FLIGHT INTO THE DESERT.
A ringing cry went up from the group of men.
“We will make him confess the truth before we hang him!” they
exclaimed, and Ferris who had been listening in silent hopefulness to
the colloquy, uttered a howl of rage and fear at learning from those
words how determined they were to destroy him.
They crowded Strangemore on one side and said to the prisoner:
“Will you give us a written confession of the murder of Mrs. St. Alban
before we hoist you up?”
His face grew dark with vindictive defiance.
“I did not kill her and I will not confess to a lie!” he replied,
boldly.
They whispered among themselves several minutes and then they came back
to him.
“Will you confess to the murder if we spare your life in return for
it?” they asked him, and he burst into a fit of hoarse, dreadful
laughter.
“Truly you are terrible tempters,” he said. “You offer me death on the
one hand, life and perjury on the other. I am reminded of a certain
mythical personage with a cloven hoof who tempted a divine One in the
centuries gone by the promise of all things if he would fall down and
worship him. But let that pass. Listen to me, my recreant comrades!
Listen to me, Talbot Strangemore, while I ask you of what avail would
be a confession wrested from me under peril of ignominious death?
What court and jury in the realms of free America would accept such a
confession at any value if you said to them, ‘We told Oswald Ferris
that if he would confess that he murdered Sibyl St. Alban we would
spare his life, if not we would hang him to the nearest tree!’ Ha, ha,
I think I hear them crying down as a falsehood a confession that a
frightened man made to save his life from the violence of an infuriate
mob!”
They all remained silent through sheer mortification and
disappointment. They knew that every word he had spoken was true. No
enlightened jury would pay any attention to a confession extorted from
a man under peril of death.
“He is right,” said Talbot Strangemore. “If he made a full confession
in order to escape punishment it would not avail my little Nina in her
terrible strait. Do you not see, comrades, that you must not take his
life because it is worth too much to me? Let him live I pray you, until
he repents his sin, or until I can bring it home to him!”
So dark and threatening were the frowns the men cast upon Ferris that
if looks could have killed, Talbot Strangemore’s prayer would have
availed nothing against their deadly wrath. But they drew aside again
and consulted together. Presently one who had been chosen as spokesman
approached Ferris and Strangemore where they stood side by side beneath
the stately palm-tree, selected for so dreadful a purpose.
“We cannot decide in so great haste to release the prisoner,” he said.
“But we will reprieve him until noon to-morrow, and in the morning we
will give him a fair, impartial trial that shall decide the case. In
the mean time we will hold him under arrest.”
“Thanks for even that respite. I am sure you will consider the case
with cooler heads to-morrow,” Strangemore answered, and with his own
hands he removed the rope from the neck of his foe, and loosened the
painful thongs that bound him.
Too sullen and enraged to utter a word of thanks for this signal
interposition in his favor, Oswald Ferris retired to his couch, where
he threw himself angrily down and was soon seemingly lost to everything
mundane in a deep slumber.
The men all weary with the vigils and excitements of the night followed
his example after appointing a posse to guard the prisoner. These few
unused to keeping vigil and oppressed with the hot, breathless air,
soon slumbered at their posts and the dawn already near broke without
rousing one of the camp from the lethargy that seemed to have fallen
upon them.
But though seemingly wrapped in the embrace of Morpheus there were two
whose minds were too terribly active for repose. They were Oswald
Ferris and Talbot Strangemore.
Strangemore had thrown himself down like the rest upon his rude
camp-bed and closed his eyes, but not in sleep.
His mind momentarily diverted from the contemplation of Nina’s peril by
the episode just related, now recurred with agonizing persistency to
her, his beautiful, deeply wronged, and too lately loved wife.
He longed for wings that he might fly to her side, and whisper in her
ears while he held her close to his throbbing heart, the story of the
deep all-absorbing devotion he felt for her.
“I must go home to her at once, and I will move heaven and earth but
that I will secure her acquittal,” he vowed to himself.
It lacked scarce an hour to dawn, but in the burning impatience that
possessed him it seemed that the night would never pass, but at last
the “stars paled their ineffectual fires,” the dark hour before the
dawn came and passed, the grey gleam of the new day appeared in the
orient east, and he sprang impatiently from his couch.
“I can dally here no longer. Every hour is an eternity of woe, while I
linger!” he exclaimed.
He went to rouse Harvey Wilson to ask him if he could have a guide as
far as Khartoom.
Wilson sprang to his feet, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
“A guide? Why of course--” he began, and even while he spoke he looked
over toward the posse whom he had set to guard Oswald Ferris. Every man
was sleeping serenely on his post.
He looked past them at the camp-bed where Ferris usually slept--it was
empty!
With a ringing cry he roused the camp from the weary slumber that
brooded peacefully over it.
“Wake, every one of you,” he cried, hoarsely. “The guard have slept
upon their posts and the prisoner has fled into the desert!”