The House of a Thousand Candles by Meredith Nicholson (page 6)

easily enough if Morgan’s company had shown more of a fighting spirit. Stoddard’s presence rather amazed them, I think, and I saw that the invaders kept away from his end of the line. We were far apart, stumbling over the snow-covered earth and calling to one another now and then that we might not become too widely separated. Davidson did not relish his capture by the man he had followed across the ocean, and he attempted once to roar a command to Morgan.

“Try it again,” I heard Larry admonish him, “try that once more, and The Sod, God bless it! will never feel the delicate imprint of your web-feet again.”

He turned the man about and rushed him toward the house, the revolver still serving as a prod. His speed gave heart to the wary invaders immediately behind him and two fellows urged and led by Morgan charged our line at a smart pace.

“Bolt for the front door,” I called to Larry, and Stoddard and I closed in after him to guard his retreat.

“They’re not shooting,” called Stoddard. “You may be sure they’ve had their orders to capture the house with as little row as possible.”

We were now nearing the edge of the wood, with the open meadow and water-tower at our backs, while Larry was making good time toward the house.

“Let’s meet them here,” shouted Stoddard.

Morgan was coming up with a club in his hand, making directly for me, two men at his heels, and the rest veering off toward the wall of St. Agatha’s.

“Watch the house,” I yelled to the chaplain; and then, on the edge of the wood Morgan came at me furiously, swinging his club over his head, and in a moment we were fencing away at a merry rate. We both had revolvers strapped to our waists, but I had no intention of drawing mine unless in extremity. At my right Stoddard was busy keeping off Morgan’s personal guard, who seemed reluctant to close with the clergyman.

I have been, in my day, something of a fencer, and my knowledge of the foils stood me in good stead now. With a tremendous thwack I knocked Morgan’s club flying over the snow, and, as we grappled, Bates yelled from the house. I quickly found that Morgan’s wounded arm was still tender. He flinched at the first grapple, and his anger got the better of his judgment. We kicked up the snow at a great rate as we feinted and dragged each other about. He caught hold of my belt with one hand and with a great wrench nearly dragged me from my feet, but I pinioned his arms and bent him backward, then, by a trick Larry had taught me, flung him upon his side. It is not, I confess, a pretty business, matching your brute strength against that of a fellow man, and as I cast myself upon him and felt his hard-blown breath on my face, I hated myself more than I hated him for engaging in so ignoble a contest.

Bates continued to call from the house.

“Come on at any cost,” shouted Stoddard, putting himself between me and the men who were flying to Morgan’s aid.

I sprang away from my adversary, snatching his revolver, and ran toward the house, Stoddard close behind, but keeping himself well between me and the men who were now after us in full cry.

“Shoot, you fools, shoot!” howled Morgan, and as we reached the open meadow and ran for the house a shot-gun roared back of us and buckshot snapped and rattled on the stone of the water tower.

“There’s the sheriff,” called Stoddard behind me.

The officer of the law and his deputy ran into the park from the gate of St. Agatha’s, while the rest of Morgan’s party were skirting the wall to join them.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” yelled Morgan, and I felt Stoddard pause in his gigantic stride to throw himself between me and the pursuers.

“Sprint for it hot,” he called very coolly, as though he were coaching me in a contest of the most amiable sort imaginable.

“Get away from those guns,” I panted, angered by the very generosity of his defense.

“Feint for the front entrance and then run for the terrace and the library-door,” he commanded, as we crossed the little ravine bridge. “They’ve got us headed off.”

Twice the guns boomed behind us, and twice I saw shot cut into the snow about me.

“I’m all right,” called Stoddard reassuringly, still at my back. “They’re not a bit anxious to kill me.”

I was at the top of my speed now, but the clergyman kept close at my heels. I was blowing hard, but he made equal time with perfect ease.

The sheriff was bawling orders to his forces, who awaited us before the front door. Bates and Larry were not visible, but I had every confidence that the Irishman would reappear in the fight at the earliest moment possible. Bates, too, was to be reckoned with, and the final struggle, if it came in the house itself, might not be so unequal, providing we knew the full strength of the enemy.

“Now for the sheriff—here we go!” cried Stoddard— beside me—and we were close to the fringe of trees that shielded the entrance. Then off we veered suddenly to the left, close upon the terrace, where one of the French windows was thrown open and Larry and Bates stepped out, urging us on with lusty cries.

They caught us by the arms and dragged us over where the balustrade was lowest, and we crowded through the door and slammed it. As Bates snapped the bolts Morgan’s party discharged its combined artillery and the sheriff began a great clatter at the front door.

“Gentlemen, we’re in a state of siege,” observed Larry, filling his pipe.

Shot pattered on the wails and several panes of glass cracked in the French windows.

“All’s tight below, sir,” reported Bates. “I thought it best to leave the tunnel trap open for our own use. Those fellows won’t come in that way,—it’s too much like a blind alley.”

“Where’s your prisoner, Larry?”

“Potato cellar, quite comfortable, thanks!”

It was ten o’clock and the besiegers suddenly withdrew a short distance for parley among themselves. Outside the sun shone brightly; and the sky was never bluer. In this moment of respite, while we made ready for what further the day might bring forth, I climbed up to the finished tower to make sure we knew the enemy’s full strength. I could see over the tree-tops, beyond the chapel tower, the roofs of St. Agatha’s. There, at least, was peace. And in that moment, looking over the black wood, with the snow lying upon the ice of the lake white and gleaming under the sun, I felt unutterably lonely and heart-sick, and tired of strife. It seemed a thousand years ago that I had walked and talked with the child Olivia; and ten thousand years more since the girl in gray at the Annandale station had wakened in me a higher aim, and quickened a better impulse than I had ever known.

Larry roared my name through the lower floors. I went down with no wish in my heart but to even matters with Pickering and be done with my grandfather’s legacy for ever.

“The sheriff and Morgan have gone back toward the lake,” reported Larry.

“They’ve gone to consult their chief,” I said. “I wish Pickering would lead his own battalions. It would give social prestige to the fight.”

“Bah, these women!” And Larry tore the corner from a cartridge box.

Stoddard, with a pile of clubs within reach, lay on his back on the long leather couch, placidly reading his Greek testament. Bates, for the first time since my arrival, seemed really nervous and anxious, He pulled a silver watch from his pocket several times, something I had never seen him do before. He leaned against the table, looking strangely tired and worn, and I saw him start nervously as he felt Larry’s eyes on him.

“I think, sir, I’d better take another look at the outer gates,” he remarked to me quite respectfully.

His disturbed air aroused my old antagonism. Was he playing double in the matter? Did he seek now an excuse for conveying some message to the enemy?

“You’ll stay where you are,” I said sharply, and I found myself restlessly fingering my revolver.

“Very good, sir,”—and the hurt look in his eyes touched me.

“Bates is all right,” Larry declared, with an emphasis that was meant to rebuke me.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FIGHT IN THE LIBRARY

“They’re coming faster this time,” remarked Stoddard.

“Certainly. Their general has been cursing them right heartily for retreating without the loot. He wants his three-hundred-thousand-dollar autograph collection,” observed Larry.

“Why doesn’t he come for it himself, like a man?” I demanded.

“Like a man, do you say!” ejaculated Larry. “Faith and you flatter that fat-head!”

It was nearly eleven o’clock when the attacking party returned after a parley on the ice beyond the boat-house. The four of us were on the terrace ready for them. They came smartly through the wood, the sheriff and Morgan slightly in advance of the others. I expected them to slacken their pace when they came to the open meadow, but they broke into a quick trot at the water-tower and came toward the house as steady as veteran campaigners.

“Shall we try gunpowder?” asked Larry.

“We’ll let them fire the first volley,” I said.

“They’ve already tried to murder you and Stoddard, —I’m in for letting loose with the elephant guns,” protested the Irishman.

“Stand to your clubs,” admonished Stoddard, whose own weapon was comparable to the Scriptural weaver’s beam. “Possession is nine points of the fight, and we’ve got the house.”

“Also a prisoner of war,” said Larry, grinning.

The English detective had smashed the glass in the barred window of the potato cellar and we could hear him howling and cursing below.

“Looks like business this time!” exclaimed Larry. “Spread out now and the first head that sticks over the balustrade gets a dose of hickory.”

When twenty-five yards from the terrace the advancing party divided, half halting between us and the water-tower and the remainder swinging around the house toward the front entrance.

“Ah, look at that!” yelled Larry. “It’s a battering-ram they have. O man of peace! have I your Majesty’s consent to try the elephant guns now?”

Morgan and the sheriff carried between them a stick of timber from which the branches had been cut, and, with a third man to help, they ran it up the steps and against the door with a crash that came booming back through the house.

Bates was already bounding up the front stairway, a revolver in his hand and a look of supreme rage on his face. Leaving Stoddard and Larry to watch the library windows, I was after him, and we clattered over the loose boards in the upper hall and into a great unfinished chamber immediately over the entrance. Bates had the window up when I reached him and was well out upon the coping, yelling a warning to the men below.

He had his revolver up to shoot, and when I caught his arm he turned to me with a look of anger and indignation I had never expected to see on his colorless, mask-like face.

“My God, sir! That door was his pride, sir,—it came from a famous house in England, and they’re wrecking it, sir, as though it were common pine.”

He tore himself free of my grasp as the besiegers again launched their battering-ram against the door with a frightful crash, and his revolver cracked smartly thrice, as he bent far out with one hand clinging to the window frame.

His shots were a signal for a sharp reply from one of the men below, and I felt Bates start, and pulled him in, the blood streaming from his face.

“It’s all right, sir,—all right,—only a cut across my cheek, sir,”—and another bullet smashed through the glass, spurting plaster dust from the wall. A fierce onslaught below caused a tremendous crash to echo through the house, and I heard firing on the opposite side, where the enemy’s reserve was waiting.

Bates, with a handkerchief to his face, protested that he was unhurt.

“Come below; there’s nothing to be gained here,”—. and I ran down to the hall, where Stoddard stood, leaning upon his club like a Hercules and coolly watching the door as it leaped and shook under the repeated blows of the besiegers.

A gun roared again at the side of the house, and I ran to the library, where Larry had pushed furniture against all the long windows save one, which he held open. He stepped out upon the terrace and emptied a revolver at the men who were now creeping along the edge of the ravine beneath us. One of them stopped and discharged a rifle at us with deliberate aim. The ball snapped snow from the balustrade and screamed away harmlessly.

“Bah, such monkeys!” he muttered. “I believe I’ve hit that chap!” One man had fallen and lay howling in the ravine, his hand to his thigh, while his comrades paused, demoralized.

“Serves you right, you blackguard!” Larry muttered.

I pulled him in and we jammed a cabinet against the door.

Meanwhile the blows at the front continued with increasing violence. Stoddard still stood where I had left him. Bates was not in sight, but the barking of a revolver above showed that he had returned to the window to take vengeance on his enemies.

Stoddard shook his head in deprecation.

“They fired first,—we can’t do less than get back at them,” I said, between the blows of the battering-ram.

A panel of the great oak door now splintered in, but in their fear that we might use the opening as a loophole, they scampered out into range of Bates’ revolver. In return we heard a rain of small shot on the upper windows, and a few seconds later Larry shouted that the flanking party was again at the terrace.

This movement evidently heartened the sheriff, for, under a fire from Bates, his men rushed up and the log crashed again into the door, shaking it free of the upper hinges. The lower fastenings were wrenched loose an instant later, and the men came tumbling into the hall, —the sheriff, Morgan and four others I had never seen before. Simultaneously the flanking party reached the terrace and were smashing the small panes of the French windows. We could hear the glass crack and tinkle above the confusion at the door.

In the hall he was certainly a lucky man who held to his weapon a moment after the door tumbled in. I blazed at the sheriff with my revolver as he stumbled and half-fell at the threshold, so that the ball passed over him, but he gripped me by the legs and had me prone and half-dazed by the rap of my head on the floor.

I suppose I was two or three minutes, at least, getting my wits. I was first conscious of Bates grappling the sheriff, who sat upon me, and as they struggled with each other I got the full benefit of their combined, swerving, tossing weight. Morgan and Larry were trying for a chance at each other with revolvers, while Morgan backed the Irishman slowly toward the library. Stoddard had seized one of the unknown deputies with both hands by the collar and gave his captive a tremendous swing, jerking him high in the air and driving him against another invader with a blow that knocked both fellows spinning into a corner.

“Come on to the library!” shouted Larry, and Bates, who had got me to my feet, dragged me down the hall toward the open library-door.

Bates presented at this moment an extraordinary appearance, with the blood from the scratch on his face coursing down his cheek and upon his shoulder. His coat and shirt had been torn away and the blood was smeared over his breast. The fury and indignation in his face was something I hope not to see again in a human countenance.

“My God, this room—this beautiful room!” I heard him cry, as he pushed me before him into the library. “It was Mr. Glenarm’s pride,” he muttered, and sprang upon a burly fellow who had came in through one of the library doors and was climbing over the long table we had set up as a barricade.

We were now between two fires. The sheriff’s party had fought valiantly to keep us out of the library, and now that we were within, Stoddard’s big shoulders held the door half-closed against the combined strength of the men in the ball. This pause was fortunate, for it gave us an opportunity to deal singly with the fellows who were climbing in from the terrace. Bates had laid one of them low with a club and Larry disposed of another, who had made a murderous effort to stick a knife into him. I was with Stoddard against the door, where the sheriff’s men were slowly gaining upon us.

“Let go on the jump when I say three,” said Stoddard, and at his word we sprang away from the door and into the room. Larry yelled with joy as the sheriff and his men pitched forward and sprawled upon the floor, and we were at it again in a hand-to-hand conflict to clear the room.

“Hold that position, sir,” yelled Bates.

Morgan had directed the attack against me and I was driven upon the hearth before the great fireplace. The sheriff, Morgan and Ferguson hemmed me in. It was evident that I was the chief culprit, and they wished to eliminate me from the contest. Across the room, Larry, Stoddard and Bates were engaged in a lively rough and tumble with the rest of the besiegers, and Stoddard, seeing my plight, leaped the overturned table, broke past the trio and stood at my side, swinging a chair.

At that moment my eyes, sweeping the outer doors, saw the face of Pickering. He had come to see that his orders were obeyed, and I remember yet my satisfaction, as, hemmed in by the men he had hired to kill me or drive me out, I felt, rather than saw, the cowardly horror depicted upon his face.

Then the trio pressed in upon me. As I threw down my club and drew my revolver, some one across the room fired several shots, whose roar through the room seemed to arrest the fight for an instant, and then, while Stoddard stood at my side swinging his chair defensively, the great chandelier, loosened or broken by the shots, fell with a mighty crash of its crystal pendants. The sheriff, leaping away from Stoddard’s club, was struck on the head and borne down by the heavy glass.

Smoke from the firing floated in clouds across the room, and there was a moment’s silence save for the sheriff, who was groaning and cursing under the debris of the chandelier. At the door Pickering’s face appeared again anxious and frightened. I think the scene in the room and the slow progress his men were making against us had half-paralyzed him.

We were all getting our second wind for a renewal of the fight, with Morgan in command of the enemy. One or two of his men, who had gone down early in the struggle, were now crawling back for revenge. I think I must have raised my hand and pointed at Pickering, for Bates wheeled like a flash and before I realized what happened he had dragged the executor into the room.

“You scoundrel—you ingrate!” howled the servant.

The blood on his face and bare chest and the hatred in his eves made him a hideous object; but in that lull of the storm while we waited, watching for an advantage, I heard off somewhere, above or below, that same sound of footsteps that I had remarked before. Larry and Stoddard heard it; Bates heard it, and his eyes fixed upon Pickering with a glare of malicious delight.

“There comes our old friend, the ghost,” yelled Larry.

“I think you are quite right, sir,” said Bates. He threw down the revolver he held in his hand and leaned upon the edge of the long table that lay on its side, his gaze still bent on Pickering, who stood with his overcoat buttoned close, his derby hat on the floor beside him, where it had fallen as Bates hauled him into the room.

The sound of a measured step, of some one walking, of a careful foot on a stairway, was quite distinct. I even remarked the slight stumble that I had noticed before.

We were all so intent on those steps in the wall that we were off guard. I heard Bates yell at me, and Larry and Stoddard rushed for Pickering. He had drawn a revolver from his overcoat pocket and thrown it up to fire at me when Stoddard sent the weapon flying through the air.

“Only a moment now, gentlemen,” said Bates, an odd smile on his face. He was looking past me toward the right end of the fireplace. There seemed to be in the air a feeling of something impending. Even Morgan and his men, half-crouching ready for a rush at me, hesitated; and Pickering glanced nervously from one to the other of us. It was the calm before the storm; in a moment we should be at each other’s throats for the final struggle, and yet we waited. In the wall I heard still the sound of steps. They were clear to all of us now. We stood there for what seemed an eternity—I suppose the time was really not more than thirty seconds—inert, waiting, while I felt that something must happen; the silence, the waiting, were intolerable. I grasped my pistol and bent low for a spring at Morgan, with the overturned table and wreckage of the chandelier between me and Pickering; and every man in the room was instantly on the alert.

All but Bates. He remained rigid—that curious smile on his blood-smeared face, his eyes bent toward the end of the great fireplace back of me.

That look on his face held, arrested, numbed me; I followed it. I forgot Morgan; a tacit truce held us all again. I stepped back till my eyes fastened on the broad paneled chimney-breast at the right of the hearth, and it was there now that the sound of footsteps in the wall was heard again; then it ceased utterly, the long panel opened slowly, creaking slightly upon its hinges, then down into the room stepped Marian Devereux. She wore the dark gown in which I had seen her last, and a cloak was drawn over her shoulders.

She laughed as her eyes swept the room.

“Ah, gentlemen,” she said, shaking her head, as she viewed our disorder, “what wretched housekeepers you are!”

Steps were again heard in the wall, and she turned to the panel, held it open with one hand and put out the other, waiting for some one who followed her.

Then down into the room stepped my grandfather, John Marshall Glenarm! His staff, his cloak, the silk hat above his shrewd face, and his sharp black eyes were unmistakable. He drew a silk handkerchief from the skirts of his frock coat, with a characteristic flourish that I remembered well, and brushed a bit of dust from his cloak before looking at any of us. Then his eyes fell upon me.

“Good morning, Jack,” he said; and his gaze swept the room.

“God help us!”

It was Morgan, I think, who screamed these words as he bolted for the broken door, but Stoddard caught and held him.

“Thank God, you’re here, sir!” boomed forth in Bates’ sepulchral voice.

It seemed to me that I saw all that happened with a weird, unnatural distinctness, as one sees, before a storm, vivid outlines of far headlands that the usual light of day scarce discloses.

I was myself dazed and spellbound; but I do not like to think, even now, of the effect of my grandfather’s appearance on Arthur Pickering; of the shock that seemed verily to break him in two, so that he staggered, then collapsed, his head falling as though to strike his knees. Larry caught him by the collar and dragged him to a seat, where he huddled, his twitching hands at his throat.

“Gentlemen,” said my grandfather, “you seem to have been enjoying yourselves. Who is this person?”

He pointed with his stick to the sheriff, who was endeavoring to crawl out from under the mass of broken crystals.

“That, sir, is the sheriff,” answered Bates.

“A very disorderly man, I must say. Jack, what have you been doing to cause the sheriff so much inconvenience? Didn’t you know that that chandelier was likely to kill him? That thing cost a thousand dollars, gentlemen. You are expensive visitors. Ah, Morgan,— and Ferguson, too! Well, well! I thought better of both of you. Good morning, Stoddard! A little work for the Church militant! And this gentleman?”—he indicated Larry, who was, for once in his life, without anything to say.

“Mr. Donovan,—a friend of the house,” explained Bates.

“Pleased, I’m sure,” said the old gentleman. “Glad the house had a friend. It seems to have had enemies enough,” he added dolefully; and he eyed the wreck of the room ruefully. The good humor in his face reassured me; but still I stood in tongue-tied wonder, staring at him.

“And Pickering!” John Marshall Glenarm’s voice broke with a quiet mirth that I remembered as the preface usually of something unpleasant. “Well, Arthur, I’m glad to find you on guard, defending the interests of my estate. At the risk of your life, too! Bates!”

“Yes, Mr. Glenarm.”

“You ought to have called me earlier. I really prized that chandelier immensely. And this furniture wasn’t so bad!”

His tone changed abruptly. He pointed to the sheriff’s deputies one after the other with his stick. There was, I remembered, always something insinuating, disagreeable and final about my grandfather’s staff.

“Clear out!” he commanded. “Bates, see these fellows through the wall. Mr. Sheriff, if I were you I’d be very careful, indeed, what I said of this affair. I’m a dead man come to life again, and I know a great deal that I didn’t know before I died. Nothing, gentlemen, fits a man for life like a temporary absence from this cheerful and pleasant world. I recommend you to try it.”

He walked about the room with the quick eager step that was peculiarly his own, while Stoddard, Larry and I stared at him. Bates was helping the dazed sheriff to his feet. Morgan and the rest of the foe were crawling and staggering away, muttering, as though imploring the air of heaven against an evil spirit.

Pickering sat silent, not sure whether he saw a ghost or real flesh and blood, and Larry kept close to him, cutting off his retreat. I think we all experienced that bewildered feeling of children who are caught in mischief by a sudden parental visitation. My grandfather went about peering at the books, with a tranquil air that was disquieting.

He paused suddenly before the design for the memorial tablet, which I had made early in my stay at Glenarm House. I had sketched the lettering with some care, and pinned it against a shelf for my more leisurely study of its phrases. The old gentlemen pulled out his glasses and stood with his hands behind his back, reading. When he finished he walked to where I stood.

“Jack!” he said, “Jack, my boy!” His voice shook and his hands trembled as he laid them on my shoulders. “Marian,”—he turned, seeking her, but the girl had vanished. “Just as well,” he said. “This room is hardly an edifying sight for a woman.” I heard, for an instant, a light hurried step in the wall.

Pickering, too, heard that faint, fugitive sound, and our eyes met at the instant it ceased. The thought of her tore my heart, and I felt that Pickering saw and knew and was glad.

“They have all gone, sir,” reported Bates, returning to the room.

“Now, gentlemen,” began my grandfather, seating himself, “I owe you an apology; this little secret of mine was shared by only two persons. One of these was Bates,” —he paused as an exclamation broke from all of us; and he went on, enjoying our amazement,—“and the other was Marian Devereux. I had often observed that at a man’s death his property gets into the wrong hands, or becomes a bone of contention among lawyers. Sometimes,” and the old gentleman laughed, “an executor proves incompetent or dishonest. I was thoroughly fooled in you, Pickering. The money you owe me is a large sum; and you were so delighted to hear of my death that you didn’t even make sure I was really out of the way. You were perfectly willing to accept Bates’ word for it; and I must say that Bates carried it off splendidly.”

Pickering rose, the blood surging again in his face, and screamed at Bates, pointing a shaking finger at the man.

“You impostor,—you perjurer! The law will deal with your case.”

“To be sure,” resumed my grandfather calmly; “Bates did make false affidavits about my death; but possibly—”

“It was in a Pickwickian sense, sir,” said Bates gravely.

“And in a righteous cause,” declared my grandfather. “I assure you, Pickering, that I have every intention of taking care of Bates. His weekly letters giving an account of the curious manifestations of your devotion to Jack’s security and peace were alone worth a goodly sum. But, Bates—”

The old gentleman was enjoying himself hugely. He chuckled now, and placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Bates, it was too bad I got those missives of yours all in a bunch. I was in a dahabiyeh on the Nile and they don’t have rural free delivery in Egypt. Your cablegram called me home before I got the letters. But thank God, Jack, you’re alive!”

There was real feeling in these last words, and I think we were all touched by them.

“Amen to that!” cried Bates.

“And now, Pickering, before you go I want to show you something. It’s about this mysterious treasure, that has given you—and I hear, the whole countryside—so much concern. I’m disappointed in you, Jack, that you couldn’t find the hiding-place. I designed that as a part of your architectural education. Bates, give me a chair.”

The man gravely drew a chair out of the wreckage and placed it upon the hearth. My grandfather stepped upon it, seized one of the bronze sconces above the mantel and gave it a sharp turn. At the same moment, Bates, upon another chair, grasped the companion bronze and wrenched it sharply. Instantly some mechanism creaked in the great oak chimney-breast and the long oak panels swung open, disclosing a steel door with a combination knob.

“Gentlemen,”—and my grandfather turned with a quaint touch of humor, and a merry twinkle in his bright old eyes—“gentlemen, behold the treasury! It has proved a better hiding-place than I ever imagined it would. There’s not much here, Jack, but enough to keep you going for a while.”

We were all staring, and the old gentleman was unfeignedly enjoying our mystification. It was an hour on which he had evidently counted much; it was the triumph of his resurrection and home-coming, and he chuckled as he twirled the knob in the steel door. Then Bates stepped forward and helped him pull the door open, disclosing a narrow steel chest, upright and held in place by heavy bolts clamped in the stone of the chimney. It was filled with packets of papers placed on shelves, and tied neatly with tape.

“Jack,” said my grandfather, shaking his head, “you wouldn’t be an architect, and you’re not much of an engineer either, or you’d have seen that that paneling was heavier than was necessary. There’s two hundred thousand dollars in first-rate securities—I vouch for them! Bates and I put them there just before I went to Vermont to die.”

“I’ve sounded those panels a dozen times,” I protested.

“Of course you have,” said my grandfather, “but solid steel behind wood is safe. I tested it carefully before I left.”

He laughed and clapped his knees, and I laughed with him.

“But you found the Door of Bewilderment and Pickering’s notes, and that’s something.”

“No; I didn’t even find that. Donovan deserves the credit. But how did you ever come to build that tunnel, if you don’t mind telling me?”

He laughed gleefully.

“That was originally a trench for natural-gas pipes. There was once a large pumping-station on the site of this house, with a big trunk main running off across country to supply the towns west of here. The gas was exhausted, and the pipes were taken up before I began to build. I should never have thought of that tunnel in the world if the trench hadn’t suggested it. I merely deepened and widened it a little and plastered it with cheap cement as far as the chapel, and that little room there where I put Pickering’s notes had once been the cellar of a house built for the superintendent of the gas plant. I had never any idea that I should use that passage as a means of getting into my own house, but Marian met me at the station, told me that there was trouble here, and came with me through the chapel into the cellar, and through the hidden stairway that winds around the chimney from that room where we keep the candlesticks.”

“But who was the ghost?” I demanded, “if you were really alive and in Egypt?”

Bates laughed now.

“Oh, I was the ghost! I went through there occasionally to stimulate your curiosity about the house. And you nearly caught me once!”

“One thing more, if we’re not wearing you out—I’d like to know whether Sister Theresa owes you any money.”

My grandfather turned upon Pickering with blazing eyes.

“You scoundrel, you infernal scoundrel, Sister Theresa never borrowed a cent of me in her life! And you have made war on that woman—”

His rage choked him.

He told Bates to close the door of the steel chest, and then turned to me.

“Where are those notes of Pickering’s?” he demanded; and I brought the packet.

“Gentlemen, Mr. Pickering has gone to ugly lengths in this affair. How many murders have you gentlemen committed?”

“We were about to begin actual killing when you arrived,” replied Larry, grinning.

“The sheriff got all his men off the premises more or less alive, sir,” said Bates.

“That is good. It was all a great mistake,—a very great mistake,”—and my grandfather turned to Pickering.

“Pickering, what a contemptible scoundrel you are! I lent you that three hundred thousand dollars to buy securities to give you better standing in your railroad enterprises, and the last time I saw you, you got me to release the collateral so you could raise money to buy more shares. Then, after I died”—he chuckled—“you thought you’d find and destroy the notes and that would end the transaction; and if you had been smart enough to find them you might have had them and welcome. But as it is, they go to Jack. If he shows any mercy on you in collecting them he’s not the boy I think he is.”

Pickering rose, seized his hat and turned toward the shattered library-door. He paused for one moment, his face livid with rage.

“You old fool!” he screamed at my grandfather. “You old lunatic, I wish to God I had never seen you! No wonder you came back to life! You’re a tricky old devil and too mean to die!”

He turned toward me with some similar complaint ready at his tongue’s end; but Stoddard caught him by the shoulders and thrust him out upon the terrace.

A moment later we saw him cross the meadow and hurry toward St. Agatha’s.

CHAPTER XXVII

CHANGES AND CHANCES

John Marshall Glenarm had probably never been so happy in his life as on that day of his amazing home-coming. He laughed at us and he laughed with us, and as he went about the house explaining his plans for its completion, he chaffed us all with his shrewd humor that had been the terror of my boyhood.

“Ah, if you had had the plans of course you would have been saved a lot of trouble; but that little sketch of the Door of Bewilderment was the only thing I left, —and you found it, Jack,—you really opened these good books of mine.”

He sent us all away to remove the marks of battle, and we gave Bates a hand in cleaning up the wreckage,— Bates, the keeper of secrets; Bates, the inscrutable and mysterious; Bates, the real hero of the affair at Glenarm.

He led us through the narrow stairway by which he had entered, which had been built between false walls, and we played ghost for one another, to show just how the tread of a human being around the chimney sounded. There was much to explain, and my grandfather’s contrition for having placed me in so hazardous a predicament was so sincere, and his wish to make amends so evident, that my heart warmed to him. He made me describe in detail all the incidents of my stay at the house, listening with boyish delight to my adventures.

“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed over and over again. And as I brought my two friends into the story his delight knew no bounds, and he kept chuckling to himself; and insisted half a dozen times on shaking hands with Larry and Stoddard, who were, he declared, his friends as well as mine.

The prisoner in the potato cellar received our due attention; and my grandfather’s joy in the fact that an agent of the British government was held captive in Glenarm House was cheering to see. But the man’s detention was a grave matter, as we all realized, and made imperative the immediate consideration of Larry’s future.

“I must go—and go at once!” declared Larry.

“Mr. Donovan, I should feel honored to have you remain,” said my grandfather. “I hope to hold Jack here, and I wish you would share the house with us.”

“The sheriff and those fellows won’t squeal very hard about their performances here,” said Stoddard. “And they won’t try to rescue the prisoner, even for a reward, from a house where the dead come back to life.”

“No; but you can’t hold a British prisoner in an American private house for ever. Too many people know he has been in this part of the country; and you may be sure that the fight here and the return of Mr. Glenarm will not fail of large advertisement. All I can ask of you, Mr. Glenarm, is that you hold the fellow a few hours after I leave, to give me a start.”

“Certainly. But when this trouble of yours blows over, I hope you will come back and help Jack to live a decent and orderly life.”

My grandfather spoke of my remaining with a warmth that was grateful to my heart; but the place and its associations had grown unbearable. I had not mentioned Marian Devereux to him, I had not told him of my Christmas flight to Cincinnati; for the fact that I had run away and forfeited my right made no difference now, and I waited for an opportunity when we should be alone to talk of my own affairs.

At luncheon, delayed until mid-afternoon, Bates produced champagne, and the three of us, worn with excitement and stress of battle, drank a toast, standing, to the health of John Marshall Glenarm.

“My friends,”—the old gentleman rose and we all stood, our eyes bent upon him in, I think, real affection, —“I am an old and foolish man. Ever since I was able to do so I have indulged my whims. This house is one of them. I had wished to make it a thing of beauty and dignity, and I had hoped that Jack would care for it and be willing to complete it and settle here. The means I employed to test him were not, I admit, worthy of a man who intends well toward his own flesh and blood. Those African adventures of yours scared me, Jack; but to think”—and he laughed—“that I placed you here in this peaceful place amid greater dangers probably than you ever met in tiger-hunting! But you have put me to shame. Here’s health and peace to you!”

“So say we all!” cried the others.

“One thing more,” my grandfather continued, “I don’t want you to think, Jack, that you would really have been cut off under any circumstances if I had died while I was hiding in Egypt. What I wanted, boy, was to get you home! I made another will in England, where I deposited the bulk of my property before I died, and did not forget you. That will was to protect you in case I really died!”—and he laughed cheerily.

The others left us—Stoddard to help Larry get his things together—and my grandfather and I talked for an hour at the table.

“I have thought that many things might happen here,” I said, watching his fine, slim fingers, as he polished his eye-glasses, then rested his elbows on the table and smiled at me. “I thought for a while that I should certainly be shot; then at times I was afraid I might not be; but your return in the flesh was something I never considered among the possibilities. Bates fooled me. That talk I overheard between him and Pickering in the church porch that foggy night was the thing that seemed to settle his case; then the next thing I knew he was defending the house at the serious risk of his life; and I was more puzzled than ever.”

“Yes, a wonderful man, Bates. He always disliked Pickering, and he rejoiced in tricking him.”

“Where did you pick Bates up? He told me he was a Yankee, but he doesn’t act or talk it.”

My grandfather laughed. “Of course not! He’s an Irishman and a man of education—but that’s all I know about him, except that he is a marvelously efficient servant.”

My mind was not on Bates. I was thinking now of Marian Devereux. I could not go on further with my grandfather without telling him how I had run away and broken faith with him, but he gave me no chance.

“You will stay on here,—you will help me to finish the house?” he asked with an unmistakable eagerness of look and tone.

It seemed harsh and ungenerous to tell him that I wished to go; that the great world lay beyond the confines of Glenarm for me to conquer; that I had lost as well as gained by those few months at Glenarm House, and wished to go away. It was not the mystery, now fathomed, nor the struggle, now ended, that was uppermost in my mind and heart, but memories of a girl who had mocked me with delicious girlish laughter,— who had led me away that I might see her transformed into another, more charming, being. It was a comfort to know that Pickering, trapped and defeated, was not to benefit by the bold trick she had helped him play upon me. His loss was hers as well, and I was glad in my bitterness that I had found her in the passage, seeking for plunder at the behest of the same master whom Morgan, Ferguson and the rest of them served.

The fight was over and there was nothing more for me to do in the house by the lake. After a week or so I should go forth and try to win a place for myself. I had my profession; I was an engineer, and I did not question that I should be able to find employment. As for my grandfather, Bates would care for him, and I should visit him often. I was resolved not to give him any further cause for anxiety on account of my adventurous and roving ways. He knew well enough that his old hope of making an architect of me was lost beyond redemption—I had told him that—and now I wished to depart in peace and go to some new part of the world, where there were lines to run, tracks to lay and bridges to build.

These thoughts so filled my mind that I forgot he was patiently waiting for my answer.

“I should like to do anything you ask; I should like to stay here always, but I can’t. Don’t misunderstand me. I have no intention of going back to my old ways. I squandered enough money in my wanderings, and I had my joy of that kind of thing. I shall find employment somewhere and go to work.”

“But, Jack,”—he bent toward me kindly,—“Jack, you mustn’t be led away by any mere quixotism into laying the foundation of your own fortune. What I have is yours, boy. What is in the box in the chimney is yours now—to-day.”

“I wish you wouldn’t! You were always too kind, and I deserve nothing, absolutely nothing.”

“I’m not trying to pay you, Jack. I want to ease my own conscience, that’s all.”

“But money can do nothing for mine,” I replied, trying to smile. “I’ve been dependent all my days, and now I’m going to work. If you were infirm and needed me, I should not hesitate, but the world will have its eyes on me now.”

“Jack, that will of mine did you a great wrong; it put a mark upon you, and that’s what hurts me, that’s what I want to make amends for! Don’t you see? Now don’t punish me, boy. Come! Let us be friends!”

He rose and put out his hands.

“I didn’t mean that! I don’t care about that! It was nothing more than I deserved. These months here have changed me. Haven’t you heard me say I was going to work?”

And I tried to laugh away further discussion of my future.

“It will be more cheerful here in the spring,” he said, as though seeking an inducement for me to remain. “When the resort colony down here comes to life the lake is really gay.”

I shook my head. The lake, that pretty cupful of water, the dip and glide of a certain canoe, the remembrance of a red tam-o’-shanter merging afar off in an October sunset—my purpose to leave the place strengthened as I thought of these things. My nerves were keyed to a breaking pitch and I turned upon him stormily.

“So Miss Devereux was the other person who shared your confidence! Do you understand,—do you appreciate the fact that she was Pickering’s ally?”

“I certainly do not,” he replied coldly. “I’m surprised to hear you speak so of a woman whom you can scarcely know—”

“Yes, I know her; my God, I have reason to know her! But even when I found her out I did not dream that the plot was as deep as it is. She knew that it was a scheme to test me, and she played me into Pickering’s hands. I saw her only a few nights ago down there in the tunnel acting as his spy, looking for the lost notes that she might gain grace in his eyes by turning them over to him. You know I always hated Pickering,—he was too smooth, too smug, and you and everybody else were for ever praising him to me. He was always held up to me as a model; and the first time I saw Marian Devereux she was with him—it was at Sherry’s the night before I came here. I suppose she reached St. Agatha’s only a few hours ahead of me.”

“Yes. Sister Theresa was her guardian. Her father was a dear friend, and I knew her from her early childhood. You are mistaken, Jack. Her knowing Pickering means nothing,—they both lived in New York and moved in the same circle.”

“But it doesn’t explain her efforts to help him, does it?” I blazed. “He wished to marry her,—Sister Theresa told me that,—and I failed, I failed miserably to keep my obligation here—I ran away to follow her!”

“Ah, to be sure! You were away Christmas Eve, when those vandals broke in. Bates merely mentioned it in the last report I got as I came through New York. That was all right. I assumed, of course, that you had gone off somewhere to get a little Christmas cheer; I don’t care anything about it.”

“But I had followed her—I went to Cincinnati to see her. She dared me to come—it was a trick, a part of the conspiracy to steal your property.”

The old gentleman smiled. It was a familiar way of his, to grow calm as other people waxed angry.

“She dared you to come, did she! That is quite like Marian; but you didn’t have to go, did you, Jack?”

“Of course not; of course I didn’t have to go, but—”

I stammered, faltered and ceased. Memory threw open her portals with a challenge. I saw her on the stairway at the Armstrongs’; I heard her low, soft laughter, I felt the mockery of her voice and eyes! I knew again the exquisite delight of being near her. My heart told me well enough why I had followed her.

“Jack, I’m glad I’m not buried up there in that Vermont graveyard with nobody to exercise the right of guardianship over you. I’ve had my misgivings about you; I used to think you were a born tramp; and you disappointed me in turning your back on architecture,—the noblest of all professions; but this performance of yours really beats them all. Don’t you know that a girl like Marian Devereux isn’t likely to become the agent of any rascal? Do you really believe for a minute that she tempted you to follow her, so you might forfeit your rights to my property?”

“But why was she trying to find those notes of his? Why did she come back from Cincinnati with his party? If you could answer me those things, maybe I’d admit that I’m a fool. Pickering, I imagine, is a pretty plausible fellow where women are concerned.”

“For God’s sake, Jack, don’t speak of that girl as women! I put her in that will of mine to pique your curiosity, knowing that if there was a penalty on your marrying her you would be wholly likely to do it,—for that’s the way human beings are made. But you’ve mixed it all up now, and insulted her in the grossest way possible for a fellow who is really a gentleman. And I don’t want to lose you; I want you here with me, Jack! This is a beautiful country, this Indiana! And what I want to do is to found an estate, to build a house that shall be really beautiful,—something these people hereabouts can be proud of,— and I want you to have it with me, Jack, to link our name to these woods and that pretty lake. I’d rather have that for my neighbor than any lake in Scotland. These rich Americans, who go to England to live, don’t appreciate the beauty of their own country. This landscape is worthy of the best that man can do. And I didn’t undertake to build a crazy house so much as one that should have some dignity and character. That passage around the chimney is an indulgence, Jack,— I’ll admit it’s a little bizarre,—you see that chimney isn’t so big outside as it is in!”—and he laughed and rubbed his knees with the palms of his hands,—“and my bringing foreign laborers here wasn’t really to make it easier to get things done my way. Wait till you have seen the May-apples blossom and heard the robins sing in the summer twilight,—help me to finish the house,— then if you want to leave I’ll bid you God-speed.”

The feeling in his tone, the display of sentiment so at variance with my old notion of him, touched me in spite of myself. There was a characteristic nobility and dignity in his plan; it was worthy of him. And I had never loved him as now, when he finished this appeal, and turned away to the window, gazing out upon the somber woodland.

“Mr. Donovan is ready to go, sir,” announced Bates at the door, and we went into the library, where Larry and Stoddard were waiting.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SHORTER VISTAS

Larry had assembled his effects in the library, and to my surprise, Stoddard appeared with his own hand-bag.

“I’m going to see Donovan well on his way,” said the clergyman.

“It’s a pity our party must break up,” exclaimed my grandfather. “My obligations to Mr. Donovan are very great—and to you, too, Stoddard. Jack’s friends are mine hereafter, and when we get new doors for Glenarm House you shall honor me by accepting duplicate keys.”

“Where’s Bates?” asked Larry, and the man came in, respectfully, inperturbably as always, and began gathering up the bags.

“Stop—one moment! Mr. Glenarm,” said Larry. “Before I go I want to congratulate you on the splendid courage of this man who has served you and your house with so much faithfulness and tact. And I want to tell you something else, that you probably would never learn from him—”

“Donovan!” There was a sharp cry in Bates’ voice, and he sprang forward with his hands outstretched entreatingly. But Larry did not heed him.

“The moment I set eyes on this man I recognized him. It’s not fair to you or to him that you should not know him for what he is. Let me introduce an old friend, Walter Creighton; he was a student at Dublin when I was there,—I remember him as one of the best fellows in the world.”

“For God’s sake—no!” pleaded Bates. He was deeply moved and turned his face away from us.

“But, like me,” Larry went on, “he mixed in politics. One night in a riot at Dublin a constable was killed. No one knew who was guilty, but a youngster was suspected, —the son of one of the richest and best-known men in Ireland, who happened to get mixed in the row. To draw attention from the boy, Creighton let suspicion attach to his own name, and, to help the boy’s case further, ran away. I had not heard from or of him until the night I came here and found him the defender of this house. By God! that was no servant’s trick,—it was the act of a royal gentleman.”

They clasped hands; and with a new light in his face, with a new manner, as though he resumed, as a familiar garment, an old disused personality, Bates stood transfigured in the twilight, a man and a gentleman. I think we were all drawn to him; I know that a sob clutched my throat and tears filled my eyes as I grasped his hand.

“But what in the devil did you do it for?” blurted my grandfather, excitedly twirling his glasses.

Bates (I still call him Bates,—he insists on it) laughed. For the first time he thrust his hands into his pockets and stood at his ease, one of us.

“Larry, you remember I showed a fondness for the stage in our university days. When I got to America I had little money and found it necessary to find employment without delay. I saw Mr. Glenarm’s advertisement for a valet. Just as a lark I answered it to see what an American gentleman seeking a valet looked like. I fell in love with Mr. Glenarm at sight—”

“It was mutual!” declared my grandfather. “I never believed your story at all,—you were too perfect in the part!”

“Well, I didn’t greatly mind the valet business; it helped to hide my identity; and I did like the humor and whims of Mr. Glenarm. The housekeeping, after we came out here, wasn’t so pleasant”—he looked at his hands ruefully—“but this joke of Mr. Glenarm’s making a will and then going to Egypt to see what would happen,—that was too good to miss. And when the heir arrived I found new opportunities of practising amateur theatricals; and Pickering’s efforts to enlist me in his scheme for finding the money and making me rich gave me still greater opportunities. There were times when I was strongly tempted to blurt the whole thing; I got tired of being suspected, and of playing ghost in the wall; and if Mr. Glenarm hadn’t got here just as he did I should have stopped the fight and proclaimed the truth. I hope,” he said, turning to me, “you have no hard feelings, sir.” And he threw into the “sir” just a touch of irony that made us all roar.

“I’m certainly glad I’m not dead,” declared my grandfather, staring at Bates. “Life is more fun than I ever thought possible. Bless my soul!” he said, “if it isn’t a shame that Bates can never cook another omelette for me!”

We sent Bates back with my grandfather from the boat-house, and Stoddard, Larry and I started across the ice; the light coating of snow made walking comparatively easy. We strode on silently, Stoddard leading. Their plan was to take an accommodation train at the first station beyond Annandale, leave it at a town forty miles away, and then hurry east to an obscure place in the mountains of Virginia, where a religious order maintained a house. There Stoddard promised Larry asylum and no questions asked.

We left the lake and struck inland over a rough country road to the station, where Stoddard purchased tickets only a few minutes before the train whistled.

We stood on the lonely platform, hands joined to hands, and I know not what thoughts in our minds and hearts.

“We’ve met and we’ve said good-by in many odd corners of this strange old world,” said Larry, “and God knows when we shall meet again.”

“But you must stay in America—there must be no sea between us!” I declared.

“Donovan’s sins don’t seem heinous to me! It’s simply that they’ve got to find a scapegoat,”—and Stoddard’s voice was all sympathy and kindness. “It will blow over in time, and Donovan will become an enlightened and peaceable American citizen.”

There was a constraint upon us all at this moment of parting—so many things had happened that day—and when men have shared danger together they are bound by ties that death only can break. Larry’s effort at cheer struck a little hollowly upon us.

“Beware, lad, of women!” he importuned me.

“Humph! You still despise the sex on account of that affair with the colleen of the short upper lip.”

“Verily. And the eyes of that little lady, who guided your grandfather back from the other world, reminded me strongly of her! Bah, these women!”

“Precious little you know about them!” I retorted.

“The devil I don’t!”

“No,” said Stoddard, “invoke the angels, not the devil!”

“Hear him! Hear him! A priest with no knowledge of the world.”

“Alas, my cloth! And you fling it at me after I have gone through battle, murder and sudden death with you gentlemen!”

“We thank you, sir, for that last word,” said Larry mockingly. “I am reminded of the late Lord Alfred:

“I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires,—’ ”

he quoted, looking off through the twilight toward St. Agatha’s. “I can’t see a blooming spire!”

The train was now roaring down upon us and we clung to this light mood for our last words. Between men, gratitude is a thing best understood in silence; and these good friends, I knew, felt what I could not say.

“Before the year is out we shall all meet again,” cried Stoddard hopefully, seizing the bags.

“Ah, if we could only be sure of that!” I replied. And in a moment they were both waving their hands to me from the rear platform, and I strode back homeward over the lake.

A mood of depression was upon me; I had lost much that day, and what I had gained—my restoration to the regard of the kindly old man of my own blood, who had appealed for my companionship in terms hard to deny— seemed trifling as I tramped over the ice. Perhaps Pickering, after all, was the real gainer by the day’s event. My grandfather had said nothing to allay my doubts as to Marion Devereux’s strange conduct, and yet his confidence in her was apparently unshaken.

I tramped on, and leaving the lake, half-unconsciously struck into the wood beyond the dividing wall, where snow-covered leaves and twigs rattled and broke under my tread. I came out into an open space beyond St. Agatha’s, found the walk and turned toward home.

As I neared the main entrance to the school the door opened and a woman came out under the overhanging lamp. She carried a lantern, and turned with a hand outstretched to some one who followed her with careful steps.

“Ah, Marian,” cried my grandfather, “it’s ever the task of youth to light the way of age.”

CHAPTER XXIX

AND SO THE LIGHT LED ME

He had been to see Sister Theresa, and Marian was walking with him to the gate. I saw her quite plainly in the light that fell from the lamp overhead. A long cloak covered her, and a fur toque capped her graceful head. My grandfather and his guide were apparently in high spirits. Their laughter smote harshly upon me. It seemed to shut me out,—to lift a barrier against me. The world lay there within the radius of that swaying light, and I hung aloof, hearing her voice and jealous of the very companionship and sympathy between them.

But the light led me. I remembered with bitterness that I had always followed her,—whether as Olivia, trailing in her girlish race across the snow, or as the girl in gray, whom I had followed, wondering, on that night journey at Christmas Eve; and I followed now. The distrust, my shattered faith, my utter loneliness, could not weigh against the joy of hearing that laugh of hers breaking mellowly on the night.

I paused to allow the two figures to widen the distance between us as they traversed the path that curved away toward the chapel. I could still hear their voices, and see the lantern flash and disappear. I felt an impulse to turn back, or plunge into the woodland; but I was carried on uncontrollably. The light glimmered, and her voice still floated back to me. It stole through the keen winter dark like a memory of spring; and so her voice and the light led me.

Then I heard an exclamation of dismay followed by laughter in which my grandfather joined merrily.

“Oh, never mind; we’re not afraid,” she exclaimed.

I had rounded the curve in the path where I should have seen the light; but the darkness was unbroken. There was silence for a moment, in which I drew quite near to them.

Then my grandfather’s voice broke out cheerily.

“Now I must go back with you! A fine person you are to guide an old man! A foolish virgin, indeed, with no oil in her lamp!”

“Please do not! Of course I’m going to see you quite to your own door! I don’t intend to put my hand to the lantern and then turn back!”

“This walk isn’t what it should be,” said my grandfather, “we’ll have to provide something better in the spring.”

They were still silent and I heard him futilely striking a match. Then the lantern fell, its wires rattling as it struck the ground, and the two exclaimed with renewed merriment upon their misfortune.

“If you will allow me!” I called out, my hand fumbling in my pocket for my own match-box.

I have sometimes thought that there is really some sort of decent courtesy in me. An old man caught in a rough path that was none too good at best! And a girl, even though my enemy! These were, I fancy, the thoughts that crossed my mind.

“Ah, it’s Jack!” exclaimed my grandfather. “Marian was showing me the way to the gate and our light went out.”

“Miss Devereux,” I murmured. I have, I hope, an icy tone for persons who have incurred my displeasure, and I employed it then and there, with, no doubt, its fullest value.

She and my grandfather were groping in the dark for the lost lantern, and I, putting out my hand, touched her fingers.

“I beg your pardon,” she murmured frostily.

Then I found and grasped the lantern.

“One moment,” I said, “and I’ll see what’s the trouble.”

I thought my grandfather took it, but the flame of my wax match showed her fingers, clasping the wires of the lantern. The cloak slipped away, showing her arm’s soft curve, the blue and white of her bodice, the purple blur of violets; and for a second I saw her face, with a smile quivering about her lips. My grandfather was beating impatiently with his stick, urging us to leave the lantern and go on.

“Let it alone,” he said. “I’ll go down through the chapel; there’s a lantern in there somewhere.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” she remarked; “but I recently lost my best lantern!”

To be sure she had! I was angry that she should so brazenly recall the night I found her looking for Pickering’s notes in the passage at the Door of Bewilderment!

She had lifted the lantern now, and I was striving to touch the wax taper to the wick, with imminent danger to my bare fingers.

“They don’t really light well when the oil’s out,” she observed, with an exasperating air of wisdom.

I took it from her hand and shook it close to my ear.

“Yes; of course, it’s empty,” I muttered disdainfully.

“Oh, Mr. Glenarm!” she cried, turning away toward my grandfather.

I heard his stick beating the rough path several yards away. He was hastening toward Glenarm House.

“I think Mr. Glenarm has gone home.”

“Oh, that is too bad!” she exclaimed.

“Thank you! He’s probably at the chapel by this time. If you will permit me—”

“Not at all!”

A man well advanced in the sixties should not tax his arteries too severely. I was quite sure that my grandfather ran up the chapel steps; I could hear his stick beating hurriedly on the stone.

“If you wish to go farther”—I began.

I was indignant at my grandfather’s conduct; he had deliberately run off, leaving me alone with a young woman whom I particularly wished to avoid.

“Thank you; I shall go back now. I was merely walking to the gate with Mr. Glenarm. It is so fine to have him back again, so unbelievable!”

It was just such a polite murmur as one might employ in speaking to an old foe at a friend’s table.

She listened a moment for his step; then, apparently satisfied, turned back toward St. Agatha’s. I followed, uncertain, hesitating, marking her definite onward flight. From the folds of the cloak stole the faint perfume of violets. The sight of her, the sound of her voice, combined to create—and to destroy!—a mood with every step.

I was seeking some colorless thing to say when she spoke over her shoulder:

“You are very kind, but I am not in the least afraid, Mr. Glenarm.”

“But there is something I wish to say to you. I should like—”

She slackened her step.

“Yes.”

“I am going away.”

“Yes; of course; you are going away.”

Her tone implied that this was something that had been ordained from the beginning of time, and did not matter.

“And I wish to say a word about Mr. Pickering.”

She paused and faced me abruptly. We were at the edge of the wood, and the school lay quite near. She caught the cloak closer about her and gave her head a little toss I remembered well, as a trick compelled by the vagaries of woman’s head-dress.

“I can’t talk to you here, Mr. Glenarm; I had no intention of ever seeing you again; but I must say this—”

“Those notes of Pickering’s—I shall ask Mr. Glenarm to give them to you—as a mark of esteem from me.”

She stepped backward as though I had struck her.

“You risked much for them—for him”—I went on.

“Mr. Glenarm, I have no intention of discussing that, or any other matter with you—”

“It is better so—”

“But your accusations, the things you imply, are unjust, infamous!”

The quaver in her voice shook my resolution to deal harshly with her.

“If I had not myself been a witness—” I began.

“Yes; you have the conceit of your own wisdom, I dare say.”

“But that challenge to follow you, to break my pledge; my running away, only to find that Pickering was close at my heels; your visit to the tunnel in search of those notes,—don’t you know that those things were a blow that hurt? You had been the spirit of this woodland to me. Through all these months, from the hour I watched you paddle off into the sunset in your canoe, the thought of you made the days brighter, steadied and cheered me, and wakened ambitions that I had forgotten—abandoned —long ago. And this hideous struggle here,—it seems so idle, so worse than useless now! But I’m glad I followed you,—I’m glad that neither fortune nor duty kept me back. And now I want you to know that Arthur Pickering shall not suffer for anything that has happened. I shall make no effort to punish him; for your sake he shall go free.”

A sigh so deep that it was like a sob broke from her. She thrust forth her hand entreatingly.

“Why don’t you go to him with your generosity? You are so ready to believe ill of me! And I shall not defend myself; but I will say these things to you, Mr. Glenarm: I had no idea, no thought of seeing him at the Armstrongs’ that night. It was a surprise to me, and to them, when he telegraphed he was coming. And when I went into the tunnel there under the wall that night, I had a purpose—a purpose—”

“Yes?” she paused and I bent forward, earnestly waiting for her words, knowing that here lay her great offending.

“I was afraid,—I was afraid that Mr. Glenarm might not come in time; that you might be dispossessed,—lose the fight, and I came back with Mr. Pickering because I thought some dreadful thing might happen here—to you—”

She turned and ran from me with the speed of the wind, the cloak fluttering out darkly about her. At the door, under the light of the lamp, I was close upon her. Her hand was on the vestibule latch.

“But how should I have known?” I cried. “And you had taunted me with my imprisonment at Glenarm; you had dared me to follow you, when you knew that my grandfather was living and watching to see whether I kept faith with him. If you can tell me,—if there an answer to that—”

“I shall never tell you anything—more! You were so eager to think ill of me—to accuse me!”

“It was because I love you; it was my jealousy of that man, my boyhood enemy, that made me catch at any doubt. You are so beautiful,—you are so much a part of the peace, the charm of all this! I had hoped for spring—for you and the spring together!”

“Oh, please—!”

Her flight had shaken the toque to an unwonted angle; her breath came quick and hard as she tugged at the latch eagerly. The light from overhead was full upon us, but I could not go with hope and belief struggling unsatisfied in my heart. I seized her hands and sought to look into her eyes.

“But you challenged me,—to follow you! I want to know why you did that!”

She drew away, struggling to free herself

“Why was it, Marian?”

“Because I wanted—”

“Yes.”

“I wanted you to come, Squire Glenarm!”

Thrice spring has wakened the sap in the Glenarm wood since that night. Yesterday I tore March from the calendar. April in Indiana! She is an impudent tomboy who whistles at the window, points to the sunshine and, when you go hopefully forth, summons the clouds and pelts you with snow. The austere old woodland, wise from long acquaintance, finds no joy in her. The walnut and the hickory have a higher respect for the stormier qualities of December. April in Indiana! She was just there by the wall, where now the bluebird pauses dismayed, and waits again the flash of her golden sandals. She bent there at the lakeside the splash of a raindrop ago and tentatively poked the thin, brittle ice with the pink tips of her little fingers. April in the heart! It brings back the sweet wonder and awe of those days, three years ago, when Marian and I, waiting for June to come, knew a joy that thrilled our hearts like the tumult of the first robin’s song. The marvel of it all steals over me again as I hear the riot of melody in meadow and wood, and catch through the window the flash of eager wings.

My history of the affair at Glenarm has overrun the bounds I had set for it, and these, I submit, are not days for the desk and pen. Marian is turning over the sheets of manuscript that lie at my left elbow, and demanding that I drop work for a walk abroad. My
grandfather is pacing the terrace outside, planning, no doubt, those changes in the grounds that are his constant delight.

Of some of the persons concerned in this winter’s tale let me say a word more. The prisoner whom Larry left behind we discharged, after several days, with all the honors of war, and (I may add without breach of confidence) a comfortable indemnity. Larry has made a reputation by his book on Russia—a searching study into the conditions of the Czar’s empire, and, having squeezed that lemon, he is now in Tibet. His father has secured from the British government a promise of immunity for Larry, so long as that amiable adventurer keeps away from Ireland. My friend’s latest letters to me contain, I note, no reference to The Sod.

Bates is in California conducting a fruit ranch, and when he visited us last Christmas he bore all the marks of a gentleman whom the world uses well. Stoddard’s life has known many changes in these years, but they must wait for another day, and, perhaps, another historian. Suffice it to say that it was he who married us —Marian and me—in the little chapel by the wall, and that when he comes now and then to visit us, we renew our impression of him as a man large of body and of soul. Sister Theresa continues at the head of St. Agatha’s, and she and the other Sisters of her brown-clad company are delightful neighbors. Pickering’s failure and subsequent disappearance were described sufficiently in the newspapers and his name is never mentioned at Glenarm.

As for myself—Marian is tapping the floor restlessly with her boot and I must hasten—I may say that I am no idler. It was I who carried on the work of finishing Glenarm House, and I manage the farms which my grandfather has lately acquired in this neighborhood. But better still, from my own point of view, I maintain in Chicago an office as consulting engineer and I have already had several important commissions.

Glenarm House is now what my grandfather had wished to make it, a beautiful and dignified mansion. He insisted on filling up the tunnel, so that the Door of Bewilderment is no more. The passage in the wall and the strong box in the paneling of the chimney-breast remain, though the latter we use now as a hiding-place for certain prized bottles of rare whisky which John Marshall Glenarm ordains shall be taken down only on Christmas Eves, to drink the health of Olivia Gladys Armstrong. That young woman, I may add, is now a belle in her own city, and of the scores of youngsters all the way from Pittsburg to New Orleans who lay siege to her heart, my word is, may the best man win!

And now, at the end, it may seem idle vanity for a man still young to write at so great length of his own affairs; but it must have been clear that mine is the humblest figure in this narrative. I wished to set forth an honest account of my grandfather’s experiment in looking into this world from another, and he has himself urged me to write down these various incidents while they are still fresh in my memory.

Marian—the most patient of women—is walking toward the door, eager for the sunshine, the free airs of spring, the blue vistas lakeward, and at last I am ready to go.