A pall of swiftly enveloping blackness closed about the toll-house and
its surroundings, which had been revealed for one short space.
The girl started back with a sharp cry, wrung from her in surprise and
consternation at the sudden apparition she had beheld, while the Squire,
naturally mistook her perturbation for fear of the storm.
"Come! don't be afraid, my dear, you are quite safe," he said,
soothingly, striving clumsily at the words to slip his arm about her
waist. But she adroitly avoided the movement and retreated toward the
door of the toll-house.
"Hurry home!" she cried anxiously, thinking rather of ridding herself of
his presence, than of entertaining a fear for his safety. "The storm is
near at hand."
"It's a good deal bluster," answered the Squire calmly, after a
critical glance heavenward, "It may not rain at all. I hope it may not,
as to-morrow's our wedding--only think of that, chickie, our wedding
day!"
"Hurry home!" repeated Sally, faintly, scarcely knowing what she was
saying, and only desirous of hastening his departure, and ridding
herself of his hateful presence--doubly hateful at this moment. There
was a touch of very entreaty in her voice.
"I thought you were going to ride with me a little way," remonstrated
the Squire in disappointed tones. "You said you were."
"No! no!" answered the girl hastily, "it's dangerous--besides, it's
growing late."
"That's scarcely treating me fair," protested the Squire, but he
good-naturedly shambled along the platform, and went to get his buggy.
"We won't begin to quarrel this early," he added with a laugh, "so--good
night, my dear! and pleasant dreams to you!"
"Good night!" echoed Sally, mechanically. She stood motionless until the
sound of the vehicle grew faint in the distance, then, with quaking
frame, she hurriedly jumped off the platform into the road, and groped
her way to the spot where she had seen the dark, solitary figure
standing fully revealed in that brief, intense light.
She had heard no sound, save the Squire's clumsy movements, and later
the rumble of his buggy along the pike, and as she eagerly started
forward, the thought came to her that perhaps she was the dupe of her
own vivid imagination--that the motionless figure imprinted on the
retina of her eye, as it had been etched on the background of the night,
was the creature of her excited brain, and had no part in the darkness
without.
"Milt!" she called out softly, inquiringly.
She strained her ear attentively to the silence. The sound of labored
breathing near at hand betrayed the presence she sought, and putting
forth her hand fearlessly she touched the substance of the shadow she
had seen.
"Milt!" she once more called aloud.
With a gesture of impatience, or anger, she knew not which, he roughly
shook off the hand laid lightly upon him, with the impatient mumbling of
a fierce oath.
"So, it's true," he said at last; but his voice sounded strange and
harsh, and totally unlike the familiar caressing tones she had so
longed to hear once more.
[Illustration: "SO IT'S TRUE," HE SAID, BUT HIS VOICE SOUNDED STRANGE
AND HARSH.]
A deep silence fell between them, and in its strained quiet she could
hear her heart beating loudly in her bosom, as if it were the pendulum
of some muffled clock ticking off the dreary moments of a life.
"Yes," she answered, finally breaking the intense silence, her voice
scarcely more than a faint whisper. It seemed that an age had passed
since the question was asked.
"Sally!" he cried sharply, as if her reply had been a keen knife thrust.
"You don't mean it!"
"It is true," she said, simply.
"And I would not believe it, even though I read it by chance in one of
the papers from here. I said it was a lie. I really thought it was
one--a wicked lie--a damnable one--I didn't know women," he added, with
a bitter laugh.
"Don't blame me, Milt," she faltered. "I did it for the best."
"For the best?" he echoed, scornfully, swift anger following close upon
his words. "Is it for the best to wreck my life--my faith in you?"
"It need not wreck your life, it must not," answered Sally, earnestly.
"I'm not worth it. Oh! why did you come back?" she asked sorrowfully.
"I came back to convince myself that it was a lie. I was a fool for
coming, I'll admit that; but women have made fools of men ever since the
days of Eve."
The two walked on up the road, further away from the toll-house.
"You should not have come back," persisted the girl. "I hoped you never
would. I beg you to go away again, this very night. It is best for us
both. Some day you will find a true woman who is worthy of your love,"
she added with a sob rising in her throat, but Milt in his anger and
resentment failed to rightly interpret its meaning.
"Then you have been fooling me all the while!" he cried, hot with
indignation. "You have made me believe that you cared nothing for
him--that you loathed him, even--well, perhaps you did, but you loved
his money--you've sold yourself for that."
"No! no! Milt, don't say that!" cried the girl imploringly. "I may have
sold myself to him, but not for money--don't think that of me!"
"If not for money--for what?" demanded Derr, sternly. "For what else but
his houses and lands?"
Once again the impulse was strong upon her to confess the truth, yet
swift to follow the impulse came the unhappy knowledge that to do this
would be to seal Milt's fate. If she would save him, she must sacrifice
herself. For his sake her lips must remain mute now, and perhaps
forever.
"It _is_ a sale, an outright sale!" persisted Derr. "You really don't
care for him, you never did. It is only his money you are after--money,
not love has won the day, it always will. I might have known as much,
but I was simple, and had a simple faith. I didn't understand the
falseness of women's hearts."
"Would I have risked my life, as I did, to get you out of the clutches
of the raiders that night, if I had cared nothing for you?" asked Sally
in sharp earnestness, unable longer to bear his reproaches in silence.
"And to what purpose?" demanded her companion. "Why didn't you let them
kill me, as they proposed doing? It would have been kinder to have let
them put me out of the way," he added bitterly.
"Oh, why didn't you stay away, when once you had gone?" she asked. "It
would have been far kinder to me."
"I begin to understand now why you were so anxious to have me go," he
said. "Probably you feared I would make trouble. Did you think I might
attempt to harm your youthful, handsome lover?" he asked, sneeringly.
"No wonder you only cared to talk of the present, not of the future that
night we parted. No wonder you parried my questions when I asked if you
would some day come to me. I marveled then at your strange silence, but
the reason is now as clear as day. All the while you were urging me to
go away, you were expecting to marry him after I had gone! Confess
now--wasn't your word given to him before I went away?"
"Yes," acknowledged Sally, "but let me explain a few things you do not
understand, I"--
"It is unnecessary," quickly interrupted Milt. "Those things I _do_
understand are all-sufficient for me. You wanted me away from here, and
you succeeded in getting me to go--you preferred the Squire's money to
my poverty, and you are on the eve of getting his money, too. Perhaps
you are in league with those rascals who may have meant only to frighten
me, and cause me to run away, like a cowardly cur. They might not have
harmed me--I doubt now if they intended to.
"It is not too late, though, to thwart your plans and his," continued
the speaker with increasing anger. "You are not yet married to that
brute, and, by heaven! you shall not be! I swear it! I will kill him
first--the scoundrel! the hound!" he cried passionately, overswept by
the rage that swayed him, like a tree twisted by the storm.
"Milt, Milt, don't talk that way! You mustn't harm him! You shall not!"
cried the girl, terror-stricken by the passionate utterances of her
companion.
Her words were but fuel to the flame. They goaded him into a sort of
frenzy.
"So you beg for him, do you? You don't want him hurt--your lover, your
husband that is soon to be. By heaven! I'll wring his wrinkled,
villainous neck like I would a chicken's, d--n him. He's driven me from
his roof, he's taken you from me, but I'll even up old scores at last."
As the maddened man started up the road, Sally frantically caught hold
of him, striving to pacify his anger, to reason with him, to make him
understand his unjustness toward her, but he roughly shook himself free,
and moved the faster.
"Milt! Milt! come back!" she cried entreatingly, but he made no answer,
and hurried on.
"Milt, listen to me! It's all my fault. I, alone, am to blame. Come
back! For God's sake, don't do anything rash!"
Again she tried to overtake him, to lay hold of him, but he broke into a
run, and left her far behind, crying entreatingly to him through the
darkness.