A Rich Man's Relatives Volume III Part 12

She laid her hand upon the sergeant as he was turning to go, after having discharged his prisoners.

"I know you," she said, as he turned in surprise. "Remember me?"

"You? Where have I seen you? When was it?"

"Long ago--_enfante perdue_--Remember now?"

"What? You the woman that stole the child, and the nuns got off? Yes, I remember you. You should be at the _Isle aux Noix_ now, I do believe. Look out, as I said a little ago, or you'll go there yet, some day. Don't you be expecting the ladies will do as much for you next time."

"_Enfante encore perdue?_"

"To be sure. Do you know where it is?"

"_Morte_," grunted Therese, with a wicked flash of her eye--"ze bones."

"Murder? Do you say it was murdered? Did you see it done? Did you do it yourself?"

"No. Fidele and Paul."

"Will you swear out an information. There is a reward still out. It has not been withdrawn that ever I heard. If I get you that reward, is it a bargain that I am to draw it for you and keep half? Is it a bargain?"

"Bargain."

"And you will swear an information?"

"Vill swear."

"Where shall I find you?--to-morrow morning, say?"

Therese shook her head despondingly, and looked at her children.

"Hungry."

"Who's your buck?"

"Paul was."

"I know Paul. Has he turned you off?"

"Got Fidele."

"Aha! That's it, is it? And you know where those bones are? Sure?"

"Svear."

"Then you'll get even with them yet, my beauty. And, stay, here's a dollar for you. You say you're hungry, and Paul has turned you out of doors. Be on the Lachine side of the ferry this evening. I may have to lock you up, but you'll be well used."

That evening, at sunset, the police landed Paul and Fidele, both handcuffed, on the Lachine wharf, where Therese joined the party of her own accord, and they all proceeded by train to Montreal. Therese could not refrain from uttering one cluck of triumph as she pa.s.sed her late master and looked at his bonds, while he shot her a look of fury and strained at his handcuffs in a way which showed it was well that they were strong; and then all the party subsided into the stony stillness of their ordinary demeanour.

There was nothing very striking in the first examination which followed. Therese recollected having seen a small grave dug in the back kitchen, and an empty box laid beside it. Then Fidele had come in and exchanged clothes with her, and then she (Therese) went away.

Neither Fidele nor the baby had been seen afterwards. She herself had been taken up and accused of stealing the child, but it had been shown that she had not left Caughnawaga on the day of the kidnapping, and she had been acquitted. After that Paul had taken her as his squaw, and they had lived together ever since. A fortnight ago Fidele had returned, and since then she had suffered much ill-usage, and finally been turned out of doors.

The evidence seemed sufficient, but in court it would need as corroboration the finding of the bones; therefore, there was a remand, and two days later the prisoners were brought before the magistrate again. The persons sent to dig under the floor had found a box, which was produced, and a thrill of hushed excitement ran through the court room; the male prisoner, even, threw aside his sullen stolidity, turned to the constable in charge, and spoke a few words. The constable conveyed the message to the Crown attorney, who addressed the magistrate, and he forthwith appointed counsel for the defence, leaning back in his chair, and allowing the young _avocat_ a few minutes to converse with his client. The lawyer listened to Paul, shook his head, raised his hand in remonstrance, and spoke soothingly; but the red man's anger, having once found voice, grew fiercer and more determined every moment. He shook out his long straight hair as a furious animal will toss his mane, and gnashed his teeth, while his usually dull eyes blazed like living coals. He put aside the arguments and remonstrances of his adviser with a gesture of impatience, and, looking to the magistrate, rose to his feet. The advocate, seeing that his client was impracticable, preferred to take the work upon himself, and addressed the bench.

He told "that, in spite of all which he could say, the prisoner--the male one--while disclaiming art and part in the crime of murder, was resolved to claim from the court that he should not stand his trial alone, or in company only with the ignorant squaw who sat at his side.

Whatever had taken place--and here, in tribute to his own professional credit, he must be permitted to say that it was sorely against his wish and advice that he was now driven to admit that anything _had_ taken place, and he would have defied the learned counsel opposite to prove that there had, and more, to bring it home to these much-injured Indians--it was but right that the instigator should be brought to stand his trial by the side of his instruments, and he claimed of the court to permit the prisoner Paul to swear an information against Ralph Herkimer, financier, broker, banker,"--"and bankrupt," some one muttered--"for conspiring with and suborning, and inciting by promise of gain, the prisoner Paul to steal, kidnap, abduct, and make away with the infant daughter of George Selby, professor of music, in the city of Montreal." He told "how the said Herkimer had continued to pay an annual stipend or pension to the said Paul during many years, till, on pressing the said Paul to make away with the said child, Paul had declared that he could not, and the said stipend or pension had ceased to be paid from that day forward."

It was with enhanced interest that, when this had been settled, and a warrant ordered to issue for Herkimer's apprehension, the box was placed on the table, and the lid ordered to be removed.

His worship, the magistrate, arranged his spectacles on his nose, the county attorney compressed his lips to steady his nerves, lest the sight of horror to be disclosed should disturb his delicate sensibilities; and, then, as the lid came away, there appeared--what might once have been a lock of hay! Time and mildew had done much to destroy it, the shaking it had undergone since it was disturbed had contributed yet more towards returning it to its primal condition of dust; but hay it was, most surely, though even as they looked it seemed crumbling away under the light and the freer air. The finders had identified the box. It was manifestly the one referred to by the chief witness. But where were the bones? Where any evidence of murder?

Not a morsel was there of bone, or even a lock of hair.

The magistrate shrugged his shoulders. He was a disinterested party, and could appreciate without alloy of personal feeling the humour of his court holding inquest upon an empty box. The Crown prosecutor bit his lip, infinitely disconcerted, and the sergeant of police looked foolish. There was still the charge of kidnapping, however, that was sworn to by the chief witness, whose evidence, after all, was confirmed by the box. It was a grave, a box, and a live baby which she had seen, and she had not said that she saw the murder. The male prisoner's own statement and confession, after being warned, was also in evidence against him. His counsel turned and looked at him, as much as to say, "I told you so; but you _would_ speak out, notwithstanding my advice. Now, take the consequence."

Paul was more surprised than anybody at the discovery of emptiness within the box. His jaw actually dropped in amazement, notwithstanding the natural rigidity of his facial muscles. He might have got off, it almost seemed; but then there would have been no information laid against Herkimer, and ever since the day he had been dismissed with contumely from his office before all those sn.i.g.g.e.ring clerks, his fingers had been itching to be at the man's throat, and only prudence had restrained them. Fidele's face remained unchanged, for, naturally, she was not surprised; but there came a twinkle of childish humour into her face to see how all those arrogant whites had been fooled by a poor squaw.

Therese was disappointed, but not more than her experiences as a squaw had long taught her to bear. The down-trodden are not much crushed when an expectation gives way. Her foes, it was true, were not to be tried for their lives, but they were still to be locked up, and punished in some sort later on, while she herself, an indispensable witness, would be well cared for till all was settled.

CHAPTER XV.

THE SELBYS.

George Selby was notified at once, of course, that the inquiry into his child's disappearance had suddenly and unexpectedly revived itself, after so many years, with the prospect of solving the mystery, if not of restoring the lost one.

It was an old wound now, that sudden evanishment of the sweetest blossom which had shone upon their lives. His wife and he, each in pity to the other, seldom spoke of it, and therefore there appeared a skinning over or partial healing to have come; but it still bled inwardly, saddening, and oppressing with unspoken grief. In the fifteen years of their bereavement his wife had been brought down from youth and strength and beauty to premature old age. Within the last twelvemonths a change had come. As she had told him, peace and resignation had come to her, the sad peace of the mourners who resign their loved ones, believing it is well with them, though knowing they shall no more meet on earth; and her health had greatly improved.

"Why, then," thought George, "should he disturb her?--revive the deadened misery and cause relapse? There would be doubt and anxiety while the inquiry was in progress, and, alas! there was little that could be called hope to look for at the conclusion." Therefore he said nothing to Mary, but he did not fail to present himself at the examination before the magistrate. It was a horrid idea that their innocent darling should have been murdered by Indians, though it was relieved by the consolatory thought that in all those years of mourning to the parents the child's troubles had long been of the past; and he said nothing when he went home after the first day's inquiry.

The next day of examination was one of the most painful George Selby had ever known. He shrank into an unnoticed corner when the box was brought into the court-room--shrank from it, but could not tear away his eyes. And then he listened to Paul's accusation of his Mary's nephew, and for the first time he divined the motive of the seemingly wanton and inexplicable crime. Oh! how deeply in his heart he cursed the detestable money of that domineering old man, who, not satisfied with having his way in life, must needs strive to impose it after death, working misery and soul destruction upon his nearest kin. He shivered and clasped his hands before his eyes when the lid was to be lifted from the box. He heard the drawing of the nails, the creak and giving way of each one in its turn, and then there was a stillness; but after that there came no sigh of horror, the air thrilled with a movement of disappointment, felt rather than to be heard, and he came forward and peered into the faces of the crowd. The one additional horror was to be spared him of being called on to recognize his child's remains in the presence of curious strangers.

He peered intently at the prisoners, one of whom had virtually confessed but a moment before. He noted Paul's amazement and confusion. He noted that the squaw by his side remained calm, save that there stole a look of mockery into her face, as she surveyed the court, and he felt sure that that woman was not a murderess. It was his heart which was on the strain, and enabled him to see and read the reality untrammelled by judgment's frequent errors, wrong deductions, and misinterpretations. He could discern that of which the professional experience of officials took no note, for the heart is clearer sighted than the head.

With them there was a juridical problem to be solved by pure reason, an indictment to be made, presentable before a judge and jury--a proposition that the prisoners at the bar were guilty of a specific offence, with evidence in proof. "Where is my child?" was the ruling thought which filled George Selby's mind. The squaw at the bar was the stealer. So much was proved by the witness under oath, and by the implied admission of her fellow prisoner. But she had not murdered the child, though perhaps it had been intended that she should; so much could be drawn from her tranquillity and the confusion of her companion. He felt that he must question that squaw forthwith, and after the prisoners had been formally committed to stand their trial, he obtained speech of her through the a.s.sistance of the police sergeant, who took care to elicit an a.s.surance that the reward, advertised fifteen years before in a placard of which he produced a copy, would still be paid when the baby's fate was discovered.

"Mary," George said to his wife that evening when they met. "I have news."

"News, George? News of what?"

"The news we have been waiting for all these years. The squaw is found at last--the right one. She is sister of the one who was taken up at the time. The two changed clothes. That accounts for the confusion at the trial. Those who identified her recognized the clothes. Those who swore to her being in Caughnawaga that day spoke truth, too."

"Oh, George!" with a weary sigh; "Is it all to be gone through again?

The misery and the pain? Yet now I feel so sure my precious one is at peace, in the arms of G.o.d, that I think I can bear it. It is well the discovery, whatever it may be, did not come earlier to embitter our grief."

"And yet, my dearest, already something which will shock you has come to light--the instigator of the wrong is named. His accomplice accuses him. That wretched fortune of your most misguided brother has been at the root of all our trouble. That men who find themselves so little wise in directing their own courses, should strive to perpetuate their folly, by imposing their will on others after they are dead!"