There was a belt of timber, principally oak and hickory, on the Himes
place, and one afternoon the old man informed his wife that “a young
feller was comin’ to help him for a week or so fellin’ trees and
cuttin’ ’em up into cord wood.”
“More work for me, I s’pose,” she said, in a sullen tone.
“He’ll board and lodge here. You kin git a room ready fer him and set
an extry plate onto the table. He’ll be here to supper to-night if he’s
a man o’ his word,” was the nonchalant reply. And Mr. Himes stepped
from the kitchen door and walked off in the direction of the barn.
Belinda’s face brightened as she went upstairs and busied herself in
making a bed in a little room usually appropriated to the use of the
hired man, when they had one. They had now been without one for some
time, and she was inexpressibly weary of the uncongenial society of her
old husband. Any change, she thought, must be for the better.
She was bustling about, setting her table while the supper was cooking
over the fire, when the outer door opened, and a man’s step—not that
of her husband, yet strangely familiar—crossed the threshold. She
turned to see whose it was, then uttered a low cry full of terror,
while her cheek blanched and the dish in her hand fell to the floor
with a crash and lay in fragments at her feet.
For several minutes they stood silently gazing into each other’s eyes,
hers dilating with fear, his stern and gloomy, a grim smile upon his
lips.
“Yis, it’s me,” he said at last; “an’ what have ye to say fer yersilf,
false, desateful, treacherous crayther that ye are?”
“They told me ye was killed,” she answered, in a shaking voice,
staggering back and dropping into a chair, but never taking her eyes
from his face; “shot down dead in one o’ them awful battles; and I
thought it must be your ghost.”
“I’m a livin’ man an’ no ghost,” he returned, with a mocking laugh.
“An’ ye soon comforted yersilf wid ould Himes and his house an’ farm,
did ye?”
“What could I do? When you was gone, the rest was all alike to me. I’d
no home, nobody in the wide world to care for me,” she sobbed, covering
her face with her hands; “and he said he’d be so good to me—I should
have everything I wanted. But it isn’t so; he’s an awful man to live
with; and I’m just heart broke, that I am!”
“An’ if ’twas all to do over agin, ye wadn’t give me up fer the likes
o’ him—house an’ farm an’ all?” he queried, drawing a step nearer and
bending toward her with an eager look in his eyes, while his tones
softened till they were almost affectionate.
“Never!” she cried, passionately. “I’d take you without a penny sooner
than him with all the gold of Californy.” And her face, lifted to his,
was full of yearning love and entreaty.
“I knowed it, me own darlint, jewel o’ me heart!” he cried, clasping
her in his arms and heaping fond caresses upon her. “It’s an evil fate
that’s come atween us; but him that’s robbed me’s an ould man, an’ I’m
young, an’ mabbe my turn’ll come when he’s took out o’ the way.”
“Go! go! run! he’ll be here in a minute, maybe, and kill you if he
finds you here!” she cried, hastily releasing herself and pushing him
from her.
“Kill me! ha! ha! that wake ould man! Do yees think I’d come off second
best in a foight wid the loikes o’ him?” he asked, with a scornful
laugh. “But yees needn’t be afeard, B’lindy; I’m the chap as he’s hired
to help him chop down his trees.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, with a look of relief. “But we must behave
cautious, Phelim—mustn’t let him suspect as we’ve ever set eyes on
each other till now.”
He assented to the wisdom of her proposition, and as footsteps were
heard approaching from without, moved quickly to the farther side of
the room, and as the master of the house came in, seemed very much
engaged with the county paper which he found lying on the window-sill.
Belinda was stooping over the fire, stirring something stewing in a pan.
“Supper not ready?” Himes asked, in a surly tone. Then, catching sight
of the new-comer, “Ah! so you’re here, O’Rourke! Well, set up to the
table. I guess we’ll have something to eat after a bit.”
By previous arrangement, Teddy McManus was to temporarily supply
Phelim’s place with Bangs, thus leaving Phelim at liberty to stay away
as long as should seem advisable for their common interest. He
accordingly spent several weeks in the employ of Farmer Himes, felling
trees and cutting wood all day in company with the old man, and often,
in the long evenings, enjoying a stolen interview with Belinda when a
call upon some neighbor or a visit to the nearest town had taken her
husband out of the way.
The woman’s conscience troubled her sorely at times; she knew she was
doing very wrong, now that she was the wife of another man, to let this
one talk to her in the old lover-like way; that was proper enough while
she was free to bestow her heart and hand upon him. But she stifled the
reproaches of the inward monitor, and went on in the evil course that
must end in sorrow and shame.
But O’Rourke had a purpose in coming there aside from his passion for
her and wish to obtain the money paid him for his work. He was in
Bangs’s employ still, though in a new capacity.
“I’ve a little job on hand that mabbe you cud help me wid, me jewel,”
he said to Belinda one evening in the second week of his stay.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking up from her sewing in some surprise
and apprehension.
“Nothin’ to fright ye,” he returned, laughing. “It’s jist this, me
darlint. There’s a gintleman as wants to foind out, fer some raison o’
his own, if yer ould man’s got a margage—I belave that’s what they
call it—on Lakeside, the farm belongin’ till the Heaths.”
“How should I know if he has?” she returned. “He never tells me nothin’
about his business, and I don’t know what a margage is.”
“It’s a paper wid writin’ onto it, darlint, and one as it wudn’t be o’
no use at all at all to take,” he explained; “not till me nor the
gintleman I was spakin’ av, though mabbe it moight fer the folks it’s
drawed against.”
“Would you know it if you saw it?”
“Sorra a bit, jewel, but ye wad; ye can rade writin’.”
“Yes; but I tell you I don’t know what sort of a thing it is.”
“Somethin’ loike this jist—tellin’ that money’s owed on the farm, an’
if it ain’t paid by sich a toime, the feller what holds the margage can
sell ’em out and git his money.”
“Then anybody that had the paper could do that, couldn’t he?” she
asked, with increasing interest.
“No, not if he stole it, the gintleman tould me; the writin’s got to be
fixed to suit, wid the roight name ontil it. He’ll be afther buyin’ it,
I belave, whin he foinds out all about it; an’ he’ll pay me a purty
penny if I foind out an’ let him intil the sacret.”
“But what made him think it was here?”
“Well, a friend o’ his’n see the ould man over there, an’ somethin’ put
it intil her head as it moight be he wuz afther money, the folks
seemin’ kind o’ distressed loike.”
Mr. Himes’s return broke off the conversation, but it was renewed by
Phelim at the first opportunity, and at length Belinda was prevailed
upon to promise to make an examination of her husband’s papers if she
could in any way manage to get possession of the key to the strong box
in which they were kept. This key he carried on his person during the
day and put carefully under his pillow at night. She had never been
permitted to touch it, nor did it seem likely she ever would be.
But one day, having torn his coat, he brought it to her to mend.
“Mind you do it right away,” he said, “for I’ll have to wear my Sunday
one till it’s done. I can’t chop wood in that, so I’ll just step over
to Harkness’s to ask what cord wood’s a sellin’ fer now in
Prairieville.”
Dropping the coat the moment the door closed on him, Belinda ran to the
front window and watched him stealthily as he crossed the yard and went
out at the gate; then, hurrying back, she searched the pockets of the
coat.
Yes, the key was there. She drew it out with a gleeful laugh. There was
nothing she enjoyed with a keener relish than prying into whatever he
particularly desired to keep secret from her. First satisfying herself
that he had not discovered his loss and turned back to retrieve it, she
hastened to make use of this “lucky chance.”
It so happened that the first paper she opened proved to be the one she
was in search of. She read enough to make sure of that, gloated for
several minutes over rolls of bank-notes and piles of gold and silver
coin, feeling strongly tempted to help herself; but deterred by the
almost certain conviction that her husband knew to a cent how much was
there, she hurriedly shut down the lid, relocked the box, and went back
to her work.
Well for her that she did; for scarcely had she taken the first stitch
in the garment when the old man rushed in in breathless haste and
snatched it from her hands.
“What’s that for?” she asked, her black eyes snapping.
“Have ye been makin’ free with this?” he demanded, shaking the key in
her face. “It’ll not be good for ye if ye have.”
“With that?” she cried, in well-feigned surprise. “I only wish I’d
knowed it was there. But if you jerk my work out o’ my hands agin, ye
may do yer mendin’ yerself.”
He started upon his errand a second time, and only waiting until he was
well out of sight, she threw a shawl over her head and ran to the wood,
where Phelim’s axe was descending with ringing strokes upon a fallen
tree. They ceased at her approach.
“What is it?” he asked; “have ye come til me fer purtection from that
ould brute baste?”
“No,” she answered, with a scornful laugh, “he hasn’t got so far as to
strike me yet.”
Then she went on to tell of her chance opportunity; how she had
improved it, and the discovery she had made.
“Good! good!” he cried, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction and with
greed. “But ye’re sure now the margage is on the Heath property?”
“Yes; certain sure. You’ll not get me into trouble about it?”
“Niver a bit, me darlint. And so that’s where the ould divil kapes his
money, is it? How much do ye s’pose he has there?”
“I didn’t dare look,” she answered, evasively, “and he’ll take good
care I don’t never get hold o’ that key again. You may count on that.
Now I must run back and do that mendin’ afore he gits home.”
She flew back to the house and worked with nervous haste; the mending
must be done before her husband’s return, lest his suspicions should be
aroused. She had just completed her task, thrown the coat over a
chair-back and set about getting supper, when he came in.
He gave her a sharp, suspicious glance, and passed on into the next
room, where the strong-box was. He had been thinking on his homeward
walk that perhaps she had found and made use of the key in those few
minutes that it was out of his possession.
He would find out, he said to himself, and if a dollar of his precious
store were missing, he would demand its instant return. Fortunately she
could not have had time and opportunity to spend it.
Belinda awaited with a quaking heart the result of his examination.
What if she had unwittingly disarranged the papers! What might he not
do to her in his fury if such were the case!
It seemed a long while that he was there. Evidently he must be counting
his money. How glad she was that she had resisted the temptation to
take a little! At last he came out with a satisfied, triumphant look
that banished her fears.
Early the next week Phelim O’Rourke returned to Prairieville, the time
of his engagement with Mr. Himes having expired.