Dark Hollow Part 35

Within, Reuther seated in the glow of a hospitable fire of great logs, talking earnestly to Mr. Black. As they were placed, he could see her much better than she could see him, his back being to the blaze and she, in its direct glare.

He could, therefore, study her features, without offence, and this he did, steadily and with deep interest, all the while she was talking. He was looking for signs of physical weakness or fatigue; but he found none. The pallor of her features was a natural pallor, and in their expression, new forces were becoming apparent, which give him encouragement, rather than anxiety, for the adventure whose most trying events lay still before them.

Crouching low on the hearth could be seen the diminutive figure of Miss Weeks. She had no time to waste even in a solitude as remote as this, and was crocheting busily by the firelight. Her earnestness gave character to her features which sometimes lacked significance. Reuther loved to glance at her from time to time, as she continued her conversation with Mr. Black.

This is what she was saying:

"I cannot point to any one man of the many who have been about us ever since we started north. But that we have been watched and our route followed, I feel quite convinced. So does Miss Weeks. But, as you saw, no one besides ourselves left the cars at this station, and I am beginning to hope that we shall remain unmolested till we can take the trip to Tempest Lodge. How far is it, Mr. Black?"

"Twenty-five miles and over a very rough mountain road. Did I not confidently expect to find Oliver there, I should not let you undertake this ride. But the inquiries I have just made lead me to hope for the best results. I was told that yesterday a young man bound for Tempest Lodge, stopped to buy a large basket of supplies at the village below us. I could not learn his name and I saw no one who could describe him; but the fact that any one not born in these parts should choose to isolate himself so late in the year as this, in a place considered inaccessible after the snow flies, has roused much comment."

"That looks as if--as if--"

"As if it were Oliver. So it does; and if you feel that you can ride so far, I will see that horses are saddled for us at an early hour to-morrow morning."

"I can ride, but will Oliver be pleased to see us at Tempest Lodge. Mr.

Black, I had an experience in Utica which makes it very hard for me to contemplate obtruding myself upon him without some show of permission on his part. We met--that is, I saw him and he saw me; but he gave me no opportunity--that is, he did not do what he might have done, had he felt--had he thought it best to exchange a word with me."

"Where was this? You were not long in Utica?"

"Only one night. But that was long enough for me to take a walk down one of the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares and it was during this walk I saw him. He was on the same side of the street as myself and rapidly coming my way, but on his eye meeting mine--I could not mistake that unconscious flash of recognition--he wheeled suddenly aside into a cross-street where I dared not follow him. Of course, he did not know what hung on even a momentary interview. That it was not for myself I--" The firelight caught something new to shine upon--a tear on lashes which yet refused to lower themselves.

Mr. Black fidgeted, then put out his hand and laid it softly on hers.

"Never mind," he grumbled; "men are--" he didn't say what; but it wasn't anything very complimentary. "You have this comfort," said he: "the man at the Lodge is undoubtedly Oliver. Had he gone West, he wouldn't have been seen in Utica three days ago."

"I have never had any doubt about that. I expect to see him to-morrow, but I shall find it hard to utter my errand quick enough. There will be a minute when he may misunderstand me. I dread that minute."

"Perhaps, you can avoid it. Perhaps after you have positively identified him I can do the rest. We will arrange it so, if we can."

Her eyes flashed grat.i.tude, then took on a new expression. She had chanced to glance again at Miss Weeks, and Miss Weeks was not looking quite natural. She was still crocheting, or trying to, but her att.i.tude was constrained and her gaze fixed; and that gaze was not on her work, but directed towards a small object at her side, which Reuther recognised from its open lid to be the little lady's work-box.

"Something is the matter with Miss Weeks," she confided in a low whisper to Mr. Black. "Don't turn; she's going to speak."

But Miss Weeks did not speak. She just got up, and, with a careless motion, stood stretching herself for a moment, then sauntered up to the table and began showing her work to Reuther.

"I've made a mistake," she pettishly complained. "See if you can find out what's wrong." And, giving the work into Reuther's hand, she stood watching, but with a face so pale that Mr. Black was not astonished when she suddenly muttered in a very low tone:

"Don't move or show surprise. The shade of the window is up, and somebody is looking in from outside. I saw his face reflected in the mirror of my work-box. It isn't any one I know, but he was looking very fixedly this way and may be looking yet. Now I am going to s.n.a.t.c.h my work. I don't think you're helping me one bit."

She suited the action to the word; shook her head at Reuther and went back to her old position on the hearth.

"I was afraid of it," murmured Reuther. "If we take the ride to-morrow, it will not be alone. If, on the other hand, we delay our trip, we may be forestalled in the errand upon which so much depends. We are not the only ones who have heard of the strange young man at Tempest Lodge."

The answer came with quick decision. "There is but one thing for us to do. I will tell you what it is a little later. Go and sit on the hearth with Miss Weeks, and mind that you laugh and chat as if your minds were quite undisturbed. I am going to have a talk with our host."

x.x.x

TEMPEST LODGE

"What's that?"

"That's the cry of a loon."

"How awful! Do they often cry like that?"

"Not often in the nighttime."

Reuther shuddered.

Mr. Black regarded her anxiously. Had he done wrong to let her join him in this strange ride?

"Shall we go back and wait for broad daylight?" he asked.

"No, no. I could not bear the suspense of wondering whether all was going well and the opportunity being given you of seeing and speaking to him. We have taken such precautions--chosen so late (or should I say so early) a start--that I'm sure we have outwitted the man who is so watchful of us. But if we go back, we cannot slip away from him again; and Oliver will have to submit to an humiliation it is our duty to spare him. And the good judge, too. I don't care if the loons do cry; the night is beautiful."

And it was, had their hearts been in tune to enjoy it. A gibbous moon had risen, and, inefficient as it was to light up the recesses of the forest, it illumined the tree-tops and brought out the difference between earth and sky. The road, known to the horses, if not to themselves, extended like a black ribbon under their eyes, but the patches of light which fell across it at intervals took from it the uninterrupted gloom it must have otherwise had. Mr. Sloan, who was at once their guide and host, promised that dawn would be upon them before they reached the huge gully which was the one dangerous feature of the road. But as yet there were no signs of dawn; and to Reuther, as well as to Mr. Black, this ride through the heart of a wilderness in a darkness which might have been that of midnight by any other measure than that of the clock, had the effect of a dream in which one is only sufficiently in touch with past commonplaces to say, "This is a dream and not reality. I shall soon wake." A night to remember to the end of one's days; an experience which did not seem real at the time and was never looked back upon as real--and yet, one with which neither of them would have been willing to part.

Their guide had prophesied truly. Heralded by that long cry of the loon, the dawn began to reveal itself in clearness of perspective and a certain indefinable stir in the still, shrouded s.p.a.ces of the woods.

Details began to appear where heretofore all had been ma.s.s. Pearl tints proclaimed the east, and presently these were replaced by a flush of delicate colour deepening into rose, and the every-day world of the mighty forest was upon them with its night mystery gone.

But not the romance of their errand, or the anxiety which both felt as to its ultimate fulfilment. This it had been easier to face when they themselves as well as all about them, were but moving shadows in each other's eyes. Full sight brought full realisation. However they might seek to cloak the fact, they could no longer disguise from themselves that the object of their journey might not be acceptable to the man in hiding at Tempest Lodge. Reuther's faith in him was strong, but even her courage faltered as she thought of the disgrace awaiting him whatever the circ.u.mstances or however he might look upon his father's imperative command to return.

But she did not draw rein, and the three continued to ride up and on.

Suddenly, however, one of them showed disturbance. Mr. Sloan was seen to turn his head sharply, and in another moment his two companions heard him say:

"We are followed. Ride on and leave me to take a look."

Instinctively they also glanced back before obeying. They were just rounding the top of an abrupt hill, and expected to have an uninterrupted view of the road behind. But the ma.s.ses of foliage were as yet too thick for them to see much but the autumnal red and yellow spread out below them.

"I hear them; I do not see them," remarked their guide. "Two horses are approaching."

"How far are we now from the Lodge?"

"A half-hour's ride. We are just at the opening of the gully."

"You will join us soon?"

"As quickly as I make out who are on the horses behind us."

Reuther and the lawyer rode on. Her cheeks had gained a slight flush, but otherwise she looked unmoved. He was less at ease than she; for he had less to sustain him.

The gully, when they came to it, proved to be a formidable one. It was not only deep but precipitous, descending with the sheerness of a wall directly down from the road into a basin of enormous size, where trees stood here and there in solitary majesty, amid an area of rock forbidding to the eye and suggestive of sudden and impa.s.sable chasms. It was like circ.u.mambulating the sinuous verge of a canyon; and for the two miles they rode along its edge they saw no let-up in the steepness on one side or of the almost equally abrupt rise of towering rock on the other. It was Reuther's first experience of so precipitous a climb, and under other circ.u.mstances she might have been timid; but in her present heroic mood, it was all a part of her great adventure, and as such accepted.

The lawyer eyed her with growing admiration. He had not miscalculated her pluck.