"The burnished dragon-fly is thine attendant,
And tilts against the field,
And down the listed sunbeam rides resplendent,
With steel-blue mail and shield."
--LONGFELLOW.
Miss Lois came home excited. She had seen a left-handed man. True, he
was a well-known farmer of the neighborhood, a jovial man, apparently
frank and honest as the daylight. But there was no height of
impossibility impossible to Miss Lois when she was on a quest. She
announced her intention of going to his farm on the morrow under the
pretext of looking at his peonies, which, she had been told, were
remarkably fine, "for of course I made inquiries immediately, in order
to discover the prominent points, if there were any. If it had been
onions, I should have been deeply interested in them just the same."
Anne, obliged for the present to let Miss Lois make the tentative
efforts, listened apathetically; then she mentioned her wish to row on
the river.
"Better stay at home," said Miss Lois. "Then I shall know you are safe."
"But I should like to go, if merely for the air," replied Anne. "My head
throbs as I sit here through the long hours. It is not that I expect to
accomplish anything, though I confess I _am_ haunted by the river, but
the motion and fresh air would perhaps keep me from thinking so
constantly."
"I am a savage," said Miss Lois, "and you shall go where you please. The
truth is, Ruth, that while I am pursuing this matter with my mental
faculties, _you_ are pursuing it with the inmost fibres of your heart."
(The sentence was mixed, but the feeling sincere.) "I will go down this
very moment, and begin an arrangement about a boat for you."
She kept her word. Anne, sitting by the window, heard her narrating to
Mrs. Blackwell a long chain of reasons to explain the fancy of her niece
Ruth for rowing. "She inherits it from her mother, poor child," said the
widow, with the sigh which she always gave to the memory of her departed
relatives. "Her mother was the daughter of a light-house keeper, and
lived, one might say, afloat. Little Ruthie, as a baby, used to play
boat; her very baby-talk was full of sailor words. _You_ haven't any
kind of a row-boat she could use, have you?"
Mrs. Blackwell replied that they had not, but that a neighbor farther
down the river owned a skiff which might be borrowed.
"Borrow it, then," said Mrs. Young. "They will lend it to _you_, of
course, in a friendly way, and then _we_ can pay _you_ something for the
use of it."
This thrifty arrangement, of which Mrs. Blackwell unaided would never
have thought, was carried into effect, and early the next morning the
skiff floated at the foot of the meadow, tied to an overhanging branch.
In the afternoon Mrs. Young, in the farm wagon, accompanied by her
hostess, and her hostess's little son as driver, set off for John Cole's
farm, to see, in Mrs. Blackwell's language, "the pynies." A little later
Anne was in the skiff, rowing up the river. She had not had oars in her
hands since she left the island.
She rowed on for an hour, through the green fields, then through the
woods. Long-legged flies skated on the still surface of the water,
insects with gauzy wings floated to and fro. A dragon-fly with
steel-blue mail lighted on the edge of the boat. The burnished little
creature seemed attracted. He would not leave her, but even when he took
flight floated near by on his filmy wings, timing his advance with hers.
With one of those vague impulses by which women often select the merest
chance to decide their actions, Anne said to herself, "I will row on
until I lose sight of him." Turning the skiff, she took one oar for a
paddle, and followed the dragon-fly. He flew on now more steadily,
selecting the middle of the stream. No doubt he had a dragon-fly's
motives; perhaps he was going home; but whether he was or not, he led
Anne's boat onward until the river grew suddenly narrower, and entered a
ravine. Here, where the long boughs touched leaf-tips over her head, and
everything was still and green, she lost him. The sun was sinking toward
the western horizon line; it was time to return; but she said to herself
that she would come again on the morrow, and explore this cool glen to
which her gauzy-winged guide had brought her. When she reached home she
found Miss Lois there, and in a state of profound discomfiture. "The man
was left-handed enough," she said, "but, come to look at him, he hadn't
any little finger at all: chopped off by mistake when a boy. Now the
little finger in the impression is the most distinct part of the whole;
and so we've lost a day, and the price of the wagon thrown in, not to
speak of enough talking about peonies to last a lifetime! There's a fair
to-morrow, and of course I must go: more left hands: although now, I
confess, they swim round me in a cloud of vexation and peonies, which
makes me never want to lay eyes on one of them again;" and she gave a
groan, ending in a long yawn. However, the next morning, with patience
and energies renewed by sleep, she rose early, like a phœnix from her
ashes, and accompanied Mrs. Blackwell to the fair. Anne, again in her
skiff, went up the river. She rowed to the glen where she had lost the
dragon-fly. Here she rested on her oars a moment. The river still
haunted her. "He went away in a boat," had not been out of her mind
since it first came to her. "He went away in a boat," she now thought
again. "Would he, then, have rowed up or down the stream? If he had
wished to escape from the neighborhood, he would have rowed down to the
larger river below. He would not have rowed up stream unless he lived
somewhere in this region, and was simply going home, because there is no
main road in this direction, no railway, nothing but farms which touch
each other for miles round. Now, as I believe he was _not_ a stranger,
but a resident, I will suppose that he went up stream, and I will follow
him." She took up her oars and rowed on.
The stream grew still narrower. She had been rowing a long time, and
knew that she must be far from home. Nothing broke the green solitude of
the shore until at last she came suddenly upon a little board house,
hardly more than a shanty, standing near the water, with the forest
behind. She started as she saw it, and a chill ran over her. And yet
what was it? Only a little board house.
She rowed past; it seemed empty and silent. She turned the skiff, came
back, and gathering her courage, landed, and timidly tried the door; it
was locked. She went round and looked through the window. There was no
one within, but there were signs of habitation--some common furniture, a
gun, and on the wall a gaudy picture of the Virgin and the Holy Child.
She scrutinized the place with eyes that noted even the mark of muddy
boots on the floor and the gray ashes from a pipe on the table. Then
suddenly she felt herself seized with fear. If the owner of the cabin
should steal up behind her, and ask her what she was doing there! She
looked over her shoulder fearfully. But no one was visible, no one was
coming up or down the river; her own boat was the only thing that moved,
swaying to and fro where she had left it tied to a tree trunk. With the
vague terror still haunting her, she hastened to the skiff, pushed off,
and paddled swiftly away. But during the long voyage homeward the fear
did not entirely die away. "I am growing foolishly nervous," she said to
herself, with a weary sigh.
Miss Lois had discovered no left-handed men at the fair; but she had
seen a person whom she considered suspicious--a person who sold
medicines. "He was middle-sized," she said to Anne, in the low tone they
used when within the house, "and he had a down look--a thing I never
could abide. He spoke, too, in an odd voice. I suspected him as soon as
I laid my eyes upon him, and so just took up a station near him, and
watched. He wasn't left-handed _exactly_," she added, as though
he might have been so endowed inexactly; "but he is capable of
anything--left-handed, web-footed, or whatever you please. After taking
a good long look at him, I went round and made (of course by chance, and
accidentally) some inquiries. Nobody seemed to know much about him
except that his name is Juder (and highly appropriate in my opinion),
and he came to the fair the day before with his little hand-cart of
medicines, and _went out again_, into the country somewhere, at sunset.
Do you mark the significance of that, Ruth Young? He did not stay at the
Timloe hotel (prices reduced for the fair, and very reasonable beds on
the floor), like the other traders; but though the fair is to be
continued over to-morrow, and he is to be there, he took all the trouble
to go out of town for the night."
"Perhaps he had no money," said Anne, abstractedly.
"I saw him with my own eyes take in dollars and dollars. Singular that
when country people will buy nothing else, they will buy patent
medicines. No: the man knows something of that murder, and _could_ not
stay at that hotel, Ruth Young. And that's _my_ theory."
In her turn Anne now related the history of the day, and the discovery
of the solitary cabin. Miss Lois was not much impressed by the cabin. "A
man is better than a house, any day," she said. "But the thing is to get
the man to say 'cold.' I shall ask him to-morrow if he has any pills for
a cold in the head or on the lungs; and, as he tells long stories about
the remarkable cures his different bottles have effected, I hope, when I
once get him started, to hear the word several times. I confess, Ruth,
that I have great hopes; I feel the spirit rising within me to run him
down."
Miss Lois went again to the fair, her mission bubbling within her. At
eight in the morning she started; at nine in the evening she returned.
With skirt and shawl bedraggled, and bonnet awry, she came to Anne's
room, closed the door, and demanded tragically that the broom-switch
should be taken from the shelf and applied to her own thin shoulders. "I
deserve it," she said.
"For what?" said Anne, smiling.
Miss Lois returned no answer until she had removed her bonnet and
brought forward a chair, seated herself upon it, severely erect, with
folded arms, and placed her feet on the round of another. "I went to
that fair," she began, in a concentrated tone, "and I followed that
medicine man; wherever he stopped his hand-cart and tried to sell, _I_
was among his audience. I heard all his stories over and over again;
every time he produced his three certificates, _I_ read them. I watched
his hands, too, and made up my mind that they would do, though I did not
catch him in _open_ left-handedness. I now tried 'cold.' 'Have you any
pills for a cold in the head?' I asked. But all he said was 'yes,' and
he brought out a bottle. Then I tried him with a cold on the lungs; but
it was just the same. 'What are your testimonials for colds?' I
remarked, as though I had not quite made up my mind; and he thereupon
told two stories, but they were incoherent, and never once mentioned the
word I was waiting to hear. 'Haven't you ever had a cold yourself?' I
said, getting mad. 'Can't you speak?' And then, looking frightened, he
said he often had colds, and that he took those medicines, and that they
always cured him. And then hurriedly, and without waiting for the two
bottles which I held in my hand tightly, he began to move on with his
cart. But he had said 'gold,' Ruth--he had actually said 'gold!' And,
with the stings of a guilty, murderous conscience torturing him, he was
going away without the thirty-seven and a half cents each which those
two bottles cost! It was enough for me. I tracked him from that
moment--at a distance, of course, and in roundabout ways, so that he
would not suspect. I think during the day I must have walked, owing to
doublings and never stopping, twenty miles. When at last the fair was
over, and he started away, I started too. He went by the main road, and
I by a lane, and _such_ work as I had to keep him in sight, and yet not
let him see me! I almost lost him several times, but persevered until he
too turned off and went up a hill opposite toward a grove, dragging his
little cart behind him. I followed as quickly as I could. He was in the
grove as I drew near, stepping as softly as possible, and others were
with him; I heard the murmur of voices. 'I have come upon the whole
villainous band,' I thought, and I crept softly in among the trees,
hardly daring to breathe. Ruth, the voices had a little camp; they had
just lighted a fire; and--what do you think they were? Just a parcel of
children, the eldest a slip of a girl of ten or eleven! I never was more
dumbfounded in my life. Ruth, that medicine man sat down, kissed the
children all round, opened his cart, took out bread, cheese, and a
little package of tea, while the eldest girl put on a kettle, and they
all began to talk. And then the youngest, a little tot, climbed up on
his knee, and called him--Mammy! This was too much; and I appeared on
the scene. Ruth, he gathered up the children in a frightened sort of
way, as if I were going to eat them. 'What do you mean by following me
round all day like this?' he began, trying to be brave, though I could
see how scared he was. It _was_ rather unexpected, you know, my
appearing there at that hour so far from town. 'I mean,' said I, 'to
know who and what you are. Are you a woman, or are you a man?'
"'Can't you see,' said the poor creature; 'with all these children
around? But it's not likely from your looks that _you_ ever had any of
your own, so you don't know.' She said that," thoughtfully remarked Miss
Lois, interrupting her own narrative, "and it has been said before. But
how in the world any one can know it at sight is and always will be a
mystery to me. Then said I to her, 'Are you the mother, then, of all
these children? And if so, how came you to be selling medicines dressed
up like a man? It's perfectly disgraceful, and you ought to be
arrested.'
"'No one would buy of me if I was a woman,' she answered. 'The cart and
medicines belonged to my husband, and he died, poor fellow! four weeks
ago, leaving me without a cent. What was I to do? I know all the
medicines, and I know all he used to say when he sold them. He was about
my size, and I could wear his clothes. I just thought I'd try it for a
little while during fair-time for the sake of the children--only for a
little while to get started. So I cut my hair and resked it. And it's
done tolerably well until _you_ come along and nearly scared my life out
of me yesterday and to-day. I don't see what on earth you meant by it.'
"Ruth, I took tea with that family on the hill-side, and I gave them all
the money I had with me. I have now come home. Any plan you have to
propose, I'll follow without a word. I have decided that my mission in
this life is _not_ to lead. But she _did_ say gold for cold," added Miss
Lois, with the spirit of "scissors."
"I am afraid a good many persons say it," answered Anne.
The next day Miss Lois gave herself up passively to the boat. They were
to take courage in each other's presence, and row to the solitary cabin
on the shore. When they reached it, it was again deserted.
"There is no path leading to it or away from it in any direction," said
Miss Lois, after peeping through the small window. "The fire is still
burning. The owner, therefore, whoever it is, uses a boat, and can not
have been long gone either, or the fire would be out."
"If he had gone down the river, we should have met him," suggested Anne,
still haunted by the old fear, and watching the forest glades
apprehensively.
"How do you know it is a _he_?" said Miss Lois, with grim humor.
"Perhaps this, too, is a woman. However, as you say, if he had gone down
the river, _probably_ we should have met him--a 'probably' is all we
have to stand on--and the chances are, therefore, that he has gone up.
So we will go up."
[Illustration: "THE SECOND BOAT, WHICH WAS FARTHER UP THE LAKE,
CONTAINED A MAN."]
They took their places in the skiff again, and the little craft moved
forward. After another half-hour they saw, to their surprise, a broad
expanse of shining water opening out before them: the river was the
outlet of a little lake two miles long.
"This, then, is where they go fishing," said Miss Lois. "The Blackwells
spoke of the pond, but I thought it was on the other side of the valley.
Push out, Ruth. There are two boats on it, both dug-outs; we'll row by
them."
The first boat contained a boy, who said, "Good-day, mums," and showed a
string of fish. The second boat, which was farther up the lake,
contained a man. He was also fishing, and his face was shaded by an old
slouch hat. Anne, who was rowing, could not see him as they approached;
but she saw Miss Lois's hands close suddenly upon each other in their
lisle-thread gloves, and was prepared for something, she knew not what.
No word was spoken; she rowed steadily on, though her heart was
throbbing. When she too could look at the man, she saw what it was: he
was holding his rod with his left hand.
Their skiff had not paused; it passed him and his dug-out, and moved
onward a quarter of a mile--half a mile--before they spoke; they were
afraid the very air would betray them. Then Anne beached the boat under
the shade of a tree, took off her straw hat, and bathed her pale face in
the clear water.
"After all, it is the vaguest kind of a chance," said Miss Lois,
rallying, and bringing forward the common-sense view of the case: "no
better a one, at this stage, than the peony farmer or my medicine man.
You must not be excited, Ruth."
"I am excited only because I have thought so much of the river," said
Anne. "The theory that the man who did it went away from the foot of
that meadow in a boat, and up this river, has haunted me constantly."
"Theories are like scaffolding: they are not the house, but you can not
build the house without them," said Miss Lois. "What we've got to do
next is to see whether this man has all his fingers, whether he is a
woman, and whether he says, 'gold.' Will you leave it to me, or will you
speak to him yourself? On the whole, I think you had better speak to
him: your face is in your favor."
When Anne felt herself sufficiently calm, they rowed down the lake
again, and passed nearer to the dug-out, and paused.
"Have you taken many fish?" said Anne, in a voice totally unlike her
own, owing to the effort she made to control it. The fisherman looked
up, took his rod in his right hand, and, with his left, lifted a string
of fish.
"Pretty good, eh?" he said, regarding Anne with slow-coming approval.
"Have some?"
"Oh no," she answered, almost recoiling.
"But, on the whole, I think I _should_ like a few for tea, Ruth," said
Miss Lois, hastening to the rescue--"my health," she added, addressing
the fisherman, "not being what it was in the lifetime of Mr. Young. How
much are your fish? I should like six, if you do not ask too much."
The man named his price, and the widow objected. Then she asked him to
hold up the string again, that she might have a better view. He laid his
rod aside, held the string in his right hand, and as she selected, still
bargaining for the fish she preferred, he detached them with his left
hand. Two pairs of eyes, one old, sharp, and aided by spectacles, the
other young, soft, intent, yet fearful, watched his every motion. When
he held the fish toward them, the widow was long in finding her purse;
the palm of his hand was toward them, they could see the underside of
the fingers. They were broad, and cushioned with coarse flesh.
Anne had now grown so pale that the elder woman did not dare to linger
longer. She paid the money, took the fish, and asked her niece to row on
down the lake, not forgetting, even then, to add that she was afraid of
the sun's heat, having once had a sun-stroke during the life of the
lamented Mr. Young. Anne rowed on, hardly knowing what she was doing.
Not until they had reached the little river again, and were out of sight
round its curve under the overhanging trees, did they speak.
"Left-handed, and cushions under his finger-tips," said Miss Lois. "But,
Ruth, how you acted! You almost betrayed us."
"I could not help it," said Anne, shuddering. "When I saw that hand, and
thought-- Oh, poor, poor Helen!"
"You must not give way to fancies," said Miss Louis. But she too felt an
inward excitement, though she would not acknowledge it.
The fisherman was short in stature, and broad; he was muscular, and his
arms seemed too long for his body as he sat in his boat. His head was
set on his shoulders without visible throat, his small eyes were very
near together, and twinkled when he spoke, while his massive jaw
contradicted their ferrety mirthfulness as his muscular frame
contradicted the childish, vacant expression of his peculiarly small
boyish mouth, whose upper lip protruded over narrow yellow teeth like
fangs.
"Faces have little to do with it," said Miss Lois again, half to
herself, half to Anne. "It is well known that the portraits of murderers
show not a few fine-looking men among them, while the women are almost
invariably handsome. What _I_ noticed was a certain want in the
creature's face, a weakness of some kind, with all his evident
craftiness."
When they came to the solitary cabin, Miss Lois proposed that they
should wait and see whether it really was the fisherman's home. "It will
be another small point settled," she said. "We can conceal our boat, and
keep watch in the woods. As he has my money, he will probably come home
soon, and very likely go directly down to the village to spend it: that
is always the way with such shiftless creatures."
They landed, hid the boat in a little bay among the reeds some distance
below the cabin, and then stole back through the woods until they came
within sight of its door. There, standing concealed behind two tree
trunks, they waited, neither speaking nor stirring. Miss Lois was right
in her conjecture: within a quarter of an hour the fisherman came down
the river from the lake, stopped at the house, brought out a jug, placed
it in his dug-out; then, relocking the door, he paddled by them down the
river. They waited some minutes without stirring. Then Miss Lois stepped
from her hiding-place.
"Whiskey!" she said. "And _my_ money pays for the damnable stuff!" This
reflection kept her silent while they returned to the skiff; but when
they were again afloat, she sighed and yielded it as a sacrifice to the
emergencies of the quest. Returning to the former subject, she held
forth as follows: "It is something, Ruth, but not all. We must not hope
too much. What is it? A man lives up the river, and owns a boat; he is
left-handed, and has cushions of flesh under his finger-tips: that is
the whole. For we can scarcely count as evidence the fact that he is as
ugly as a stump fence, such men being not uncommon in the world, and
often pious as well. We must do nothing hurriedly, and make no
inquiries, lest we scare the game--if it _is_ game. To-morrow is
market-day; he will probably be in the village with fish to sell, and
the best way will be for me to find out quietly who his associates are,
by using my eyes and not my tongue. His associates, if he has any, might
next be tackled, through their wives, perhaps. Maybe they do sewing,
some of them; in that case, we could order something, and so get to
speaking terms. There's my old challis, which I have had dyed black--it
might be made over, though I _was_ going to do it myself. And now do row
home, Ruth; I'm dropping for my tea. This exploring work is powerfully
wearing on the nerves."
The next day she went to the village.
Anne, finding herself uncontrollably restless, went down and unfastened
the skiff, with the intention of rowing awhile to calm her excited
fancies. She went up the river for a mile or two. Her mind had fastened
itself tenaciously upon the image of the fisherman, and would not loosen
its hold. She imagined him stealing up the stairway and leaning over
Helen; then escaping with his booty, running through the meadow, and
hiding it in his boat, probably the same old black dug-out she had seen.
And then, while she was thinking of him, she came suddenly upon him,
sitting in his dug-out, not ten feet distant, fishing. Miss Lois had
been mistaken in her surmise: he was not in the village, but here.
There had not been a moment of preparation for Anne; yet in the
emergency coolness came. Resting on her oars, she spoke: "Have you any
fish to-day?"
He shook his head, and held up one. "That's all," he said, drawing his
hand over his mouth by way of preparation for conversation.
"I should not think there would be as many fish here as in the lake,"
she continued, keeping her boat at a distance by a slight motion of her
oars.
"When the wind blows hard, there's more in the river," he answered.
"Wind blows to-day."
Was she mistaken? Had he given a sound of _d_ to _th_?
"But the water of the lake must be colder," she said, hardly able to
pronounce the word herself.
"Yes, in places where it's deep. But it's mostly shaller."
"How cold is it? Very cold?" (Was _she_ saying "gold" too?)
"No, not very, this time o' year. But cold enough in April."
"What?"
"Cold enough in April," replied the fisherman, his small eyes gazing at
her with increasing approbation.
He had given the sound of _g_ to the _c_. The pulses in Anne's throat
and temples were throbbing so rapidly now that she could not speak.
"I could bring yer some fish to-morrer, I reckon," said the man, making
a clicking sound with his teeth as he felt a bite and then lost it.
She nodded, and began to turn the boat.
"Where do you live?" he called, as the space between them widened.
She succeeded in pronouncing the name of her hostess, and then rowed
round the curve out of sight, trying not to betray her tremulous haste
and fear. All the way home she rowed with the strength of a giantess,
not knowing how she was exerting herself until she began to walk through
the meadow toward the house, when she found her limbs failing her. She
reached her room with an effort, and locking her door, threw herself
down on a couch to wait for Miss Lois. It was understood in the house
that "poor Miss Young" had one of her "mathematical headaches."