

"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"

"Like a good many others," she smiled.

"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You

can't think what it means to me."

"I should think you'd see what it means to me."

"I don't. What harm can it do you?"

"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is--- how

shall I say it?--a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking

care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk

from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a

way--a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand

already--it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that

isn't everything."

"Well--what else?"

"When this little episode is over"--her voice trembled, and it was not

without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again--"when

this little episode is over, it will be better for us both--for you as

well as for me--to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't

past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be

made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you

after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."

"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a

success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you

again?"

"Why should you communicate with me at all?"

"To pay you back your money, for one thing--"

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it

wouldn't be my only reason in any case."

Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt

him.

"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly.

"We really must be going on."

"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I

said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I

shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you

won't want to hear it."

"Hadn't we better wait and see?"

"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if

I don't know who you are?"

"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an

attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on.

It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."

She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the

mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up,

so they descended--the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region

was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and

before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe

drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.

It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a

miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees

leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of

sand.

"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own

observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to

Montreal."

She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.

"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the

preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to

look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case

forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary

traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package

in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are

bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a

railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll

find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after

you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most

familiar."

"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance

of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their

glances meet.

"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have

all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why

you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better

rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little

secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed.

I'd do that, if I were you."

He nodded to show that he understood her.

"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a

route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will

take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You

can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on

a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time

yourself to go by about nightfall."

He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.

"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore,

just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands

lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately

opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a

good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right

up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so

that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to

you?"

Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his

emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.

"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old

wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint

Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins

nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think

you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the

station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've

marked a very good train on the time-table--a train that stops at Saint

Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."

A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to

smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close

in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep

purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy

black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the

dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could

detect the pale glimmer of a star.

"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the

water.

"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the

bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how

to do it--adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you.

That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If

you ever have need of it--"

"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."

"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance

of making my promise good."

She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the

canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he

had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by

a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the

light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In

three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing

headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to

an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck,

moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.

VI

On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was

one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and

observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in

his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware

of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his

own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his

consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was

able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a

new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky

above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the

mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul.

After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past

hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity

only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe

beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening

onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to

be a law unto himself.

A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet

he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them

mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told

him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and

away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at

them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from

things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was

over and done with.

It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards

in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the

protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was

as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer--zigzagging

down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on

the east--had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of

lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the

waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second

such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range

of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the

canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating

her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed

scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on

the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the

boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the

lake, of his right to the world.

His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle

forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories

to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place,

minute by minute, to the confidence in himself which was part of his

normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance.

Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear

the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was

something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of

human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that

comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped

paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until

they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to

have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being

able to go his way unheeded.

On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of

the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and

windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came

peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play.

Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the

shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of

it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in

childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before

the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting

type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings

on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting

with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the

serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly,

neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and

class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers--strangers for

the most part, in all probability, to one another--and in ten minutes'

time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their

gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to

him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and

misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the

elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in

high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the

guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial,

his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it

possible for them to know now that he was lurking out there in the dark,

watching their silhouettes and listening to their voices, there would be

such a hue and cry as the lake had not heard since the Indians sighted

Champlain on its banks.

It was this reflection that first of all stirred the current of his deep,

slow resentment. During the fifteen months since his arrest he had been

either too busy, or too anxious, or too sorely puzzled at finding himself

in so odd a position, to have leisure for positive anger. At the worst of

times he had never lost the belief that the world, or that portion of the

world which concerned itself with him, would come to recognize the fact

that it was making a mistake. He had taken his imprisonment and his trial

more or less as exciting adventures. Even the words of his sentence lost

most of their awfulness in his inner conviction that they were empty

sounds. Of the confused happenings on the night of his escape his clearest

memory was that he had been hungry, while he thought of the weeks spent in

the cabin as a "picnic." Just as good spirits had seldom failed him, so

patience had rarely deserted him. Such ups and downs of emotion as he had

experienced resulted in the long run in an increase of optimism. In the

back of his slow mind he kept the expectation, almost the intention, of

giving his anger play--some time; but only when his rights should have

been restored to him.

But he felt it coming on him now, before he was prepared for it. It was

taking him unawares, and without due cause, roused by the chance

perception that he was cut off from rightful, natural companionship.

Nothing as yet had brought home to him the meaning of his situation like

the talk and laughter of these lads and girls, who suddenly became to him

what Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was to Dives in his torment.

A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but

the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in

the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the

starlight. For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed

against nothing and no one in particular. He was not skilled in the

analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause. For an hour or two his

wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain,

regardless of the hand that has inflicted it. Other rowing-parties came

within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove

in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at

intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes,

but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new

creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused

sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a

new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.

Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their

lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the

rowing-parties went home to bed. In the smooth, dark level of the lake and

in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he

was aware of doing so. The spacious solitude of the summer night brought

with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of

comfort. There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony

of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity

of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them.

So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work,

fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical

activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course

on which he was embarked.

Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a

deduction was on the subject of "old Wayne." Up to the present he had

regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while

inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to

the full working of the law. It came to Ford now in the light of a

discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne's fault. Wayne was in the grip

of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary

action. He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was

appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere. With whom did

it lie? For a primitive mind like Ford's the question was not an easy one

to answer.

For a time he was inclined to call to account the lawyers who had pleaded

for the State. Had it not been for their arguments he would have been

acquitted. With an ingenuity he had never supposed to exist they had

analyzed his career--especially the two years of it spent with Uncle

Chris--and showed how it led up to the crime as to an inevitable

consequence. They seemed familiar with everything he had ever done, while

they were able to prove beyond cavil that certain of his acts were

inspired by sinister motives which he himself knew to have sprung from

dissipation at the worst. It was astonishing how plausible their story

was; and he admitted that if anybody else had been accused, he himself

would probably have been convinced by it. Certainly, then, the lawyers

must have been to blame--that is, unless they were only carrying out what

others had hired them to do.

That qualifying phrase started a new train of thought. Mechanically, dip

by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove

the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here,

on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the

soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the

water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or

syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final

conclusion; and yet he reached it with conviction. By a process of

elimination he absolved judge, jury, legal profession, and local public

from the greater condemnation. Each had contributed to the error that made

him an outlaw, but no one contributor was the whole of the great force

responsible. That force, which had set its component parts to work, and

plied them till the worst they could do was done, was the body which they

called Organized Society. To Ford, Organized Society was a new expression.

He could not remember ever to have heard it till it was used in court.

There it had been on everybody's lips. Far more than old Chris Ford

himself it was made to figure as the injured party. Though there was

little sympathy for the victim in his own person, Organized Society seemed

to have received in his death a blow that called for the utmost avenging.

Organized Society was plaintiff in the case, as well as police, jury,

judge, and public. The single human creature who could not apparently gain

footing within its fold was Norrie Ford himself. Organized Society had

cast him out.

He had been told that before, and yet the actual fact had never come home

to him till now. In prison, in court, in the cabin in the woods, there had

always been some human hand within reach of his own, some human tie, even

though it was a chain. However ignoble, there had been a place for him.

But out here on the great vacant lake there was an isolation that gave

reality to his expulsion. The last man left on earth would not feel more

utterly alone.

For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him

that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that

almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and

fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip,

splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking

into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an

instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive

shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life

of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is _on_

the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped

off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.

It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused

inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped

off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What

should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would

not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join

those--socialists, anarchists, faddists--already at the work. But he

admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at

all, it would be to try to creep back into it.

The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing

Burlington by this time--the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light

along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was

the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless

career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not

free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the

canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a

poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are

dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the

waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer;

a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial

towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long,

melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but

with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford

knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and--again

like a wandering ghost--sped on.

But he had been looking on the tower which the children of men had

builded, and had recognized his desire to clamber up into it again. He was

not without the perception that a more fiery temperament than his

own--perhaps a nobler one--would have cursed the race that had done him

wrong, and sought to injure it or shun it. Misty recollections of

proud-hearted men who had taken this stand came back to him.

"I suppose I ought to do the same," he muttered to himself humbly; "but

what would be the use when I couldn't keep it up?"

Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer. Like the ant

or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to

work to reconstruct it. He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort

of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations. By dint of

keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to

the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the

right to be on it.

But he himself would know it. He shrank from that fact with the repugnance

of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was

past helping. He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and

with every one. He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their

friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors--and deceive them

under their very noses. Life would become one long trick, one daily feat

of skill. Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would

lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.

From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort. He had

forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer. Had he stayed

where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the

death-chair. Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore. In his

disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain

powerless to explain away.

Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point. He could work

neither back from it nor forward. His mind could only dwell on it with an

aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.

In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it--unless it was

that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more

distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part. On the

Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on

night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.

He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or

fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he

stepped on land. He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of

cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking.

He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept

repeating, sometimes half aloud:

"O Lord, O Holy One! I want to be a man!"

Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved

and headed landward.

"By God!" he muttered, under his breath, "I've got it.... It isn't my

fault.... It's theirs.... They've put me in this fix.... They've brought

this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me.... The subterfuge isn't

mine; it's theirs.... They've taken the responsibility from me.... When

they strip me of rights they strip me of duties.... They've forced me

where right and wrong don't exist for me any more.... They've pitched me

out of their Organized Society, and I've had to go.... Now I'm free ...

and I shall profit by my freedom."

In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again. He

remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview

with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance. It was the

emancipation of his conscience. Whatever difficulties he might encounter

from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within. He had

been relieved of them; they had been taken from him. Since none had a duty

toward him, he had no duty toward any. If it suited his purposes to juggle

with men, the blame must rest upon themselves. He could but do his best

with the maimed existence they had left to him. Self-respect would entail

observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he

need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration

for himself. He was absolved from the necessity in advance. In the region

in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but

himself. From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and

mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo

where none of these things obtained. It was only lawful that he should

make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.

There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule

of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn. It had taken him

unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont

hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so

many Titans. Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer

of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette

beneath the perceptibly paling stars. Over Canada the veil was still down,

but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.

Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some

little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing--to

be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were

aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying

darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children

roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer

now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when,

later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray

gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the

eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the

daylight.

The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose.

Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and

dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. He knew the sun

must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they

turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of

the moon. On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath

of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.

But the sun was actually in the sky when he perceived that he no longer

had the lake to himself. From a village nestling in some hidden cove a

rowboat pulled out into the open--a fisherman after the morning's catch.

It was easy enough for Ford to keep at a prudent distance; but the

companionship caused him an uneasiness that was not dispelled before the

first morning steamer came pounding from the northward. He fixed his

attention then on a tiny islet some two or three miles ahead. There were

trees on it, and probably ferns and grass. Reaching it, he found himself

in a portion of the lake forest-banked and little frequented. Pastures and

fields of ripening grain on the most distant slopes of Vermont gave the

nearest token of life. All about him there was solitude and

stillness--with the glorious, bracing beauty of the newly risen day.

Landing with stiffened limbs, he drew up the canoe on a bit of sandy

beach, over which sturdy old bushes, elder and birch, battered by the

north winds, leaned in friendly, concealing protection. He himself would

be able to lie down here, among the tall ferns and the stunted

blueberry-scrub, as secluded and secure as ever he had been in prison.

Being hungry and thirsty, he ate and drank, consulting his map the while

and fixing approximately his whereabouts. He looked at his little watch

and wound it up, and fingered the pages of the railway guide he found

beside it.

The acts brought up the image of the girl who had furnished him with these

useful accessories to flight. For lack of another name he called her the

Wild Olive--remembering her yearning, not wholly unlike his own, to be

grafted back into the good olive-tree of Organized Society. With some

shame he perceived that he had scarcely thought of her through the night.

It was astounding to recollect that not twelve hours ago she had kissed

him and sent him on his journey. To him the gulf between then and now was

so wide and blank that it might have been twelve weeks, or twelve months,

or twelve years. It had been the night of the birth of a new creature, of

the transmigration of a soul; it had no measurement in time, and threw all

that preceded it into the mists of prenatal ages.

These thoughts passed through his mind as he made a pillow for himself

with his white flannel jacket, and twisted the ferns above it into a

shelter from the flies. Having done this, he stood still and pondered.

"Have I really become a new creature?" he asked himself.

There was much in the outward conditions to encourage the fancy, while his

inner consciousness found it easy to be credulous. Nothing was left of

Norrie Ford but the mere flesh and bones--the least stable part of

personality. Norrie Ford was gone--not dead, but gone--blasted,

annihilated stamped out of existence, by the act of Organized Society. In

its place the night of transition had called up some one else.

"But who? ... Who am I? ... What am I?"

Above all, a name seemed required to give him entity. It was a repetition

of his feeling about the Wild Olive--the girl in the cabin in the woods.

Suddenly he remembered that, if he had found a name for her, she had also

found one for him--and that it was written on the steamer ticket in his

pocket. He drew it out, and read:

"Herbert Strange."

He repeated it at first in dull surprise, and then with disapproval. It

was not the kind of name he would have chosen. It was odd, noticeable--a

name people would remember He would have preferred something commonplace

such as might be found for a column or two in any city directory. She had

probably got it from a novel--or made it up. Girls did such things. It was

a pity, but there was no help for it now. As Herbert Strange he must go on

board the steamer, and so he should be called until--

But he was too tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or

the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing

ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over them,

he was soon asleep.