fragments, but the man was left hanging to a bough, and it was toward
him that Paul Colbert was struggling against the fury of the flood. The
tree hung to the bank by its loosened roots, but its trunk and branches
were swaying wildly, fiercely tossed by the waves. The man was sinking
lower in the water, his strength almost was gone, and his hold was
giving way, when Paul reached him. The white head, turning, revealed
Philip Alston's face and Paul Colbert thought that he shrank under his
touch. Neither spoke for a moment; both needed all their breath to reach
a higher bough.
"Let me help you," gasped Paul Colbert. "Try to climb to the next limb.
It is stronger and steadier."
"Thank you," panted Philip Alston.
They reached it together and could now see the shore, and both looked at
Ruth through the swaying boughs and flying spray. The young man's heart
leapt and his courage rose at the sight of the slender, girlish form. He
saw her stretch out her arms, and remembering that she loved this old
man, panting and struggling at his side, he shouted with all the power
that he had, telling her that he would do his best to bring him to land.
Philip Alston gave him a strange look, and then turned his gaze again
toward the little figure on the shore. In a tone that was even more
strange than his look, he murmured something about being on his way back
from the island. He also said something about going to the boat early in
the morning to countermand an order that he had given on the night
before.
"I changed my mind--I found I couldn't do--"
Paul Colbert did not understand, and scarcely heard the confused,
gasping, hurried words. He was looking at Ruth, and longing to loose his
hold on the bough, long enough to wave the assurance that his voice
could not carry across the roaring waters. And this was the instant that
Nature chose to mock the pitting of his puny powers against her
resistless forces. A fierce wave tore away the roots that the tree bound
to the bank, and hurled it into the flood. It swung round and turned
partly over, burying the bough that they clung to, deep under the water.
Both went down with it and Paul Colbert thought, with the quickness and
clearness of mind that comes to the drowning, that they could never come
up again. When he found his own head once more above water, with his
hand grasping a bough of a smaller tree, which had been driven close to
the shore, he looked round for Philip Alston. There was no silver head
anywhere to be seen now above the thick, dark river. Half stunned, he
gazed again blankly, feeling vaguely that his own head must go down very
soon; his strength was wholly gone; he could not even see the shore,
though it was very near, because he was not strong enough to lift
himself above the trunk of the tree which hid it from his sight. And
then at last he heard Father Orin's voice:--
"Hold fast, my boy. Hold fast just a moment longer. We are coming, Toby
and I. Try to hold on. We are almost there."
They reached him as his hand let go and his head sunk, and they bore him
to the shore and laid him down at Ruth's feet, unconscious, but alive.
* * * * *
When Nature has thus rent the trembling earth and thus smitten appalled
humanity by some stupendous convulsion, the outburst of passion nearly
always passes quickly, and she hastens to console by concealing its
traces. These fatal throes were hardly over before she was quelling the
frenzied river by her sudden coldness, and only a few days had passed
before she was covering its subdued waters with a heavy white sheet of
glittering ice. And then, as if to make the torn land lovely again at
once, she wrapped it in a dazzling robe of spotless snow. Above this she
hurriedly hung the broken boughs of the wrecked cottonwoods with
countless flashing prisms, encrusting the smallest twigs to the very top
in sparkling crystal; and coming down she stilled the murmur of the
reeds under icy helmets--binding all together with crystalline cables of
frost. So that under the rainbow light of the brilliant winter sun the
world was once more radiant with peace and joy and beauty unspeakable.
And Cedar House, too, was now just as it had been before. From its open
door nothing could be seen of the marks left by Nature's passionate
fury; marks which must remain forever unless some more furious passion
should come to erase them. It was hard to tell just how and wherein the
whole face of the country had been so greatly changed. The people of
Cedar House knew that a great lake nearly seventy miles in length and
deeper in places than the height of the tallest trees whose tops barely
showed above the water, had taken the place of a range of high hills
covered with primeval forest. But this was too far away to be seen from
Cedar House, and no one there had the heart to approach it. One sad
pilgrimage had been made, and that was to the ruins of Philip Alston's
house. It was now a mere heap of fallen logs, and although these were
lifted and laid in orderly rows, and the ground searched over inch by
inch, there was nothing but his fine clothes and some simple furniture
to show that it had ever been occupied.
"To think that he lived like this--that he gave me everything and kept
nothing for himself," Ruth said softly through her tears, looking up in
Paul Colbert's troubled face. "Such a desolate, lonely life. It breaks
my heart to think of it. But I would have lived in his house if I could.
I wanted to live in it--I wouldn't have cared how plain and rough it
was. I wanted to live with him and cheer him and make him happy, as if
he had been my own father. I couldn't have loved him more dearly if he
had been. And you would have loved him, too, if you had known him
better. I am sure that you would. You couldn't have helped loving
him--if only for his goodness to me. And he was kind to every one. I
never heard him speak a harsh word of any living thing. It was in being
kind that he lost his life; he must have gone to see the man who was ill
on the boat."
The young doctor looked away and fixed his eyes on the men who were
going over the ground around the cabin.
"Who are those men, Paul? And what are they doing here?" she asked
suddenly, observing that they seemed to be looking for something. "It
hurts me to have strangers handling these things that belonged to him.
What are they looking for? Who are they?"
"Dearest, when a thing like this happens the law has to take certain--"
"What has the law to do with my uncle Philip's clothes? No one shall
touch them but me or you!" bending over the garments and gathering them
up in her arms. "What are they digging for? Make them stop. Oh, stop
them; this spot is like his grave, the only grave he can ever have."
* * * * *
Paul could not tell her then, nor for months afterward, that it was
impossible to stop the search for the gold which was believed to be
buried in the earth of the forest near the ruined cabin. He waited till
the forest was once more quivering with tender young leaves and the
river was gentle and warm again--and she had become his wife. When he
gently told her at last, she looked at him wonderingly like a child, and
was silent for some time. She knew so little about money or the
eagerness for riches. And then she smiled and said that she herself
would certainly claim any gold belonging to Philip Alston that ever
might be found, and that David and the Sisters and Father Orin and Toby
should have the spending of it.
"For that is what he would like and we have no need of more, now that
you are becoming famous. We have all and more than we want. Uncle Robert
has plenty for himself and his sisters. William will soon be going to
Congress, if you and uncle Robert work hard for him. Yes, David and the
Sisters and Father Orin and Toby shall have dear uncle Philip's gold. He
would wish them to have it. Think how generous he always was to them and
every one, and how kind to all. If you only could have known him just a
little longer, dear heart! Knowing him better, you would have known, as
I do, how truly he loved everything fine and noble and great."
He did not reply but silently laid his hand on hers. Sighing and
smiling, she nestled closer to his side. And then as they sat thus with
their eyes on the glorious afterglow, the Angelus began to peal softly
through the shadows, and the Beautiful River seemed in the softened
light to curve its majestic arm more closely around this wonderful new
country, from which a blighting shadow was lifted forever.