“They are the people of Virginia,” he said, “and they come, Zindorf, in
the purpose of events that you have turned terribly backward!”
The man was in some desperate perplexity, but he had steel nerves and
the devil's courage.
He looked my father calmly in the face.
“What does all this mean?” he said.
“It means, Zindorf,” cried my father, “it means that the very things,
the very particular things, that you ought to have used for the glory of
God, God has used for your damnation!”
And again, in the clear April air, there entered through the open window
the faint tolling of a bell.
“Listen, Zindorf! I will tell you. In the old abandoned church yonder,
when they came to toll the bell for Duncan, the rope fell to pieces; I
came along then, and Jacob Lance climbed into the steeple to toll the
bell by hand. At the first crash of sound a wolf ran out of a thicket
in the ravine below him, and fled away toward the mountains. Lance, from
his elevated point, could see the wolf's muzzle was bloody. That would
mean, that a lost horse had been killed or an estray steer. He called
down and we went in to see what thing this scavenger had got hold of.”
He paused.
“In the cut of an abandoned road we found the body of Ordez riddled with
buckshot, and his pockets rifled. But sewed up in his coat was the silk
envelope with these papers. I took possession of them as a Justice of
the Peace, ordered the body sent on here, and the people to assemble.”
He extended his arm toward the faint, quivering, distant sound.
“Listen, Zindorf,” he cried; “the bell began to toll for Duncan, but
it tolls now for the murderer of Ordez. It tolls to raise the country
against the assassin!”
The false monk had the courage of his master. He stood out and faced my
father.
“But can you find him, Pendleton,” he said. And his harsh voice was
firm. “You find Ordez dead; well, some assassin shot him and carried his
body into the cut of the abandoned road. But who was that assassin? Is
Virginia scant of murderers? Do you know the right one?”