IF THINE ENEMY HUNGER
"Whatever the number of a man's friends, there will be times in his
life when he has one too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is
lucky indeed if he has not one too many."
--Bulwer-Lytton.
The blow struck by David had stunned the doctor, but had not killed him.
He lay in the road until a slave, passing that way, picked him up and
carried him to a neighboring plantation, where he fell into the hands of
people who in the truest sense of the word were good Samaritans. Their
hospitality was tested to the utmost, for he lay for weeks in a stupor,
and when he recovered consciousness his reason had undergone a strange
eclipse. For a long time he could not recall a single event in his
history and when at last some of the most prominent began to re-present
themselves to his view it was vaguely and slowly, as mountain-peaks and
hill-tops break through a morning mist. This was not the only result of
the blow which his rival had struck him; it had left him totally blind.
Nothing could have been more pitiful than the sight of this once strong
man, more helpless than an infant, sitting in the sun where kind hands
had placed him. Months elapsed before he regained anything that could be
called a clear conception of the past. It did at length return, however.
Slowly, but with terrible distinctness he recalled the events which
preceded and brought about this tragedy. And as he reflected upon them,
jealousy, hatred and revenge boiled in his soul and finally crystallized
into the single desperate purpose to find and crush the man who had
wrecked his life.
He kept his story to himself; but made furtive inquiries of his
new-found friends and of the slaves and neighbors, none of which enabled
him to discover the slightest clue to the fugitives. So far as he could
learn, the earth might have opened and swallowed them, and so when he
had exhausted the sources of information in the region where the
accident occurred, he determined to go elsewhere.
Refusing the kind offers of a permanent refuge in the home of these
hospitable Kentuckians, he made his way back to Cincinnati, where he
hoped not only to find traces of the fugitives, but to recover the
jewels which Pepeeta had left behind her on the table, and which in his
frantic haste he had forgotten to take with him.
He learned the history of the jewels in a few short hours. Not long
after his own sudden disappearance and that of David and Pepeeta, the
judge had called at the hotel with an order for his property. The
unsuspecting landlord had honored it, and the judge not long afterward
left for parts unknown.
This discovery not only turned his rage to frenzy, but increased his
difficulties a hundred fold. Without friends and without money, he set
himself to attain revenge. Before a purpose so resolute, many obstacles
at once gave way, and although he could find no traces of David and
Pepeeta, he discovered that the judge had fled to New York City, and
thither he determined to go.
Procuring a little terrier, through the charity of strangers, he trained
him to be his guide, and started on his pilgrimage. Many weeks were
consumed in the journey and many more in hopeless efforts to discover
the thief. Through the aid of an old Cincinnati friend whom he
accidentally encountered he located the fugitive at last; but in a
cemetery! Ill-gotten wealth had precipitated the final disaster, for
having turned the diamonds into money the fugitive entered upon a
debauch which terminated in a horrible death. At the side of a grave in
the potter's field, the sexton one day saw a blind man leaning on a
cane. After a long silence, he stooped down, felt carefully over the low
ground as if to assure himself of something, then rose, lifted his cane
to heaven, waved it wildly, muttered what sounded like imprecations, and
soon after followed a little terrier to the gate of the cemetery and
disappeared.
It was the doctor. One of his enemies had escaped him forever, and the
trail of the others seemed hopelessly lost in the darkness which had
settled down upon him. There was nothing left for him but to beg his
living and impotently nourish his hate.