CHAPTER XXIX.

BY MY MOTHER IN HEAVEN.

Ruth Jessup stood by her father's bed, white as a ghost, and cold as a stone. Her step, usually so light, had fallen heavily on the floor as she entered the room--so heavily that the sick man started in his bed, afraid of some unwelcome intrusion. The room was darkened, and he did not see how pale his child was, even when she stood close to him.

"Did you see him? Did you tell him to keep a close lip? Does he know that I would be hacked to pieces rather than harm him? Why don't you speak, Ruth?"

"I saw him, father; but that was all," answered the girl, in a voice that sounded unnatural to him.

"That was all? Did you not give him my own words?"

"No, father! Another person was with him. I had no power to speak."

The old man groaned, and gave an impatient grip at the bed-clothes.

"I will get up. I will go myself!"

With the words on his lips, the old man half-rose, and fell back upon his pillow with a gasp of pain.

"Oh, father! do not try to move. It hurts you so!" said Ruth, bending over him.

"But he must be told. That young man threatens us. He must be told! So rash--so young. He might--Oh!"

"Father! father! You are killing yourself!"

"No, no, child! I must not do that. Never was a poor wounded man's life of so much consequence as mine is now."

Ruth bent over him, and he saw that she was silently crying.

"Oh, father! what would I do--what would I do?" she sobbed.

The gardener's eyes filled with pity.

"Aye. What would you? But I am not dead yet. There, there! wipe your eyes. We shall live to go away from this dreary place, and take the trouble with us--the trouble and the shame."

A flash of fire shot through the pallor of Ruth Jessup's face. She drew her slender figure upright.

"Shame! No, father. Sick or well, I will not let you say that. No shame has fallen upon us."

"Ruth! Ruth! You say this?"

"Father, I swear it! I, who tremble at the sound of an oath, knowing how sacred a thing it is. I swear it by my mother, who is in heaven!"

The old man reached up his arms, and drew the girl down to his bosom, which was heaving with great wave-like sobs.

"My child! my child! my own--own--"

He murmured these broken words over her. He patted her shoulder; he smoothed her hair with his great, trembling hand. His sobs shook the bed, and a rain of tears moistened his pillow.

"You believe me, father?"

"Would I believe your mother, could she speak from her place by the great white throne? The mother you have sworn by!"

"The mother I have sworn by," repeated Ruth, lifting her eyes to heaven.

"Thank God! Thank God! Ah, Ruth! my child! my child!"

The locked agony, which was not all physical pain, went out of the old man's face then. His eyes softened, his lips relaxed; a deep, long breath heaved his chest. After this he lay upon his pillow, weak as a child, and smiling like one.

Thus Ruth watched by him for an hour; but her face was contracted with anxiety, that came back upon her after the calm of her father's rest. She had told him the truth, yet how much was kept back? There was no shame to confess; but oh, how much of sorrow to endure! Danger, too, of which Hurst should be warned. But how, with that fair woman by his side--how could any one approach him with counsel or help?

Jessup stirred on his pillow. An hour of refreshing sleep had given him wonderful strength. That surgeon, when he took the bullet from his chest, had not given him half the relief found in the words which Ruth had uttered. But out of those words came subjects for reflection when his brain awoke from its slumbers. If Ruth spoke truly, what object could have led to his own wounds? Why had young Hurst assaulted him if there was nothing to conceal--no vengeance to anticipate? Then arose a vague consciousness that all was not clear in his own mind regarding the events that had brought him so near death. The darkness of midnight lay under those old cedars of Lebanon. He had seen the figure of a man under their branches that night, but remembered it vaguely. A little after, when the bullet had struck him, and he was struggling up from the ground, he did see a face on the verge of the moonlight, looking that way. That face was Walton Hurst. Then all was black. He must have fainted.

But how had the young man been wounded? There had been a struggle--Jessup remembered that. Perhaps he had wrested the gun from his assailant, and struck back in the first agony of his wound; but of that he had no certainty--a sharp turn, and one leap upon the dark figure, was all he could remember.

What motive was there for all this? Better than his own life had he loved the family of Sir Noel Hurst--the young heir most of all. What cause of enmity had arisen up against him, a most faithful and always favored retainer? Ah, if he could but see the young man!

But that was impossible. Both were stricken down, and Ruth had failed to carry the message of conciliation and caution that had been intrusted to her. Even when writhing under a sense of double wrong, his love for the young man had come uppermost; and in the desperate apprehension inspired by Richard Storms, he had urged Ruth to go and warn the heir.

In health he might not have done this; for, though anything but a vindictive man, Jessup was proud in his manly way, and would have shrunk from that means of reassuring the man who had hurt him; but there was still continued riots of fever in his brain, and in the terror brought on him by Storms he had forgotten all the rest. Indeed, he had been incapable of cool reasoning from the first; but his affectionate nature acted for itself.

Now, when the pressure of doubt regarding his own child was removed, a struggle to remember events clearly came on, which threatened to excite his nerves into continued restlessness. He was constantly pondering over the subject of that attack, and the morning found him dangerously wakeful.

"My child."

Ruth, who had been resting in an easy-chair, was by his side in an instant.

"I am here, father, but you have not slept. How bright your eyes are!"

"Ruth, have I been out of my head again, or did you say something in the night that lifted the stone from my heart? Is it all or half a dream?"

"I told you only the truth, father."

"Ah, but that truth was everything. It may change everything."

"Do not talk so eagerly, father; the doctor will scold me when he comes."

"Let him scold. You have done me more good, child, than he ever can; but you look worn out, your eyes have dark stains under them."

"I shall be better now," answered the poor girl, turning her face away.

"Ah, yes, everything will turn out right as soon as I can see him. Anyway, my lips shall never tell a word of it. All the courts in the world could not draw that out of me. He thought I was doubting him--that I meant to harm him, may be. Youth is so quick to act--so quick!"

"Oh, father, did he--did he do it?" cried Ruth, with a quick, passionate outburst.

"Have I not said that nothing should make me answer that, lass? No one shall hurt the young master with my help."

Ruth questioned her father no more. His words had confirmed her worst fears. It seemed to her as if all the world had arrayed itself against her feeble strength. But one ray of light broke through her troubles. Her father was better. He evidently believed in her. The bitter pain had all gone out from his heart. He smiled upon her when she left the room, and tasted of the breakfast she prepared for him with something like a return of appetite.