Chapter VII

Table of Contents

For the next few years after his father's marriage to Maria Bent young Nathan Whitney lived two distinct lives. One, in the village and the red school-house, where he was rated the very worst boy in the town, all the more despised and hunted by every one in authority because he was bright enough to be better; the other in the company of Miranda and little Rose, out in the woods and fields, down by the trout brook fishing, or roaming through the hills watching birds and creeping things; and sometimes sitting at the feet of little Mother Marcia as she told beautiful stories to Nate and Rose, while she held in her arms the sleeping baby brother of little Rose. Here he was a different being. Every hard handsome feature of his face softened into gentleness and set with purpose. All the stubbornness and native error melted away, and his great brown eyes seemed to be seeing things too high for an ordinary boy to comprehend. One could be sure he almost worshipped Mother Marcia, the girl-wife of David Spafford, and looked into her madonna face as she talked or sang softly to her baby, with a fore-shadowing of the look that the man he was to be would have some day for the mother of his children.

As for little Rose she was his comrade and pet. With her, always accompanied by Miranda carrying a generous lunch basket, he roamed all the region round about on pleasant holidays. He taught her to fish in the brook, to jump and climb like any boy and to race over the hills with him. Miranda, well pleased, would stray behind and catch up with them now and then, or sit and wait till they chose to race back to her. Rose thought Nathan the strongest and the best boy in all the town, or the wide world for that matter. He was her devoted slave when she demanded flowers or a high branch of red leaves from the tall maple. It was for her sake he applied himself to his lessons as he had never done in his life before, because the first day of her advent in school he had found her with red eyes and nose weeping her heart out at the reprimand he had received for not knowing his spelling lesson. Spelling was his weakest point, but after that he scarcely ever missed a word. His school life became decidedly better so far as knowing his lessons was concerned; though his pranks still kept up. Rose, in truly feminine fashion, rather admired his pranks, and he knew it; though he had always tried to keep them under control since the day when the teacher started to whip him and Rose walked up the aisle with flashing eyes and cheeks like two flames, and said in a brave little voice:

"Teacher, Nate didn't throw that apple core at all. It was Wallie Eggleston. I saw him myself!" And then her lip trembled and she broke down in tears. Nate's face turned crimson and he hung his head, ashamed. It was true that he had not thrown the apple core, but he had done enough to deserve the whipping and he knew it. From that day he refrained from over-torment the teacher and kept his daring feats for out of school. Also he taught Rose by that unspoken art of a boy, never to "tell on" another boy again.

Mother Marcia watched the intimacy of the little girl and big boy with favor. She felt it was good for Rose, and good for the boy also. Always Miranda or herself was at hand, and never had either of them had reason to doubt the wisdom of the comradeship that had grown between the two children.

But matters were not likely to continue long in this way without the interference of some one. Nathan Whitney got into too many scrapes and slid out of their consequences with a too exasperating skill to have many friends in town. His impudence was unrivalled and his daring was equalled only by his indifference to public opinion. Such a state of things naturally did not tend to make him liked or understood. No one but the three, Rose, her mother and Miranda, ever saw the gentle look of holy reverence on his handsome face, or heard the occasional brief utterances which showed his thoughts were tending toward higher ambitions and finer principles. No others saw the rare smile which glorified his face by a gleam of the real soul of the boy. In after years Marcia often recalled the beautiful youth seated on a low stool holding her baby boy carefully, his face filled with deep pleasure at the privilege, his whole spirit sitting in his eyes in wonder, awe and gentleness as he looked at the little living creature in his arms, or handled it shyly, with rarely tender touch, while Rose sat close beside him well content. At such times the boy seemed almost transfigured. Neither Marcia nor Miranda knew the Nathan who broke windows, threw stones, tied old Mr. Smiles' office door shut while he was dozing over his desk one afternoon; and who filed a bolt, letting out a young scapegrace from the village lockup and helping him to escape from justice and an unappreciative neighborhood into the wide world. They saw only the angelic side to Nathan, the side that nobody else in the wide world dreamed that he possessed.

Nathan spent little time in his home. Shelter during his sleeping hours, and food enough to keep him alive was all he required of it, and more and more the home and the presiding genius there learned to require less of him; knowing that she did not possess the power to make him do what she required. Nathan would not perform any duties about the house or yard unless some one stood over him and kept him at it. If his step-mother attempted to make him rake the leaves in the yard and took her eyes from him a minute he was gone, and would not return until sometime the next day. An appeal to his father brought little but a cold response. Nathan Whitney senior was not calculated by nature to deal with his alert temperamental son and he knew it. He informed his wife concisely that that was what he had married her for, or words to that effect, and she appealed no more. Gradually Nathan Whitney, Jr. had his way and was let alone, for what could she do? When she attempted to discipline him he was not there, neither would he return for hours, sometimes even days afterward, until she would become alarmed lest he had run away like his older and she might be blamed for it. She found that her husband was not as easily ruled as she had supposed, and that her famous discipline of school-day times must be limited to the little girls and baby Samuel. Nathan seemed to know by instinct just when it was safe to return and drop into family life as if nothing had happened, and be let alone. One word or look and he was off again, staying in the woods for days, and knowing wild things, trees and brooks as some men know books. He could always earn a few pennies doing odd jobs for men in the village, for he was smart and handy, and with what he earned kept himself comfortably during his temporary absences from the family board. As for sleeping, he well knew and loved the luxury of a couch on the pine needles under the singing, sighing boughs, or tucked under the sheltering ledge of a rock on a stormy night. His brooding young soul watched storm and lightning with wide eyes that held strange fancies, and thought much about the world and its ways. Now and again the result of these thoughts would come out in a single wise sentence to Miranda or little Rose; rarely, but sometimes, to Mrs. Marcia, always with shyness and as if he had been, surprised out of his natural reserve.

Nathan made no display of his intimacy at the Spaffords. When he went there it was usually just at dusk, unobtrusively slipping around to Miranda at the back door. When they went a-roaming on the hills, or fishing, he never started out with them. He always appeared in the woods just as they were beginning to think he had forgotten. He usually dropped off their path on the way home by going across lots before they reached the village, having a fine instinct that it might bring criticism upon them if they were seen with him. And thus, because of his carefulness, the beautiful friendship of Rose and the boy went on for some years and no one thought anything about it. Nathan never attempted to walk home from school with Rose as other boys did with the girls they admired. Once or twice when an unexpected rain came on before school closed he slid out of his last class and whirled away through the rain to get her cloak and umbrella, returning just as school “let out,” drenched and shamefaced; but he let the little girl think her father had brought them and asked him to give them to her.

One unlucky day, toward evening, Nathan slipped in at the side gate and brought a great bag of chestnuts for Rose, while Mr. David's two prim maiden aunts, Miss Amelia and Miss Hortense Spafford, were tying on their bonnets preparatory to going home after an afternoon call. When Nathan perceived the guests his face grew dark and he backed away toward the door, holding out the bag of nuts toward Rose, and murmuring that he must go at once. By some slip the bag fell between the two and the nuts rolled out in a brown rustling shower over the floor. The boy and girl stooped in quick unison to pick them up, their golden and brown curly heads striking together in a sounding crack, making both forget the presence of their elders and break forth into merry laughter, as they ruefully rubbed their heads and began to gather up the nuts. Nathan was his gentle best self for three or four whole minutes while he picked up nuts and made comical remarks in a low tone to Rose, unconscious of the grim visages of the two aunts in the background, who paused with horrified astonishment in their tying of bonnet strings, to observe the evident intimacy between their grand-niece and a dreadful boy whom they recognized as that scapegrace son of Nathan Whitney's.

Marcia did not notice their expressions at first. She was standing close by with her eyes on the graceful girl and alert boy as they struggled playfully for the nuts she liked to see the two together in the entire unconsciousness of youth playing like children.

But Nathan, sensitive almost to a fault, was quick to feel the antagonistic atmosphere, and suddenly looked up to meet those two keen old pairs of eyes focussed on him in disapproval. He colored all over his handsome face, then grew white and sullen as he rose suddenly to his feet and flashed his defiant habitual attitude, never before worn in the Spafford house.

Standing there for an instant, white with anger, his brows drawn low over his fine dark eyes, his chin raised slightly in defiance (or was it only haughtiness and pride?) his shoulders thrown back, his hands unconsciously clenched down at his sides, and looking straight back into those two pairs of condemning, disapproving eyes, he seemed the very embodiment of the modern poem Invictus, and if he had been a picture it should have borne the inscription, "Every man's hand is against me."

There was utter silence in the room, while four eyes condemned and two eyes defied—offending anew by their defiance. The atmosphere of the room seemed charged with lightning, and oppression sat sudden upon the hearts of the mother and daughter who stood by, oppression and growing indignation. What right had the aunts to look that way at Nathan in the house of his friends?

In vain did Rose summon a merry laugh, and Mrs. Marcia tried to say something pleasant to Nathan about the nuts. It was as if they had not spoken. They were not even heard. The contest was between the aunts and the boy, and in the eyes of the two who watched the boy came off victor.

"What right have you to look at me like that? What right have you to condemn me unheard, and wish me off the face of the earth? What right have you to resent my friendship with your relatives?" That was what the boy's eyes said; and the two narrow-minded little old ladies, red with indignation, cold with pride and prejudice, declined to look honestly at the question, but let their eyes continue to condemn merely for the joy of having a chance to condemn him whom they had always condemned.

The boy's haughty undaunted look held them at bay for several seconds, before he turned coolly away and with a bow of real grace to Marcia and Rose he went out of the room and closed the door quietly behind him.

There was silence in the room. The tenseness in all faces remained until they heard him walk across the kitchen entry and close the outside door, heard his quick, clean step on the flag-stones that led around the house; and then heard the side gate click. He was gone out of hearing and Rose drew a quick involuntary sigh. He was safe, and the storm had not broken in time for him to hear. But it broke now in low oncoming threats of look and tone. Rose was shriveled to misery by the contemptuous glances of her aunts, coming as they did in unison, and meaning but one thing, that she was to blame in some way for this terrible disgrace to the family. Having disposed of Rose to their satisfaction they turned to her mother.

"I must say I'm surprised, Marcia." It was Aunt Amelia as usual who opened up the first gun, "In fact, to be plain, I'm deeply shocked! Living as you have in this town for thirteen and a half years now—(Aunt Amelia always aimed to be exact)—you cannot fail to have known what a reputation that boy has. There is no worse in the county, I believe. And you, the mother of a sweet daughter just budding into womanhood (Rose was at that time nearly eleven), should be so unwise, nay even wicked and thoughtless, as to allow a person of the character of Nathan Whitney to enter your house intimately. I observed that he entered the back door unannounced—and to present your daughter with a gift! I am shocked beyond words to express—" and Aunt Amelia paused impressively and stood looking steadily at the indignant Marcia, shaking her head slightly as if the offense were too great to be quite comprehended in a breath.

Then Aunt Hortense took up the condemnation.

"Yes, Marcia, I am deeply grieved," she spoke weepily, "to think that our beloved nephew's wife, who has become one of our own family, should so forget herself and her position, and the rights of her family, as to allow that scoundrel to enter her doors, and to speak to her child. It is beyond belief! You cannot be ignorant of his character, my dear! You must know that all the outrages that have been committed in this town have been either perpetrated by him, or he has been their instigator, which in my mind is even worse, because it shows cowardice in not being willing to bear the penalty himself——”

At this point Rose, with flashing blue eyes and cheeks as red as the flowers she was named after, stepped indignantly forward.

"Aunt Amelia, Nathan isn't a coward! He isn't afraid of anything in the whole world! He's brave and splendid!”

Miss Amelia turned shocked eyes upon her grand-niece; and Miss Hortense, chin up, fairly snuffed the air:

"In my day little girls did not speak until they were spoken to, and never were allowed to put in when their elders were speaking!" "Yes, Marcia," put in Miss Hortense getting out her handkerchief and wiping her eyes offendedly, "you see what your headstrong ideas have brought upon you already. You cannot expect to have a well-behaved child if you allow her to associate with rough boys, and especially when you pick out the lowest in the village, the vilest of the vile!"

Miss Hortense had the fire of eloquence in her eyes, and it was plain there was more to follow. The bad boys of the village were her especial hobby, and since ten years back she had held a grudge against Nathan on account of her pet cat.

Marcia, cool, controlled, tried to interrupt. She was feeling very angry both on her own account and for the boy's sake, but she knew she could do nothing to pour oil on the troubled waters if she lost her temper.

"I think you have made a mistake, Aunt Hortense," she said gently, "Nathan isn't a bad boy. I've known him a good many years and he has some beautiful qualities. He has been over here playing with Rose a great deal and I have never seen him do a mean or selfish thing. I am, in fact, very fond of him, and he has made a good playmate for Rose. He is a little mischievous of course, most boys are, but there is no real badness in him I am sure."

Rose looked at her mother with shining gratitude, but the two old ladies stiffened visibly in their wrath.

"I am mistaken, am I?" sniffed Miss Hortense. "Yes, I suppose young folks always think they know more than their experienced elders. I have to expect that, but I must do my duty. I shall feel obliged to report this to my nephew and he must deal with it as he sees fit. But whether you think I am mistaken or not, I know that you are, and you will sadly rue the day when you let that young emissary of Satan darken your door."

Miss Hortense retired into the folds of her handkerchief, but Miss Amelia at this juncture swelled forth in denunciation.

"You are quite wrong, Marcia, in thinking my sister mistaken," she said severely. "You forget yourself when you attempt to tell your elders that they are mistaken. However, you are excited, you are young (as if that were the worst offence in the category). My sister and I have had serious cause to know of what we speak. Our fine pet cat, Matthew, you will perhaps remember him as being still with us when you came to live here, he died about five years ago you know—who was as inoffensive and kind an animal as one could have about a house, was put to terrible torture before our very eves by this same paragon of a boy whom you are attempting to uphold. My dear, (here she lowered her voice sepulchrally and hissed out the words vindictively with her thin lips) that dreadful boy tied a tin can filled with pebbles to our poor dear Matthew's tail: think of it! His tail! that he always kept so beautifully clean and tucked around him so tidily! We always had a silk patchwork cushion for him to lie on by the fire and he never presumed upon his privileges; and then for him to be so outraged! My dear, it was more than human nature could bear. Poor Matthew was frantic with fear and mortification. He was a dignified cat and had always been treated with consideration, and of course he did not know what to make of it. He attempted to break away from his tormentors but could not; and the tin can came after him, hitting his poor little heels. Oh, I cannot describe to you the awful scene! Poor Hortense and I stood on the stoop and fairly implored that little imp to release poor Matthew, but he went after him all the harder—the vile little wretch—and poor Matthew did not return to the house until after dark. For days he sat licking his poor disfigured tail from which the beautiful fur had all been rubbed, and looking reproachfully at us,—his best friends. He lived for four years after that, but he never was the same cat! Poor Matthew! And I always thought that was the cause of his death! Now do you understand, Marcia?"

“But Aunt Amelia," broke in Marcia gently, trying not to smile, "that was nine years ago, and Nathan has grown up now. He was only five or six years old then, and had run wild since his mother's death. He is almost sixteen now, and very much changed in a great many ways—”

The two old ladies brought severity to bear upon her at once in frowns of differing magnitudes.

"If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" quoted Aunt Amelia solemnly. "No, Marcia, you are mistaken. The boy was bad from his birth. We are not the only ones who have suffered. He has tied strings across the sidewalk many a dark night to trip people. I have heard of hundreds of his pranks, and now that he is older he doubtless carries his accomplishments into deeper crime. I have heard that he does nothing but hang around the stores and post-office. He is a loafer, nothing short of it, and as for honesty, there isn't an orchard in the neighborhood that is safe. If he'll steal apples, he'll do worse when he gets the chance—and he'll make the chance, you may depend upon it. Boys like that always do. You have taken a great risk in letting him into your house. You have fine old silver that has been in the family for years, and many other valuable things. He may take advantage of his knowledge of the place to rob you some dark night. And as for your child, you cannot tell what awful things he may have taught her. I have often watched his face in church and thought how utterly bad and without moral principle he looks. I should not be in the least surprised if he turned out one day to be a murderer!"

Miss Amelia's tones had been gradually rising as she came to this climax, and as she spoke the word murderer she threw the whole fervor of her intense and narrow nature into her speech, coming to an eloquent and dramatic pause which was well calculated to impress her audience. But suddenly, like a flash of a glittering sword in air, a piercing scream arose. As she might have screamed if some one had struck her, Rose uttered her furious young protest against injustice. Her beautiful little face, flushed with outraged innocence and glorious in its righteous wrath, shone through the gathering dusk in the room and fairly blazing at her startled aunts, who jumped as if she had been some wild animal suddenly let loose upon them. The scream cut through the space of the little room seeming to pierce every one in it, and quickly upon it came another.

"Stop! Stop!" she cried as if they were still going on, "you shall not say those things! You are bad, wicked women! You shall not say my Nathan is a murderer. You are a murderer yourself if you say so. The Bible says he that hateth his brother is a murderer and you hate him or you would not say such wicked things that are not true. You shall not speak them any more. My Nathan is a good boy and I love him. Don't you dare talk like that again." Another scream pointed the sentence and Rose burst into a furious fit of tears and flew across the room, fairly flinging herself into her mother's arms, and sobbing as if her heart would break.

Into this scene of tumult came a calm, strong voice:

“Why, what does all this mean?”*

Chapter XV

Table of Contents

All was confusion at once, and one of the young men rushed out for Caleb Budlong, the doctor, who lived not far away. When things settled down to quiet again and Miranda had been lifted to the kitchen couch and restored with cold water and other stimulants, David had time to discover the absence of Lawrence Billings, though nobody else seemed to notice.

They all tiptoed away from the kitchen at Dr. Budlong’s suggestion, and left Miranda to lie quiet and recover. He said he didn’t believe in these new-fangled things, they were bad for the system, and got people’s nerves all stirred up, especially women. He wouldn’t allow a woman to be put under mesmeric influence if he had anything to say about it. All women were hysterical, and that was doubtless the matter with Miranda.

The company looked at one another astonished. Who had ever suspected Miranda of having nerves, and going into hysterics? And yet she had proclaimed a murderer in their midst!

They turned to one another and began to converse in low mysterious tones while Miranda lay on the couch in the kitchen with closed eyelids and inward mirth. Presently, as Dr. Budlong counted her pulse and gave her another spoonful of stimulant, she drew a long sigh and turned her face to the wall; he, thinking she was dropping to sleep, tiptoed into the sitting-room and closed the kitchen door gently behind him.

Miranda was on the alert at once, turning her head quickly to measure the width of the crack of the door. She yield herself quiet for a full minute, and then slipped softly from her couch across the kitchen with the step of a sylph, snatched a mussed tablecloth from the shelf in the pantry where she had put it when she helped Hannah clear off the dinner table, and wrapping it quickly around her and over her head she went out of the back door.

Every movement was light and quick. She paused a second on the back stoop to get her bearings, then sped with swift light steps toward the barn-door, which was open. A young moon was riding high in the heavens making weird battle with the clouds, and the light of the lantern shone from the open barn-door. Miranda could see the long shadow of a man hitching up a horse with quick, nervous fingers. Lawrence Billings was preparing to take Julia Thatcher home.

Miranda approached the barn, and suddenly emerged into the light in full view of the startled horse just as Lawrence Billings stepped behind him to fasten the traces. The horse, having been roused from a peaceful slumber and not being yet fully awake, beheld the apparition with a snort, and without regard to the man or the unfastened traces reared on his hind legs and attempted to climb backwards into the carryall. There they stood, side by side, the man and the horse, open mouthed, wide nostriled, with protruding eyes; the smoky lantern by the barn-door shedding a flickering light over the whole and casting grotesque shadows on the dusty door.

Miranda, fully realizing her advantage, stood in the half-light of the moon in her fantastic and drapery and waved her tableclothed arms, one forefinger wrapped tightly in the linen pointing straight at the frightened man, while she intoned in hollow sounds the words:

“Confess—to-night—o—you—will—die!”

Lawrence Billings’s yellow hair rose straight on end and cold creeps went down his back. He snorted like the horse in his fright.

The white apparition moved slowly nearer, nearer to the patch of light in the barn-door, and its voice wailed and rose like the wind in November, but the words it spoke were clear and distinct.

“Confess—at—once—or—misfortune—will—overtake—you! Moon—smite—you!—Dogs—bite—you!—Enoch Taylor’s speerit—hant you! Yer mother’s ghost pass before—you--!”

The white arms waved dismally, and the apparition took another step toward him. Then with a yell that might have been heard all the round, Lawrence Billings made a wild dash past her to the back door.

“Food pizen you!—Sleep—fright—you!—Earth swaller—you!” screamed the merciless apparition flying after him, and the horse, having reached the limit of his self-control clattered out into the open and cavorted around the garden until his nerves were somewhat relieved.

Lawrence Billings burst in upon the assembled company in the best parlor with wild eyes and dishevelled hair, and was suddenly confronted with the fact that these people did not believe in ghosts and apparitions. In the warm, bright room with plenty of companions about, he felt the foolishness of telling what he had just seen. His nerve deserted him. He could not face them all and suggest that he had seen a ghost, and so he blurted out an incoherent sentence about his horse. It was frightened at something white in the yard and had run away.

Instantly all hands hurried out to help catch the horse, Lawrence Billings taking care to keep close to the others, and looking fearsomely about the shadowy yard as he stepped forth again from shelter.

Miranda, meantime, had slipped into the kitchen and taken to her couch most decorously, the tablecloth folded neatly close at hand in case she needed it again, and was apparently resting quietly when Hannah tiptoed in to see if she needed anything.

“I guess I shan’t trouble you much longer,” murmured Miranda sleepily. “I don’t feel near so bad now. Shouldn’t wonder ef I could make out to git back home in a half hour er so. What’s all the racket about, Hannah?”

“Lawrence Billings’s horse got loose,” said Hannah. “He’s a fool anyway. He says it saw something white on the clothes line. There isn’t a thing out there, you know yourself Mirandy. He’s asked Dr. Budlong to take Julia Thatcher and her aunt home in his carryall. He says his horse won’t be safe to drive after all this. It’s perfect nonsense; Julia could have walked with him. Mother wanted to ride with Dr. Budlong, and now she’ll have to stay all night and I just got the spare-bed sheets done up clean and put away. I don’t see what you had to go and get into things for to-night, anyhow, Mirandy. You might have known it wasn’t a thing for you to meddle with. All this fuss just because you got people worked up about that murder. Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut about it? It couldn’t do any good now anyway. Say, Mirandy, did you really see any one or hear them say all that stuff?”

“What stuff, Hannah?” said Miranda sleepily. “I disremember what’s ben happenin’. My head feeks queer. Do you s’pose twould hurt me to go home to my own bed?”

“No,” said Hannah crossly, “it’s the best place you could be. I wish I hadn’t asked you to come. I might have known you’d cut up some shine,-- you always did, --but I thought you were grown up enough to act like other folks out to a tea-party,” and with this kind and cousinly remark she slammed into her sitting-room again to make what she could of her excited guests.

Miranda, meanwhile, laystill and listened, and when she made out from the sounds that Jula Thatcher and her aunt had driven off in Dr. Budlong’s carryall with his family, and that all the ladies who had not already departed were in the spare-room putting on their wraps and bonnets, she stole forth softly, the tablecloth hidden under her cloak,--for she had taken the precaution early in the evening to hang her own wraps behind the kitchen door,--and took her way down the street, hovering in the shadows until she saw that Lawrence Billings was coming on behind her.

He was quite near to David and Marcia when he passed where she hid behind a lilac bush on the edge of Judge Waitstill’s yard.

“Moon smite yeh,--stars blight yeh,” murmured Miranda under her breath, but almost in his ear, and flicked the tablecloth a time or two in the moonlight as he looked back fearfully.

Lawrance hastened his steps until he was close behind another group of homeward-bound guests. Miranda slipped from bush to bush, keeping in the shadows of the trees, until she made sure that he was bout to turn off down the road to his own isolated house. Then she slid under a fence and sped across a cornfield. The night was damp and a fine mist like smoke arose from the ground in wreaths of fog and hid her as she ran, but when the young man opened his gate he saw in the changing lights and shadows of the cloud-and-moon-lit night a white figure with waving arms standing on his doorstep and moving slowly, steadily down to meet him.

With a gasp of terror he turned and fled back to the main street of the village, the ghost following a short distance behind, with light, uncanny tread and waving arms like wreaths of mist. It was too much for poor Lawrence Billings. Just in front of David Spafford’s house he stumbled and fell flat—and here was the ghost all but upon him! With a cry of despair he scrambled to his feet and took refuge on the Spafford stoop, clacking the door-knocker loudly in his fright. This was better than Miranda could have hoped. She held her ghostly part by the gate-post till David opened the door, then slipped around to a loose pantry shutter and soon made good her entrance into the house. Stepping lightly she took her station near to a crack of a door where she could hear all that went on between David and his late caller. She heard with exultation the reluctant confession, the abject humility of voice, and cringing plea for mercy. Whatever happened now somebody besides herself knew that Allan Whitney was not a murderer. Her heart swelled ith triumph as she listened to the frightened voice telling how a shot had struck the old man instead of the rabbit it was intended for, and how he had run to him and done everything he knew how to resuscitate his victim but without avail. In terrible fright he had started for the road, and there met Allan Whitney, who had come back with him and worked over the old man a while, and then told him to go home and say nothing about it, that he would take the gun and if anybody made a fuss he would take the blame; that it didn’t matter about him anyway, nobody cared what became of him, but Lawrence had his mother to look out for. The man declared that he hadn’t wanted to do it, putting Allan in a position like that, but when he thought of his mother, of course he had to; and anyhow he had hoped Allan would get away all right, and he did. It hadn’t seemed so bad for Allan. He was likely as well off somewhere else as here, and he, Lawrence, had his mother to look after.”

There was no spectre in this room, and Lawrence Billings was getting back his self-confidence. All the excuses with which he had bolstered himself during the years came flocking back to comfort him as he tried to justify himself before this clear-eyed man for his cowardly hiding behind another.

Something of the contempt that Miranda felt for the weak fellow was manifest in David Spafford’s tone as he asked question after question and brought out little by little the whole story of the night of the murder and Lawrence’s cowardly part in it. Somehow as David talked his sin was made more manifest, and his excuses dropped away from him. He saw his wickedness in allowing another fellow-being, no matter how willing, to walk all these years under the name of murderer to shield him. He lifted a blanched face and fearful eyes to his judge when David at last arose and said:

“Well, now the first thing to do is to go straight to Mr. Whitney. He ought not to be allowed to think another hour that his son has committed a crime. Then we will go to Mr. Heath—”

Lawrence Billings uttered something between a whine and a groan. His face grew whiter and his eyes seemed to fairly stand out.

“What’ll we have to go to them for?” he demanded angrily.”Ain’t I confessed? Ain’t that enough? They can’t hang me after all these years, can they? I ain’t going to anybody else. I’ll leave town if you say so, but I ain’t going to do any more confessing.”

“No, you will not leave town,” said David quietly, laying a strong hand on the trembling shoulder, “and you most certainly will go and confess to those two men. It it the only possible way to make what amends you can for the past. You have put this matter in my hands by coming to me with it, and I cannot let you go until it is handed over to the proper authorities.”

“I came to you because I thought you’d be just and merciful,” whined the wretch.

“And so I will as far as in me lies. Justice demands that you confess this matter fully and that the whole thing be investigated. Come——!”

Chapter XXIII

Table of Contents

Spring crept slowly into the world again and one day late in May there came a letter from Dr. Whitman to David saying that he was just about to start from Louis to join the emigration which would rendezvous at a place called Independence, a few miles beyond the Missouri line. There were nearly a thousand in the company and this would tell greatly for the occupation of Oregon. He said that a great many cattle were going but no sheep. The next year would tell for sheep.

“You will be the best judge of what can be done, how far you can exert yourself in these matters and whether the secret service fund can be obtained—” he wrote. “As now decided in my mind, this Oregon will be occupied by American citizens. Those who go will only on the way for more another year. Wagons will go all the way, I have no doubt, this year. But remember that sheep and cattle are indispensable for Oregon. I mean to try to impress on the Secretary of War that sheep are more important to Oregon interest than soldiers. We want to get sheep and stock from the Government for Indians, instead of money for their lands. I have written him on the main interests of the Indian country, but I mean to write him again.

“I shall not be surprised to see some of you on our side of the mountains in the near future—”

David was reading the letter, and Miranda, according to her usual custom when anything of interest was going on in the other room, was hovering near the door working as silently as possible. When he had read this sentence a sudden queer choking noise, half giggle, half cough, from the kitchen door caused him to look up; but Miranda had disappeared and was clattering some pans in the closet noisily, so David, thinking nothing more of it, read on to the end.

Miranda thumped her pots and pans that night as usual, but she went around with a dreamy expression, and every now and again it seemed to her a sheep's head peered pathetically at her from a corner, or blinked across the room from space, and the gentle insistent “ba-a-a” of some little woolly creature from the meadow behind her grandfather's barn would make her heart strings tighten and the smile grow in her eyes.

The days went by, and the slow caravan wound its untried way into the West. A long line of brave souls, two hundred wagons, cattle and horses, and at their head the man whose untiring energy, strong spirit, and undaunted courage had brought him thousands of perilous miles to gather them together for this great endeavor. Safely in his keeping went the letter, and with it travelled Miranda's spirit.

Well had she listened to the missionary's story of his experiences, and stored them in her heart. There were wide rivers to cross where quicksand and strong currents vied with one another for their destruction. There were fearful heights to climb and sudden perilous precipices to avoid. There were hostile tribes, hunger, heartache, cold and sickness to be met, and the days would be long and hard before they came to the promised land. Miranda knew it all and followed them day by day.

Night after night she crept to her window, gazed up at the stars and prayed: “Oh, God, make it really him and let him get the letter!” Then she went to her bed and dreamed of a strange place of wonderful beauty and wildness, inhabited by a savage folk, and infested with shadowy forms of skulking furry creatures; who were always preventing her as she searched, searched for Allan—just to tell him there was a letter coming.

Miranda's interest in missionary meetings increased and she took great pride in putting her mite into the collection which was taken at each meeting.

During these days there grew a sweetness in Miranda's life. She had always been bright, cheery, and ready to lend a hand to anybody in need; but there had been about some of her remarks a hardness, almost bitterness, that sometimes gave a sharp edge to her tongue, and a gleam of relish to her eyes. Now these faults seemed to fade, and though she still made her quaint sarcastic remarks about the people she disliked, it was as though something had softened and gentled all her outlook on life, and she had found out how to look with leniency on slack, shiftless people, and even on those who were “hard as nails,” which was one of her favorite phrases.

She seemed to grow prettier, too, as the Spring came on and deepened into Summer. Naturally of a slender build, she had taken on a plumpness that enhanced her beauty without giving her an appearance of stoutness. She glowed with health, and her color came and went with the freshness and coloring of a child. Her years sat lightly upon her, so that most people looked upon her as still a young girl in spite of the fact that they had known her since she was a baby and could count the time, upon occasion, shaking their heads and saying:

“Mirandy’s getting’ on in years, it’s high time she was gettin’ settled if she's ever goin' to be. She'll soon be an old maid.”

Miranda's contemporaries grew up, married, brought their babies to be baptized in the church, and took on matronly ways; the next younger set grew up and did the same and still Miranda kept the bloom of youth. Her twenty-seven years might have been but seventeen; and the strength that had grown in her face with the years, had been sweetened and softened. There had been pain of loneliness and disappointment in her little unloved days of childhood, but her happy philosophy had taken it all sweetly, and the merriment danced in her eyes more brightly now than when she had been ten.

Her friends gave up expecting her to grow up and act like other people. Only her relatives paid much heed to it, and were mortified that she should so shamelessly override all rules and insist on being the irresponsible merry girl she had always been. They hadn't expected her to marry, somehow, but they did think she should grow into a silent background and begin to recede into maturity as other girls did. Grandmother Heath and Hannah felt it most, and bewailed it openly in Miranda's hearing, which only served to make her delight the more in shocking them by some of her youthful pranks.

But that summer a quiet, unconscious difference grew in her, that made even those who disapproved of her doings turn and look after her curiously when she passed, as at a vision. It seemed almost as if she were growing beautiful, and those who had known her long and classified her as red-haired, freckled and homely, couldn't understand why there was now something unfamiliar in her face. In truth, she seemed like some late lovely bud unfolding slowly into a most unexpected bloom of startling sweetness. Grandmother Heath looked at her sometimes with a pang of conscience and thought she saw resemblance to the girl's dead mother, whose beauty had been more ethereal than was common in the Heath family. Hannah looked at her in church and resented the change without in the least realizing or recognizing it.

There was a kind of expectancy growing in Miranda's eyes, and a quick trick of the color in her cheek that added piquancy to her ways. One evening after watching the girl's changing countenance during a glowing recital of one of her own escapades in which as usual she had worsted some grumpy old sinner and set some poor innocent struggling one free from a petty thraldom. Marcia said to her husband:

“I declare, David, I can't understand why it is that Miranda has been left to give us comfort all these years. She seems to me far more attractive than most of the younger girls in town. Isn't it strange some man doesn't find it out?”

“Miranda has prickles on the outside,” said David laughing, “she doesn't let any but her friends see her real worth. I fancy her sharp tongue keeps many away who might come after her, and so they never learn what they are losing. I doubt if there are very many men in town who would know enough to appreciate her. There are not very many good enough for her.”

“That's true,” Marcia heartily agreed, “but sometimes, although I should miss her very much, I can't bear to think she will never have a home of her own and some one to love her and take care of her, as I have—”

“Dear little unselfish woman,” and David stooping touched her forehead with his lips, “there is no other like you in the whole world.”

Meantime the caravan with the letter wound its long, slow way over the hundreds of miles, crossing rivers which hindered them for days, making skin boats of buffalo hides to carry their goods; and again, with the wagons chained together and driving at a tremendous rate over a ford to escape being mired in the quicksands; discouraged, disheartened and weary; out of provisions, many of them sick and worn out, they kept on. Always at their head, in their midst, everywhere he was needed, that sturdy indomitable figure of Whitman, swimming a river on his horse again and again, back and forth, to find the best ford and encourage those who were crossing, planning for their comfort, finding out ways to get the wagons through when everyone said there was no passage; quietly adopting three daughters of a family whose father and mother died on the journey; and finally late in August, bringing the company safely to Fort Hall.

Here they were met with the information given them by the trading people of the Hudson Bay Company that it was foolish and impossible for them to attempt to take their wagons through to Columbia—they could never accomplish it.

Dr. Whitman had been absent from the company for a few hours and when he returned he found them in a state of terrible distress.

But when he discovered the cause of their anxiety he came cheerfully forward and said: "My countrymen, you have trusted me thus far. Believe me now and I will take your wagons to the Columbia River.”

The pilot who had brought them so far left them and went back to Missouri, and Whitman took charge of the company. So, with many misgivings, and amid the repeated warnings and coldly-given advice of the Hudson Bay people, they started on once more.

It was late in August and the new trail over the Blue Mountains was rocky and steep, often obstructed by a thick growth of sage two or three feet high. The only wagon that had ever before gone farther than Fort Hall was Dr. Whitman's, but with strong faith in their leader and a firm determination to overcome all obstacles they pressed on their way. They forded more rivers, passed through narrow, difficult valleys filled with timber, and again through fertile valleys lying between snow-clad mountains; encountered severe snow storms in the mountains, losing their cattle in the timber, and finding the road terribly rough and almost impassable at times, yet pressing on, ever on, until at last on the tenth of October they reached Whitman's Mission station where were rest and abundance!

Dr. Whitman had hurried on ahead at the last stage of the journey, on account of the severe illness of one of the other missionaries who had sent a message for him, leaving the company to be guided by an Indian friend. By the time they reached the station he had repaired his grist-mill, which had been burned by hostile Indians during his absence. When the emigrants arrived it was possible for grinding to be done. Dr. Whitman sold the travellers flour, potatoes, corn, peas and other fresh vegetables. For a few days they rested and feasted after the hard fare of the journey, and then went on to the Williamette Valley south of the Columbia, where most of them intended to remain.

It was some time before Dr. Whitman had matters at the mission in such shape that he could go out himself to deliver Miranda's letter, but as soon as possible he took a trip to Fort Walla Walla and timed his coming to the cabin in the clearing so that he might hope to find his friend. But no cheerful light shone out across the darkness and no friendly form was waiting at the door to greet him this time. The cabin was closed and dark, and when he succeeded in opening the door he found no sign of the owner's recent occupancy.

With a feeling of deep regret he lighted a candle that stood on the table and looked the place over carefully. There were clothes hanging on the wall, and a few pelts, but there were few eatables and the fire had been dead for days. Well, at least the owner had not moved away. But what terrible fate might have been his in this land of wide wastes, fierce hates, evil beasts, great silences, who could know? Time only could tell, and even time might not choose to reveal.

With a sigh the faithful messenger sat down at the rough table and wrote a note: