Summer has come round once more, and again, amid all the glories of a
cloudless evening, we stand beside the banks of the rippling Lant--
howbeit not without misgiving, for are we not about to enact the part of
eavesdroppers towards those two strolling languidly, contentedly, there
by the shining water?
"It strikes me, child, you seem inclined to find life rather a happy
thing," a voice well-known to us is saying. "And you've no business
to."
A loving pressure of the strong arm on which she is leaning is the only
answer Yseulte deigns at first to make. Then:
"Why not?"
"Because you've done a very wrong thing. If the late lamented Dudley
were alive, he would tell you that a man may not marry his grandmother,
and by parity of reasoning a woman may not marry her grandfather. Now
this is just what you have done, and it's very wrong of you."
She gave his arm a pinch.
"I never liked--boys!" she replied with a sunny smile. And then she
sighed. For it was on this very spot, beneath this same spreading oak
here on the river-bank, that poor Geoffry had made his passionate and
despairing declaration barely a year ago. And now at the thought of the
poor fellow and his miserable end far away in that savage land, she
could not repress a sigh.
"By Jove!" cried Rupert Vallance, flinging a stone into the river.
"Something here seems to remind me of that evening when I came upon you
staving in the red brother's grinders with the butt end of a
fishing-rod. I wonder, by the way, what became of that same weapon? I
expect Mountain Cat's band still keep it as a big medicine-stick.
Deuced bad medicine it was for the buck you were laying it into. Ho,
ho!"
"Don't remind me of that horrible moment," she said, coming closer to
him with a slight shiver. "Let us go home, it's getting cold."
The Rev. Dudley Vallance was dead. The shock of learning his son's
horrible end had brought on a stroke, and the following day he had
breathed his last--not, however, before he had made what reparation he
could for the wrong he had done his cousin, who, by the way, had so far
relented as to satisfy him that he had borne no hand in poor Geoffry's
death, and, in fact was powerless to prevent it; added to which he had
himself rescued him from the same fate on a previous occasion. So on
his death-bed he had signed a hastily drawn-up will, bequeathing the
Lant property to Rupert Vallance absolutely, save and except a yearly
charge on the estate for the support of his widow and daughters. To
this Rupert had added with ample liberality. Once "the old man had
climbed down," as he euphemistically put it, he himself was willing to
let bygones be bygones, and had endowed the widow accordingly; needless
to say, without earning the slightest degree of gratitude from the
latter.
They strolled homeward across the meadows in the falling eve, and, lo,
as they entered the gate of the home paddock there arose a whinny and a
stamp of hoofs.
"Dear old Satanta!" said Yseulte, stroking the velvety black nose which
the noble animal thrust lovingly against her hand. "You have well
earned your ease for life, at any rate."
"I should rather think he had. No more arrows flying in his wake. No
more brack water or willow-bark provender. All oats and fun for life.
We shall have to give the war-whoop occasionally, just to remind him of
old times."
"Please, sir," said a man-servant, meeting them in the hall. "Postman
says was he right in leaving this, sir?"
His master took the letter, glanced at the address, and exploded in a
roar of laughter. It bore the United States stamp, and was directed--
"Judge Rupert Vipan, Lant Hall,
Brackenshire County,
Great Britain."
"Nat Hardroper's fist! Come along, Yseulte, and let's see what that
'cute citizen's got to say. `Judge!' Great Scott! With infinite
trouble I got him out of calling me Colonel, and now he's elevated me to
the judicial bench! `Vipan,' too! The old name seems to stick,
anyway."