Part 40

She had risen from the doorstep. She was looking casually around, as if she were about to go. Her voice had sunk unaccountably. “Jes’ kase I ’lowed it mought hev been him ez treated leetle Bob Bowles mean.”

There was a pause. “Marcelly,” he cried at last, “who be ye a-talkin’ ’bout?”

“You-uns!” She turned away her scarlet cheek, then flashed a bright glance over her shoulder. “But I’m mos’ wore out tryin’ ter git it inter yer head,—ye ’pear so sodden in folly.”

And then she was off.

Rathburn had bitter reproaches for her. “I thought you would marry me—not Jepson. I thought you cared for me.”

“I never knowed my mind,” she admitted, “till that night whenst I hearn ’em plottin’ agin him, an’ seen he war in danger. _Then_ I fund out mighty quick who I keered fur.”

“I believe it will kill me,” he declared.

“Oh, no, ’twon’t!” she reassured him. “I hev hearn fower or five young men say that very thing, an they air walkin’ round in Brumsaidge now, well an’ hearty, an’ likely ter last a good while yit.”

Mrs. Strobe was not surprised. “Whenst young gals gits ter talkin’ ’bout ’despisin’ handsome sinners with eyes blue an’ deep ez a well,’ thar’s apt ter be a heap o’ foolishness in the wind.” She earnestly counseled her granddaughter to wait until after an investigation of the cave was had, lest Jepson should be in some sort inculpated by the testimony which the dark and gruesome caverns might yield at last. “Ye could turn him off then,” she argued, “ef ye ain’t married ter him.”

Her remonstrances had the unexpected effect of hastening the wedding. “I don’t believe he hev done nuthin’ underhand an’ mean. An’ I’m willin’ ter share ennythin’ they kin prove agin him,” Marcella declared.

The first superficial investigation of those unexplored underground recesses resulted in naught. There was then some delay while the sheriff secured and had brought from Colbury the requisite means for an extensive, safe, and efficient search,—lamps, ropes, etc.; and by the time they were in readiness Rathburn was sufficiently recovered to be with the party. He was in high hopes of realizing his dreams of rich deposits of ore, and eagerly examined the rock about the opening of the cave and within its passages. The only “find” was a ghastly spectacle. Not so far down the gloomy aisles of the cave, half hidden by a great fragment of rock, and by it supported in an upright posture, was the skeleton of a young man, clad in tatters and shreds of brown jeans, his grasp still upon the handle of a hunting-knife held out straight before him, kept in position since its strong blade had pierced the heart of a great panther, now but a skeleton too, rampant, its claws and fangs fixed in the ribs where its savagery had dealt death. It was the simplest explanation of the mystery: the antagonists in this primitive duel—the hunter and the beast—had each perished because of the other. Keale had doubtless tracked the creature to the cave, rashly ventured within her den, and she had fought with the courage of desperation. There were the skeletons of the panther kittens, having died of starvation, perhaps, scattered about on the floor, but no indications of precious metal, no sign that this gaunt thing that once was the adventurous mountaineer had ever sought it, save that in his pocket was a bit of float identical with the specimen which had so long proved a lure to Rathburn. The secret where he had found it perished with him.

Its influences were hardly so fleeting. Many a long and thoughtful hour Rathburn pondered on Baintree’s fate: innocent of the crime of which he was accused; tempted by his cowardly terror of it to commit its counterpart, which though failing had left him its legacy of remorse, its brand of Cain to bear as long as he should live. Never again came news of him to Broomsedge Cove, although Rathburn, with a condoning compassion, a certain sense of responsibility, remembering his own sordid schemes and their pitiless pursuit, which provoked Baintree’s crime, and a wish to lift the weight which must oppress him, sought him far and wide.

Rathburn lost his desire for wealth; somehow that bit of float, with all its unfulfilled promises, with all its inchoate curses, was a talisman to reconcile him to poverty. No one might know in after years, when he was notably one of the “poor collectors” of his profession, how strong a proclivity for gains at all hazards he had conquered. He never became altogether unworldly, however, and when he had returned to his appropriate place in the heart of a city he was easily consoled for Marcella’s choice, and esteemed it in the nature of an escape; for none could realize so well as he how the charming mountain flower would have lost grace and beauty, all its fascinations wilting, in the transplantation to an incongruous sphere. Nevertheless he suffers a pang occasionally—the finer æsthetic function of the heart—when he hears from Broomsedge Cove. Latterly it has been reported that Eli Strobe, whose mental malady has quite disappeared, has been elected justice of the peace, and that the “dad” formerly so frequent a word on Marcella’s lips has become a stranger to her vocabulary; for ever since she has solemnly spoken of him by the ambitious title of his office, as “the squair.” Even while Rathburn laughed at this, he saw, with the vividness of reality, and a yearning pain like homesickness, the stretches of the tawny broomsedge waving over all the abandoned land; the high encircling purple mountains touching the lofty sky; the trees bowing in homage to the passing of the royal wind; the river’s silver gleam; the smoke curling up from the stick-and-clay chimneys of the little hamlet, so still, so still, while above the white clouds set sail.

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