“What was it?” “What had he done?” “WHO was he?”
“A blank shyster, who had swindled the widows and orphans in Arkansas
and escaped from jail.”
“And his name isn't Brown?”
“No,” said the colonel curtly.
“What is it?”
“That is a matter which concerns only myself and him, sir,” said the
colonel loftily; “but for which I am--er--personally responsible.”
A wild idea took possession of Blair.
“And you say he was a noted desperado?” he said with nervous hesitation.
The colonel glared.
“Desperado, sir! Never! Blank it all!--a mean, psalm-singing, crawling,
sneak thief!”
And Blair felt relieved without knowing exactly why.
The next day it was known that the preacher, Gabriel Brown, had left
Laurel Spring on an urgent “Gospel call” elsewhere.
Colonel Starbottle returned that night with his friends to the county
town. Strange to say, a majority of the audience had not grasped the
full significance of the colonel's unseemly interruption, and those who
had, as partisans, kept it quiet. Blair, tortured by doubt, had a new
delicacy added to his hesitation, which left him helpless until the
widow should take the initiative in explanation.
A sudden summons from his patient at the loggers' camp the next
day brought him again to the fateful redwoods. But he was vexed and
mystified to find, on arriving at the camp, that he had been made the
victim of some stupid blunder, and that no message had been sent from
there. He was returning abstractedly through the woods when he was
amazed at seeing at a little distance before him the flutter of Mrs.
MacGlowrie's well-known dark green riding habit and the figure of
the lady herself. Her dog was not with her, neither was the revival
preacher--or he might have thought the whole vision a trick of his
memory. But she slackened her pace, and he was obliged to rein up
abreast of her in some confusion.
“I hope I won't shock you again by riding alone through the woods with a
man,” she said with a light laugh.
Nevertheless, she was quite pale as he answered, somewhat coldly, that
he had no right to be shocked at anything she might choose to do.
“But you WERE shocked, for you rode away the last time without
speaking,” she said; “and yet”--she looked up suddenly into his eyes
with a smileless face--“that man you saw me with once had a better right
to ride alone with me than any other man. He was”--
“Your lover?” said Blair with brutal brevity.
“My husband!” returned Mrs. MacGlowrie slowly.
“Then you are NOT a widow,” gasped Blair.
“No. I am only a divorced woman. That is why I have had to live a lie
here. That man--that hypocrite--whose secret was only half exposed
the other night, was my husband--divorced from me by the law, when, an
escaped convict, he fled with another woman from the State three years
ago.” Her face flushed and whitened again; she put up her hand blindly
to her straying hair, and for an instant seemed to sway in the saddle.
But Blair as quickly leaped from his horse, and was beside her. “Let
me help you down,” he said quickly, “and rest yourself until you are
better.” Before she could reply, he lifted her tenderly to the ground
and placed her on a mossy stump a little distance from the trail. Her
color and a faint smile returned to her troubled face.
“Had we not better go on?” she said, looking around. “I never went so
far as to sit down in the woods with HIM that day.”
“Forgive me,” he said pleadingly, “but, of course, I knew nothing. I
disliked the man from instinct--I thought he had some power over you.”
“He has none--except the secret that would also have exposed himself.”
“But others knew it. Colonel Starbottle must have known his name? And
yet”--as he remembered he stammered--“he refused to tell me.”
“Yes, but not because he knew he was my husband, but because he knew he
bore the same name. He thinks, as every one does, that my husband died
in San Francisco. The man who died there was my husband's cousin--a
desperate man and a noted duelist.”
“And YOU assumed to be HIS widow?” said the astounded Blair.
“Yes, but don't blame me too much,” she said pathetically. “It was a
wild, a silly deceit, but it was partly forced upon me. For when I
first arrived across the plains, at the frontier, I was still bearing
my husband's name, and although I was alone and helpless, I found myself
strangely welcomed and respected by those rude frontiersmen. It was not
long before I saw it was because I was presumed to be the widow of ALLEN
MacGlowrie--who had just died in San Francisco. I let them think so, for
I knew--what they did not--that Allen's wife had separated from him and
married again, and that my taking his name could do no harm. I accepted
their kindness; they gave me my first start in business, which brought
me here. It was not much of a deceit,” she continued, with a slight
tremble of her pretty lip, “to prefer to pass as the widow of a dead
desperado than to be known as the divorced wife of a living convict. It
has hurt no one, and it has saved me just now.”
“You were right! No one could blame you,” said Blair eagerly, seizing
her hand.