The darkness enveloped the hurrying man as it had done once before this
night, when he stood silent and motionless in the middle of the road,
near the toll-house, yet the girl still followed his retreating figure
persistently through the gloom, beseeching him to return, to relinquish
his fell purpose.
She stopped at last, understanding that it was futile to follow further,
that he was deaf to her entreaties to turn back, and that she could no
longer hope to overtake him. As she stood still and listened, she heard
his retreating footsteps growing fainter and fainter far up the road.
Some minutes later, a second vivid band of light revealed his tall, dark
figure sharply silhouetted against the sky, from the brow of the hill he
had climbed, then darkness came again, like a black curtain, and blotted
him from sight.
The girl stood for some time in the middle of the road, with hands
clasped tightly together, and tear-stained face, striving to think
connectedly, to reason calmly in the face of a new trouble.
What must she do? Which way to turn?
She well knew Milt's disposition--a veritable powder magazine it was,
readily ignited by an angry spark, yet soon over with, a flash in the
pan, one might say, without a bullet behind to be sped on its mission of
evil.
Such dire threats as he had just uttered, were but the violent outburst
of a sudden passion, and signified no durability of purpose, no fixed
resolve. Long before he could reach the Squire's place, his better
judgment would surely prevail--the calm after a spent storm. Probably he
was already beginning to repent his hot temper, and regret his hasty
speech.
That it was without cause Sally could not aver. From Milton's
standpoint, at least, he must feel that he had been most shamefully
used, not so much at the hands of the Squire, in the present instance,
as by the girl herself. How meanly he must think of her--heartless,
mercenary, hypocritical! And yet she dared not defend her actions by
telling him the truth.
As she stood thus, uncertain and confused, looking anxiously toward the
hill where she had last seen the solitary figure crowning it, a
reassuring thought came to her. Even should Milt go as far as the
Squire's, he would not be able to gain entrance to the house, for his
uncle had doubtless reached home before this, and he would be little
likely to admit any one into his house at that hour of the night,
especially an avowed enemy, such as he knew his nephew to be.
If Milt attempted to make any trouble at all, he would wait until the
morrow--her wedding day. How hateful the thought of this event now
seemed to her! She felt at the moment that if Milt would only come back
and tempt her to flight, this unhappy marriage would never take place.
She would risk anything, everything, and marry the younger man despite
all else. Why had she not thought of this sooner? Oh! yes, she
remembered, it was on her mother's account. What would become of her?
As the unhappy girl recalled her lover's angry words, she felt that she
deserved them all--each word of harsh reproach, of fierce anger, and
just scorn. It was a very wonder he had not offered to strike her dead
as she stood before him. To think he had even been a witness to her
kiss, and had moreover heard from her very own lips the confession that
she was about to wed his hated kinsman. It was little wonder that Milt
was half crazed by jealousy and rage.
If he did but know the terrible sacrifice she was about to make for his
sake, he must surely pity her, and no longer taunt her for her seeming
perfidy and falseness of heart.
The girl found herself wondering that her lover's anger had not centered
on herself rather than the Squire. She was the one on whom the younger
man should have avenged himself. Perhaps it was a fortunate thing, after
all, that she had not followed him further into the night. He might have
been tempted, in his ungovernable rage, to wreak his vengeance on her as
well as on his hated kinsman. A strange, unusual timidity suddenly took
possession of her--a feeling that was near akin, to dread of the younger
man, irresponsible in his jealous rage, though scarcely a fear of the
man himself, so much as of the demon of jealousy she had aroused in
him.
Beset with this new sensation, she peered cautiously into the night, as
though one might be lurking in hiding near by, ready to spring forth
upon her, then realizing that nothing but darkness lay around her, she
abruptly turned her steps toward the toll-house.
Alas! the bitter disappointment of life. Thus had come to naught all the
efforts in Milton Derr's behalf, her own sacrifice a useless thing,
since, instead of averting the dangers that threatened him, she had
unwittingly been the cause of involving him in yet greater perils.
Even though his threats against the Squire were but idle ones--blasted
buds of evil without promise of fruition, as she believed them to be,
still, if Milt persisted in tarrying longer in the locality, he was not
only putting his own life in jeopardy, but would also bring on Steve
Judson swift retribution as well.
She had tried to impress these facts on Milt's mind before he had gone
away. Why had he not remained away as she had entreated him to do, on
parting?
Then she remembered that he would not have returned--that he would
probably have known nothing of her marriage until it was too late, if he
had not read an announcement of it in the papers. Her mother was really
at the bottom of it all, she was chiefly to blame for Milt's return; for
many things, in fact, now bearing the bitter fruit of sorrow.
Mrs. Brown had caused the notice of the marriage to be put in the paper
without her daughter's knowledge or consent. Sally had begged her mother
to say as little about the wedding as possible, and if that obdurate
person had only heeded the request, all this present trouble might
easily have been avoided.
Beset with anxious doubts, intangible fears, disquieting thoughts,
feeling the while most bitterly toward her mother for the officious part
she had persistently played in all this unhappy affair, Sally retraced
her steps slowly to the toll-house.
Poor girl! Truly her marriage eve was not a propitious one.
The first objects on which the girl's eyes rested the next morning, when
she awoke after a troubled sleep, were the simple wedding garments
spread out carefully on some chairs near her bed, and as she lay and
looked at them in bitterness of heart and spirit, she heard her mother
astir in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
Sally half rose in bed. Her very heart seemed faint within her as she
gazed on all this hateful reminder of what the day held in store, and
with a quick sob she buried her face in her hands.
As she sat thus--a tearful, sobbing figure--surely a strange posture for
a prospective bride on her bridal morn, she heard a horse galloping
swiftly along the road, and as the sound came nearer, she found her
attention gradually absorbed by it. There seemed something of undue
haste in the rider's speed.
A moment later the winded animal stopped at the toll-house gate, while a
loud knock quickly summoned Mrs. Brown to the door. Sally's alert ear
caught the sound of a negro's voice without, speaking rapidly and
excitedly, then a sharp exclamation from the toll-taker followed.
The listening bride-elect could not distinguish the negro's hurried
words, nor guess the import of his message, but finally she caught one
single word that her mother uttered, and that word was--"murdered."
Scarcely had it reached the girl's strained attention, when she sprang
hurriedly out of bed, and catching up her wedding dress threw it hastily
over her shoulders. Then her strength seemed suddenly to go, and she
stood trembling and white, her eyes fixed on the door of her room in a
vacant stare, her mind a blank to all surroundings.
Her mother found her thus when she came into the room a few moments
later, visibly agitated.
"You heard it then?" she said huskily, looking into Sally's
terror-stricken face.
"He could not have done it!" gasped Sally, brokenly. "It was only an
idle threat," she added, her voice sinking to a whisper.
"Of course he didn't do it!" exclaimed her mother, catching only her
daughter's first words. "He was murdered--murdered in cold blood!"
The girl opened her mouth as if to speak again, but the sound crumbled
to unintelligible murmurs, as the fear of uttering words no ear must
ever hear flashed through her bewildered mind, so she stood looking
blankly at her mother, with wide-open eyes of horror, while the color
fled from her face, leaving a ghastly pallor instead.
All the dreadful interval she was thinking of Milton Derr rather than
his victim, and she started like a guilty thing at her mother's next
words:
"There's but one person in the whole wide world who could have done
this, to my thinkin', an' that's Milt Derr!"