The Shadow of a Crime Part 73

"Why do you bother him, girl?" said Mrs. Garth, turning about. "Rest thee, my lad, rest thee still."

"Mother," said Garth, drawing back his head, but never shifting the determination of his gaze from Rotha's face, "what does she mean?"

"Haud thy tongue, Joey."

"What does she mean, mother?"

"Whisht! Never heed folks that meddle afore they're axt."

Mrs. Garth spoke peevishly, rose from her seat, and walked between Rotha and the bed.

Garth's wide eyes were still riveted on the girl's face.

"Never mind that she's not asked," he said; "but what does she mean, mother? What lie is it that she comes to tell us!"

"No lie, Mr. Garth," said Rotha, with tearful eyes. "Ralph and father are condemned to die, and they are innocent."

"Tush! get away wi' thee!" mumbled Mrs. Garth, brushing the girl aside with her elbow. The blacksmith glared at her, and seemed to gasp for breath.

"It _is_ a lie; mother, tell her it _is_ a lie."

"G.o.d knows it is not," cried Rotha pa.s.sionately.

"Say I believed it," said Garth, rising convulsively on one elbow, with a ghastly stare; "say I believed that the idiots had condemned them to death for a crime they never committed--never; say I believed it--but it's a lie, that's what it is. Girl, girl, how can you come with a lie on your lips to a poor dying man? Cruel! cruel! Have you no pity, none, for a wretched dying man?"

The tears rolled down Rotha's cheeks. Mrs. Garth returned to her stool, and rocked herself and moaned.

The blacksmith glared from one to the other, the sweat standing in heavy beads on his forehead.

Then an awful scream burst from his lips. His face was horribly distorted.

"It is true," he cried, and fell back and rolled on the bed.

All that night the fiery hand lay on the blacksmith's brain, and he tossed in a wild delirium.

The wind's wail ran round the house, and the voice of that brother wanderer, the river beneath the bridge crept over the silence when the sufferer lay quiet and the wind was still.

No candle was now lighted, but the fire on the hearth burnt bright.

Mrs. Garth sat before it, hardly once glancing up.

Again and again her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little black pipe.

Hour after hour the blacksmith rolled in his bed in a madness too terrible to record. The memory of his blasphemies seemed to come back upon him in his raving, and add fresh agony to his despair.

A naked soul stood face to face with the last reality, battling meantime, with an unseen foe. There was to be no jugglery now.

Oh! that awful night, that void night, that night of the wind's wail and the dismal moan of the wandering river, and the frequent cry of a poor, miserable, desolate, despairing, naked soul! Had its black wings settled forever over all the earth?

No. The dawn came at last. Its faint streak of light crept lazily in at the curtainless window.

Then Garth raised himself in his bed.

"Give me paper--paper and a pen--quick, quick!" he cried.

"What would you write, Joe?" said Rotha.

"I want to write to him--to Ralph--Ralph Ray," he said, in a voice quite unlike his own.

Rotha ran to the chest in the kitchen and opened it. In a side shelf pens were there and paper too. She came back, and put them before the sick man.

But he was unconscious of what she had done.

She looked into his face. His eyes seemed not to see.

"The paper and pen!" he cried again, yet more eagerly.

She put the quill into his hand and spread the paper before him.

"What writing is this," he cried, pointing to the white sheet; "this writing in red?"

"Where?"

"Here--everywhere."

The pen dropped from his nerveless fingers.

"To think they will take a dying man!" he said. "You would scarce think they would have the heart, these people. You would scarce think it, would you?" he said, lifting his poor gla.s.sy eyes to Rotha's face.

"Perhaps they don't know," she answered soothingly, and tried to replace him on his pillow.

"That's true," he muttered; "perhaps they don't know how ill I am."

At that instant he caught sight of his mother's ill-shapen figure cowering over the fire. Clutching Rotha's arm with one hand, he pointed at his mother with the other, and said, with an access of strength,--

"I've found her out; I've found her out."

Then he laughed till it seemed to Rotha that the blood stood still in her heart.

When the full flood of daylight streamed into the little room, Garth had sunk into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER XLVIII. "OUT, OUT, BRIEF CANDLE."

As the clock struck eight Rotha drew her shawls about her shoulders and hurried up the road.

At the turning of the lonnin to Shoulthwaite she met w.i.l.l.y Ray. "I was coming to meet you," he said, approaching.