Chapter I: HAD hurt Campbell very badly indeed. I had shattered the bridge of (1)

his nose to bits, and there was a great commotion in the house—sending for a lot of doctors, and all that. My mother thought of nothing but staunching the blood and getting the doctors there. The servants were all excited and running about bringing hot water and towels and so forth, so that no attention was paid to me.

I took advantage of the confusion. I put on a little cloak and my sun-bonnet, and quietly slipped out through one of the back doors into the grounds. Then I called my dog, Prince, to go with me, and in the gloaming—for it was nearly nightfall—he and I waded across the little creek that ran at the back of the place. The house stood at the extreme edge of the little city, and there was no town on the farther side of the creek. So Prince and I went on down the road, meeting nobody.

My grandmother had left the town that day, to go back to her home somewhere in the East, so I made up my mind to walk toward the East every day till I should come to the village where she lived. I knew the name of the village, but I didn’t know what State it was in or how far away it might be; still, I hoped to find it after a while, by inquiring of people. But I feared a search would be made for me, so I decided not to reveal myself by making inquiries till I should be far away from the town where Campbell and my mother lived.

After walking along the road for what seemed to me many hours, Prince and I climbed over a fence and went far into the woods. There we hid ourselves in a clump of pawpaw bushes and went to sleep.

When we woke, there was a heavy rain falling, and we were very, very hungry. So we set out to find a road somewhere, so that we might come to a house and ask for something to eat. But there didn’t seem to be any end to the woods. We went on and on and on, without coming out anywhere. I ate two pawpaws that I found on the bushes, but poor Prince couldn’t eat pawpaws, so he had to go starving.

At last we grew so tired that we stopped to rest, and I fell asleep. When I waked, it was still raining hard, and my clothing was very wet, and I was very cold, and it was nearly night again. So I told Prince we must hurry, and find a house before it should grow dark.

But when I tried to hurry, my feet wouldn’t do as I wanted them to. My knees seemed to give way under me, and I grew very hot. My head ached for the first time in my life, and my eyes bulged so that I couldn’t see straight. Finally I seemed to forget who I was, or where I was trying to go. Then I went to sleep.

When I waked, I was lying in that bedroom in Campbell’s house, and a nurse was sitting by me. I tried to get up, but couldn’t. So I went off to sleep again, and when I waked once more, I understood that I was very ill and had been so for a considerable time. I asked somebody if Prince had been fed, and learned that he had. I never asked another question about the matter, and to this day I do not know how long I lay unconscious in the woods, or who found me there, or how, or anything about it.

I must have taken a good while to get well; for I remember how every morning I planned to run away again the following night, and how before night came I found myself still unable to do anything but lie in bed and take my medicine.

When at last I was able to sit in a rocking-chair for an hour or two at a time, my mother undertook to chide me a little about my conduct. I reckon she didn’t accomplish much, because she began at the wrong end of the affair.

“You hurt Mr. Campbell very badly,” she said.

“Did I? I’m glad of that.”

“You are a very wicked girl.”

To that statement I made no reply. I accepted it as true, but I was not sorry for it. Instead, I asked:—

“Is he going to die?”

“No. But he is very ill. That is to say, he is suffering a great deal of pain.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“You terrible child! What am I to do with you?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to run away again as soon as I can. You’d better let me stay runaway.”

Small as I was, I vaguely understood that my mother’s first care was for the man Campbell, and that so far as I was concerned, she cared only for the trouble she expected me to give her. If she had loved me a little, if she had taken me into her lap and seemed a little bit sorry for me, I reckon she might have had an easier time with me. But she did nothing of that kind. Instead of that, she managed to make me feel that she regarded me somewhat in the light of a criminal for whom she was responsible.

She set a watch upon me day and night, keeping me practically a prisoner in my own room. That was because I had made the mistake of telling her I meant to run away again. But even as a prisoner, I might have been tractable if she had spoken kindly and lovingly to me when she visited my room, which she did two or three times a day. Instead of that, she always looked at me as one might at a desperate criminal, and she talked to me of nothing but what she called my wickedness, saying that it would break her heart.

Even when I got well enough to go out, I was kept in my room until at last the doctor positively ordered that I should be sent out of doors every day. When that was done, a servant maid whom I particularly disliked was sent with me, under orders never to let me out of her sight for a moment. I was as completely a prisoner out of doors as in the house. But out of doors I could sit down at the root of a tree, shut my eyes, and bring my fairy friends to me. In that way I managed to make myself happy for little spells, as I could not do in my room, for I simply would not ask the fairy people to go to that horrible place.

But this relief was soon taken from me. The servant who watched me, seeing me sit with my eyes shut, reported that I spent all the time out of doors in sleep. She was directed by Campbell, who had assumed control of my affairs, not to let me sit down at all out of doors.

When this was reported to me, I simply refused to go out of doors again, and I stuck to that resolution in spite of all commands and threats. My health soon showed the results of confinement, and the doctor, who was a friendly sort of man, but strongly prejudiced by the bad things he had been told about me, did all he could to persuade me to go out. I absolutely refused. Then my health grew still worse, and finally the doctor insisted that I should be sent away somewhere.

Before that could be arranged, something else happened to affect me. I’ll tell you about that in another chapter.

Chapter the Seventh

THE servant who acted as my keeper suddenly changed her manner toward me about this time. She talked with me in a friendly way, and she sang to me, trying to teach me to sing with her. I refused to do that, because I was unhappy and did not feel like singing. But I rather liked to hear her sing, as she had a pretty good voice. Still, in my childish way, I distrusted the girl. I could not understand why she had been so unkind to me before, if her present kindness was sincere.

She begged me to go out of doors with her, and promised of her own accord that I should sit down and shut my eyes whenever I pleased. After a day or two, I so far yielded as to go out with her for an hour and have a romp with Prince. But I resolutely refused, then or on succeeding days, to sit down and shut my eyes, and call the fairy people. I felt, somehow, that it would compromise my dignity to accept surreptitiously and from a servant a privilege which was forbidden to me by the servant’s master and mistress.

Still, I went out for a little while every day. The girl called our outings “larks,” which puzzled me a good deal, as I knew there were no larks in the town. Finally, one brilliant moonlight night, as I sat looking out of the window, the girl, as if moved by some sudden impulse, said:—

“Let’s go out for a lark in the moonlight. I’ll put your cloak and bonnet on you, and it will do you good.”

I consented, and we quickly made ourselves ready. Just after we had got out of doors, I noticed that the girl had a satchel in her hand; and when I questioned her about it, she said that she wanted to make believe that we were two ladies going to travel; “and ladies always have satchels when they travel,” she explained.

We wandered about for a little while, and then the girl led the way to the extreme corner of the grounds, a spot which could not be seen from the house even in the daytime, because of the trees. There was a little gate there, which opened into a road, and the girl proposed that we should pass through it for some reason which I cannot now remember.

We had walked only a little way beyond the gate when we came to a carriage which was standing still, with a big man on the box and a tall, slender man standing by the open door of the vehicle. When this man turned his face toward me in the moonlight, I recognised him. He was my father! He stooped and put his arms about me tenderly, laughing a little, as he always had done when talking with me, but stopping the laugh every moment or two to kiss me. Then he told me to get into the carriage so that we might go for a drive. When I had got in, he gave the servant girl some money, and said:—

“If you keep your mouth shut and know nothing, there’ll be another hundred for you. I shall know if you talk, and if you do there’ll be no money for you. I’ll send the money, if you don’t talk, in two weeks, in care of the bank.”

Then we drove away in the moonlight, and I found presently that the girl had put the satchel into the carriage. I learned the next morning that it contained some of my clothes, and my combs and brushes.

We travelled in the carriage for several hours, and then got on board a railroad train, which took us to Chicago.

Chapter the Eighth

WE hadn’t been many days in Chicago when one morning about daybreak my father waked me and said that Campbell was after me, so that we must hurry. My father had bought me a lot of things in Chicago—clothes of many kinds, and a few books. I reckon he didn’t know much about clothes or books—poor papa—for all the clothes were red, and the books, as I now know, were intended for much older people than I was. But he said that red was the prettiest colour, and as for the books, the man that sold them had told him that they were “standard works.” I remember that one of them was called _Burke’s Works_, and another _Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. I simply couldn’t like _Burke’s Works_, but I reckon that was only because I didn’t know what Mr. Burke was talking about. I reckon I didn’t understand Gibbon very well, but I liked him, because he told some good stories, and because his sentences were musical. I liked _Macaulay’s Miscellanies_ for the same reason, and I liked _Macaulay’s History_ because it was so simple that I could understand it. Best of all, I liked _Rasselas_, _The Vicar of Wakefield_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and _The British Drama_, and Shakespeare—at least, in parts. I liked to read about Parolles, and the way he was tricked and his cowardice exposed. I identified him with Campbell, and rejoiced when he got into trouble. I suppose that was wicked, but I’m telling you all my thoughts, Dorothy, so that you may know the whole truth about me and not be deceived. I liked Falstaff, too.

I liked _Rasselas_, because in his happy valley there was no man like Campbell. And I liked _Robinson Crusoe_ for the same reason. Somehow I liked to live with him on his island, because I knew that if Campbell should land there, Robinson Crusoe would shoot him.

But above all, I liked the _British Drama_, because it opened a new and larger life to me than any that I had ever known.

When my father waked me up on that morning, I hurriedly packed my books and clothes into a trunk. There were very few underclothes, for my father knew nothing about such things, but there were many red dresses and red cloaks and red hats. And there were two fur coats—big enough for a grown woman to wear.

We got on board a train and travelled all day. Then we took another train and travelled all night, till we came to the end of the railroad. Then we got into a cart and travelled three or four days into the woods.

Finally we came to a camp in the woods, where my father seemed to be master of everything and everybody. There were Indians there and half-breeds, and Canadian lumber-men, for it was a lumber-camp. There was a Great Lake there, and many little lakes not far away. I reckon the Great Lake was Lake Superior, but I don’t know for certain.

There were no women in the camp except squaws and half-breeds. They were pretty good people, but very dirty, so I could not live with them. My father made the men build a little log house for him and me, and he made them hew a bath-tub for me out of a big log. Then he hired a half-breed girl to heat water every day and fill the tub for me to bathe in. As for himself, he jumped into the lake every morning, even when he had to make the men cut a hole in the ice for his use.

I liked the lumber-camp life because I was free there, and because there were big fires at night, like bonfires. One of them was just before my door, and my father made an Indian boy keep it blazing all night for me, so that I might see the light of it whenever I waked. I used to sit by it and read my books, even when the snow was deep on the ground; for by turning first one side and then the other to the fire I could keep warm. And the Canadians and the half-breeds and the Indians used to squat on the ground near me and beg me to read the books aloud to them. As they all spoke French, and understood no word of English, of course they didn’t understand what I read to them, but they liked to hear me read, and it was sometimes hard to drive them away to their beds, even when midnight came.

They taught me French during the year I lived among them. You tell me it is very bad French, and I reckon it is; but it was all they knew: they did their best, and I reckon that is all that anybody can do. At any rate, they were kind to me, and they taught me all the ways of the birds and the animals. I tried to teach them to be kind to the birds and the animals, after I began to understand the wild creatures; but the camp people never would learn that. Their only idea of an animal or a bird was to eat its flesh and sell its skin.

There was a young priest there who knew better, and he ought to have loved the birds and animals. But he used to talk about God’s having given man dominion over the beasts and the birds, and that doctrine perverted his mind, I think. He killed a pretty little chipmunk, one day, to get its skin to stuff. That chipmunk was my friend. I had taught it to climb up into my lap and eat out of my hand. He persuaded it to climb into his lap, and then he betrayed its confidence and killed it. I was very angry with him. I picked up an ox-whip and struck him with it twice. I was only a little girl, but I had grown strong in the outdoor life of the camp, and it doesn’t take much strength to make an ox-whip hurt.

There was great commotion in the camp when this occurred. The people there were very religious in their way, but they seemed to me to worship the priest rather than God. They didn’t mind sinning as much as they pleased, because they knew that the priest would forgive their sins on easy terms; but they thought that my act in striking the priest with the ox-whip was a peculiarly heinous crime. Perhaps it was, but I can’t even yet so look upon it. They regarded him as a “man of God”; but if he was so, why did he deceive the poor little chipmunk, and persuade it to trust him, and then kill it cruelly? Dorothy, I am not a bit sorry, even now, that I chastised him with the ox-whip.

[“Neither am I,” wrote Dorothy in the margin of the manuscript.]

But the occurrence created a great disturbance in the camp, and so my father had to take me away, for fear that the lumber-men would kill me. Curious, isn’t it, that while they were so religious as to feel in that way about the priest, who after all was only a man, they were yet so wicked that they were ready to commit murder in revenge? But those people were very ignorant and very superstitious. They thought some terrible calamity would fall upon them if I were permitted to remain in the camp. I think they cared more about that than they did about the priest. Even those who had been kind to me, teaching me to ride bareback and to shoot and to fish and to make baskets, and all the rest of it, turned against me; so that my father had to stand by me with his pistols cocked and ready in his hand, till he could get me out of the camp.

Chapter the Ninth

FROM that camp my father took me way up to Hudson’s Bay. We travelled over the snow on sledges drawn by dogs, and I learned to know the dogs as nobody else did. They were savage creatures, and would bite anybody who came near them. But somehow they never bit me. They didn’t like to be petted, but they let me pet them. I don’t know why this was so, but it was so.

We did not remain long at Hudson’s Bay—only a few weeks. After that, we went somewhere—I don’t know where it was—where the whale-men came ashore and rendered out the blubber they had got out at sea.

You must remember that my father had many interests. He owned part of the lumber-camp we had stayed in, he had a fur trade at Hudson’s Bay, and he had an interest in some whaling-ships. Wherever we went, my father seemed to be at home and to be master of the men about him. I admired him greatly, and loved him very much. I wondered how my mother could have left him and married Campbell. I am wondering over that even yet.

It was while we were at Hudson’s Bay that I began to understand something about my father. He sat down with me one day (he didn’t often sit down for more than a few minutes at a time, but on this occasion he sat with me for nearly half a day) and explained things to me.

“I want to tell you some things, little girl,” he said, “and I want you to try to understand them. Above all, I want you to remember them. You know sometimes I have a great deal of money, and sometimes I have none at all. That is because my business is a risky one. Sometimes I make a great deal of money out of it, and sometimes I lose a great deal.

“Now, when your mother left me, I made up my mind to provide well for her and you, so that no matter what else should happen, you and she might never come to want. You see, I still loved your mother. I insured my life for a large sum, and as I had plenty of money then, I paid for the insurance cash down. You don’t understand about such things, and it isn’t necessary that you should. But by insuring my life and paying cash for the insurance, I made it certain that whenever I should die, a rich insurance company would pay you a big sum of money; I had purposely made it payable to you and not to your mother, because I knew you would take care of your mother, while she could never take care of anybody or anything. I also bought some bonds and stocks and put them in your name, and placed them in a bank in New York.

“Now, I want you to pay close attention and try to understand what I tell you. Here are some papers that I want you to keep always by you—always in your little satchel. Always have them by you when you go to bed, and always lock them up by day. Take them with you wherever you go.

“This one is my will. It gives you everything that I may happen to own when I die.” With that, he handed me the papers.

“This one is the life-insurance policy. When I die, you, or whoever is acting for you, will have to present that to the life-insurance company, together with doctors’ certificates that I am really dead. Then the company will pay you the money.

“This one is a list of the securities—the bonds and stocks—that I have deposited in your name in the Chemical Bank of New York. You see, it is signed by the cashier of that bank. It is a receipt for the bonds and stocks. So you must keep it very carefully.

“Now, another thing you must remember: you can’t draw the money on my life-insurance policy until I die; but you can get these bonds and stocks at any time that you please, merely by presenting the receipt and asking for them. So long as you are a little girl under age, you couldn’t do this for yourself. Somebody must do it for you. You must be very careful whom you select for that purpose.”

Then he gave me the names and addresses of several gentlemen, who, he said, were his friends and honest men, and advised me to apply to them to act for me if I ever had occasion to do anything of the kind. Then he went on to say:

“The scoundrel, Campbell, knows that you own all this, besides some houses and lands (here’s a memorandum of them) which I have deeded to you. In the hope of getting hold of your property, he, as your stepfather, has had himself appointed your guardian. It is a shame that the courts allow that, but he owns a judge or two, and he has managed to get it done. That is why he is following us and trying to get hold of you. He doesn’t know what your property is, or where, and he thinks you will have these papers. So, if he can get hold of you, he thinks he can get hold of the property also. If I can manage to get you to New York, I’ll take the papers out of your hands and place them in charge of some men there whom I can trust. But as I may fail in that, and as something may happen to me, I want you to have the papers.

“I am pretty well off just now, but my business is very uncertain. When I die, I may be very rich, or I may ‘go broke’ any day between now and then. That is why I have put this property into your hands while I have it. I am a reckless fellow. I ‘take the very longest chances’ sometimes in my business enterprises. Sometimes I suddenly lose pretty nearly everything I have in the world, and I might die just at such a time. So I have provided for you in any case.

“If I can get to New York with you, I am going to hide you completely from that man, Campbell. There is an excellent gentlewoman there in whose hands I intend to put you. She is a woman to be trusted, and she is rather poor, so she will be glad to take charge of you and keep you out of Campbell’s way, damn him! Pardon me, dear! I didn’t mean to swear in your presence. I only mean that I can give that lady plenty of money, and she can take you wherever she thinks you will be safe.”

“But I had much rather stay with you, Father,” I answered, with tears in my eyes.

“Yes, I know. And God knows,” he said, “that I had rather have you with me. But everything is a gamble with me. I have many enemies, child, and some one of them may make an end of me any day. The other way will be safest for you.”

“I don’t care for myself,” I answered. “I only care for you, and to be with you. I’ll take the risks, and if any of your enemies ever makes an end of you, as you say, I want to be there to wreak vengeance. You know I can shoot as straight as any man alive, whether with a pistol or a rifle or a shot-gun.”

“You dear child!” he responded, “I know all that. And that is why I want to house you safely. You have it in you to be as reckless as your dad is, and I don’t intend that you shall have occasion or opportunity.”

How I did love my father! I don’t believe he was ever bad, Dorothy, though they said he was. People who liked him used to say he was “uncommonly quick on trigger”; people who hated him called him a desperado. I call him my father, and I love his memory, for he is dead now, as you will hear later.

But I was anxious to remember all that he had told me, and to make no mistake about it. I had taught myself how to write, during my stay at the lumber-camp and on Hudson’s Bay, so I got some old blank books from the agency, books which had been partly written in by a clerk who made his lines so hairlike that I could write all over them and yet make my writing quite legible. In these I wrote all that my father had said, just as he had said it, meaning to commit it to memory if I had got it right. When it was done, I took it to him and he read it. He laughed when he came to the swear word, and said:—

“You might have omitted that. Still, I’m glad you didn’t, because it shows how bravely truthful you are, and I love that in you better than anything else.”

I have always remembered that, Dorothy. I don’t know how far those who have left us know what we do; but I always think that if my father knows, he will be glad to have me perfectly truthful, and I love him so much that I would make any sacrifice to make him glad.

After he had read over what I had written, and had corrected a word here and there, I set to work to commit it to memory, so that I should never forget a line or a word of it. That is how it comes about that I am able to report it all to you exactly.

Now I know you are tired, so I am going to begin a new chapter, and you can rest as long as you like before reading it.

XXVI

EVELYN’S BOOK, CONTINUED

IT was Dorothy’s habit when reading a book to stop for an hour now and then, and devote that space to careful thinking. She explained her practice to Arthur one day, saying:—

“If a book be interesting, it is apt to dominate the mind, and sometimes to mislead the judgment. I think it well to suspend the reading now and then, and give myself a chance to shake off the glamour of the narrative, and to think out for myself what it means and to what it tends. One must do that, indeed, if one doesn’t want to surrender himself or herself completely to the dominance of an author’s thought, but chooses instead to do his or her own thinking.”

So Dorothy took an hour or two for thinking before going on with the reading of Evelyn’s book. Evelyn knew her habit, and she had recognised it by changing chapters at this point.

When Dorothy took up the pages again, she read as follows:—

Chapter the Tenth

WE stayed a long time among the whaling people, and they taught me many things. I learned from them how to tie all sorts of knots, and how to catch sea fish, and how to row, and best of all, how to sail a boat.

They were a curious kind of men. They swore all the time, in almost every sentence. But their swearing didn’t mean anything, and so it didn’t shock me in the least. They were not at all angry when they swore. They swore, I think, merely because they hadn’t any adjectives with which to express their thoughts. They called me a “damned nice gal,” and they meant it for a compliment. In the same way, they spoke of a tangle in a fish-line as “a damned ugly snarl,” or of a fish as “a damned big catch.” I suppose one might cure them of swearing by teaching them some adjectives. But nobody ever took the trouble to do that.

They were good fellows—strong and brave, and wonderfully enduring. When I went out fishing with them, and the tide was out on our return, so that we couldn’t come up to a pier, one of them would jump overboard in the mud, pick me up, swing me to his broad shoulders, and carry me ashore dry-shod, without seeming to think anything of it.

One day we had a storm while I was out in a fishing-boat. As soon as it came on, all the boats came to the side of ours, though it was dangerous to do so, just to make sure of my safety. The boat I was in was swamped, and I was spilled overboard. But I was no sooner in the angry sea than I was grabbed by the arms of a stout young fellow who gallantly bore me toward a little sloop that lay at hand. A mast broke off and fell. It hit the poor fellow, and, finding himself unable to do any more, he called to a comrade to take me, and he sank in the water and was drowned. He didn’t seem to care for himself at all, but only to save me, and all the rest of them seemed to think that that was a matter of course. I got my father to give me some money, and I hired a stone-cutter to put up a monument over the poor fellow’s grave; for we recovered his body, with both arms broken by the blow from the falling mast. There are lots of heroes, Dorothy, who are never engaged in wars.

At last my father took me away from the whaling town, and we went to New York in a little schooner. It took us a long time, because the winds were adverse, but we got there after a while, and went to a hotel. It was the Astor House, I think, and it had a beautiful little park nearly in front of it. I don’t think that is of any consequence, but, you see, I am trying to tell you everything. You can skip anything you don’t care for.

[“I’m not skipping anything,” wrote Dorothy in the margin.]

As soon as we were settled at the hotel, my father sent for the gentlewoman he had spoken about, and placed me in her care. Then something happened that I never understood. Before my father could take the papers from me and place them in the hands of the gentleman he intended to leave them with, he was somehow compelled to leave the city. He went away suddenly after midnight, and I never saw him again. I still kept the papers after he left New York so suddenly.

The lady was greatly excited when my father’s note came to her, saying that he had gone away, and she seemed to fear some danger for me. So, between midnight and morning, she packed our things, and we went to a boarding-house away up-town. Even there she didn’t feel safe, and so, within a day or so, we went on board a canal boat, and went up the river, and then along the canal for many days.

I asked the lady (Mrs. Dennison was her name) why we hadn’t taken a railroad train instead, so as to travel faster. She answered: “They were watching all the trains, dear, and would have caught you if we had tried to take one. They didn’t think of canal boats, because nobody travels by them in these days.”

After we had travelled by canal boat for several days (a week or more, I think), we left the boat at a very little village, and went away across country to a little house in a sparsely settled district. There Mrs. Dennison and I lived quite alone for more than a year. It was a very happy year, except that I couldn’t see my father, and except for another thing. Mrs. Dennison made me wear a boy’s clothes and call myself by a false name, “Charlie Dennison.” She did that to prevent Campbell from finding me. I suppose it really didn’t matter much, but somehow I didn’t like the thought of wearing a disguise and going by an assumed name.

Of course, as a boy, I couldn’t go much with the few girls there were in the neighbourhood, and at the same time, being in fact a girl, I couldn’t go out and associate with the boys. So my only companion was Mrs. Dennison. We lived together in a tiny bit of a house that belonged to her, and she was the only real teacher I ever had. I reckon she didn’t know much about books. At any rate, she didn’t care about them. But she let me read mine as much as I pleased, and she taught me how to do all sorts of household things. Especially she taught me to do needlework, and as I used to do it in our little porch in the summertime, the boys thought it strange for a boy to use a needle, so they used to call me “Miss Charlotte” and gibe and jeer at me a good deal. But I didn’t mind, particularly as there was a woodland near our house, so that I could see a great deal of my birds and squirrels. It was then, too, that I made acquaintance with many insects and bugs—pinch-bugs, ants, yellow-jackets, and a lot more. You can’t imagine how greatly interested I became in studying the ways of these creatures. They all have characters of their own; and when one really becomes acquainted with them, they are vastly more interesting than commonplace people are.

Chapter the Eleventh

AFTER we had lived for more than a year in the little cottage, Mrs. Dennison one day told me we must go away quickly, and we left within an hour. She let me put my girl’s clothes on before we started.

“They have found out that you are disguised as a boy,” she explained, “and when they set out to find us again, they’ll probably look for a lady and a boy. So, by wearing girl’s clothes again, you’ll have a better chance to escape their clutches.”

I was getting to be a pretty big girl by that time, and so I had been ashamed of wearing boy’s clothes for some time past. But when I put on my gowns again, they made me still more ashamed, because they were so short.

So, as soon as we got to a place where we could stop for a few days, Mrs. Dennison sent for two dressmakers to fashion some new gowns for me, and I really looked quite like another person when I put them on.

That must have been about four years ago. According to what I was afterward told, I was then thirteen years old. I know now that I was fifteen. But I’ll tell you all about that further on.

All this while, Mrs. Dennison was receiving money from my father at regular intervals, and there was plenty of it. But it never came directly from my father. It came from a bank, with a very formal note saying that the money was sent “by order of Mr. Jackson Byrd,” and asking Mrs. Dennison to sign and return a receipt for it. My father sent us no letters and no messages. This troubled me very much when I got to thinking about it. And that made me very unhappy, for I loved my father dearly, and I remembered how happy I had been with him. But after thinking more about it, I saw that he hadn’t forgotten his little girl and hadn’t quit caring about her, because if he had, the money wouldn’t have come so regularly.

Still, that troubled me more than ever, because it must mean that my father was in some kind of difficulty, that he could not send any letters to us. I learned afterward that this was so, but Mrs. Dennison would never tell me anything about it.

We were moving about a good deal at this time, generally starting suddenly—sometimes so suddenly as to leave many of our things behind. But I always carried the little satchel that contained the papers my father had given me.

At last, one day when we left the train at Chicago and entered a carriage to drive to a little hotel that we were to live at, a man came to the carriage door and handed Mrs. Dennison a paper. He said something which I did not understand, and Mrs. Dennison kissed me and got out of the carriage. The man got in, and ordered the carriage to drive away with us, leaving Mrs. Dennison standing there on the sidewalk.

I was terribly scared, and wanted to jump out. I tried to open the doors, but the man had placed his hands on the two latches, so that I couldn’t move them. I felt like shrieking, but I decided that it was best to control myself, keep my wits about me, and be ready to deal with the situation wisely, as soon as I should find out what it really was. So, summoning all my self-control, I entered into conversation with the man who sat on the front seat opposite me.

“Do you mind telling me,” I asked, “why you have kidnapped me in this fashion?”

“It ain’t kidnapping, young lady, an’ it ain’t anything else irregular. You see, I had a warrant. I’m a court officer, an’ I does what the court orders an’ nothin’ else.”

“Then a court ordered you to seize me?” I asked.

“Ya’as ’m,” he answered.

“But on what ground?”

“‘Tain’t my business to know that, Miss, an’ as a matter of fac’ I don’t know it. All I know is, I was give a warrant an’ tole to serve it, an’ bring you to the court. Don’t you worry about a-payin’ of the cabman. I’ll ten’ to all that.”

“But what do they want with me in court?” I asked insistently.

“Dunno, Miss.”

“But who is it that wants me?”

“Dunno, Miss, only the warrant head said, ‘Campbell vee ess Byrd and Dennison.’”

“But what right have they to bother me in this way? Am I not a free person? Haven’t I a right—”

“Dunno, Miss, ’tain’t my business to know. But I suppose you’re a gal under age, and I suppose gals under age ain’t got no rights in pertic’lar, leastways in opposition to their gardeens.”

By this time, we had arrived at the courthouse, and I was taken before the judge. I remember thinking that if I should displease him in any way, he could order me hanged. I know better now, but I thought so then; so I made up my mind to be very nice to the judge.

Campbell was there, and he had a lawyer with him. The lawyer told the judge that Campbell was—something in Latin—_loco parentis_, I think it was. Anyhow, it meant stepfather, or something like that. He said the courts in his State had made him my guardian; that I possessed valuable property; that I had been abducted by my father, who was a dissolute person, now serving out a sentence in the State’s prison for some crime. He gave the judge a lot of papers to prove all this.

I was so shocked and distressed to hear that my father was in prison, that for a while I couldn’t speak. At last I controlled myself and said to the judge:—

“I love my father. If he has been sent to prison, it was that man”—pointing to Campbell—“who got him sent there. My father is good and kind, and I love him. Campbell is wicked and cruel, and I hate him. Look at his flat nose! That’s where I smashed it with a heavy hair-brush when he tried to whip me for telling the truth about him. I don’t want to go with him. I want to go back to Mrs. Dennison, till my father can come after me. Please, Judge, let me do that.”

The judge asked Campbell’s lawyer how old I was, and he answered:—

“Thirteen years old, your Honour.”

Then the judge said:—

“She seems older. If she were fourteen, I should be bound by the law to let her choose her own guardian for so long at least as she shall remain in Illinois. But as the papers in the case seem to show that her age is only thirteen, I am bound to recognise the guardianship established by the courts of another State. I must remand the girl to the custody of her guardian, Mr. Campbell.”

Then, seeing in how desperate a strait I was, I summoned all my courage. I rose to my feet and faced the judge. I said:—

“But, please, Mr. Judge, this isn’t fair. That man Campbell hates me, and I hate him. Isn’t it better to send me to somebody else? Besides that, he has a lawyer, and I haven’t one. Can’t I hire a lawyer to speak for me? I’ve got two dollars in my pocketbook to pay him with.”

Everybody laughed when I said that. You see, I had no idea what the price of lawyers was. But just then an old gentleman arose and said to the judge:—

“If it please the court, I will appear as counsel for this persecuted girl. I have listened to these proceedings with indignation and horror. It is perfectly clear to my mind that this is a case of kidnapping under the forms of the law.”

There the judge interrupted him, saying:—

“The court will permit no reflections upon its proceedings.”

Then my lawyer answered:—

“I have cast no reflections upon the court. My challenge is to the integrity and good faith of this man, Campbell. I do not know the facts that lie behind this proceeding. I am going to ask the court for an adjournment, in order to find them out. It is obvious that this young girl—helpless and friendless here—looks not only unwillingly, but with positive horror, upon the prospect of being placed again in Campbell’s charge. Morally, and I think legally, she has a right to be heard in that behalf, to have the facts competently explored and fully presented to the court. To that end, I ask that the matter be adjourned for one week, and that the young girl be paroled, in the meanwhile, in the custody of her counsel.”

Then the dear old gentleman, whom everybody seemed to regard with special reverence, took his seat by my side, and held my hand in his. Campbell’s lawyer made a speech to the judge, and when he had finished, the judge said that my lawyer’s request was denied. He explained the matter in a way that I did not understand. It seemed to anger the old lawyer who had taken my case. He rose and said, as nearly as I can remember:—

“Your Honour’s denial of my motion is a denial of justice. This young girl, my client, is a minor child, utterly defenceless here except in so far as I have volunteered my services to defend her. But she is an American citizen, and as such is entitled to be heard in her own behalf. In this court she cannot get a hearing, for the reason that this court has corruptly prejudged the case, as it corruptly prejudges every case in which money or influence can be brought to bear.”

By this time the judge was pounding with his mallet, and the whole court-room was in an uproar. But, raising his voice, my dear old lawyer continued:—

“If justice were done, you, sir, would be dragged from the bench that you dishonour by sitting upon it. Oh, I know, you can send me to jail for speaking these truths in your presence. I trust you will try that. If, by any martyrdom of mine, I can bring the corruption of such judges as you are to the knowledge and attention of this community, I shall feel that my work is well done. In the meantime I shall set another to secure for this helpless girl a writ of habeas corpus which shall get for her, in another and more righteous court, the fair hearing which you insolently and criminally deny to her here. Now send me to jail in punishment of the immeasurable contempt I feel for a court where justice is betrayed for money, and where human rights are bartered away for a price.”

The judge was very angry, and a lot of men surrounded my old lawyer. But what happened afterward I have never known. For no sooner was I put in Campbell’s charge than I was hurried to a train, and the next morning I heard him say to one of the men he had with him:—

“We are out of Illinois now; we’ve beaten that writ of habeas corpus.”

Then he turned to me and said:—

“If you care for your own comfort, you will recognise me as your guardian, and behave yourself accordingly.”

I reckon you must be tired reading by this time, Dorothy, so you are to take a rest here, and I’ll write the remainder of my story in other chapters. I’m afraid I’m making my story tedious; but I’ve fully made up my mind to tell it all, because I don’t know what you will care for in it, and what will seem unimportant to you. If I try to shorten it by leaving out anything, the thing I leave out may happen to be precisely the thing that would change your opinion of me. I want to deal absolutely honestly with you; so I am telling you everything I remember.

XXVII

KILGARIFF’S PERPLEXITY

DURING the two days that Dorothy had thus far given to the reading of Evelyn’s book, Kilgariff had been chafing impatiently. He wanted to go back to Petersburg and active duty, and he wanted, before doing so, to ride over to Branton and “talk it out with Evelyn,” as he formulated his thoughts in his own mind.

He could do neither, for the reason that his wound began to trouble him again, and Arthur Brent, upon examining it, condemned him to spend another week or ten days in the house.

So far as “talking it out with Evelyn” was concerned, it was perhaps fortunate that he was compelled to submit to an enforced delay. For he really did not know what he was to say to Evelyn; and the more he thought about the matter, the more he did not know.

The question was indeed a very perplexing one. How should he even begin the proposed conversation? Should he begin by abruptly telling Evelyn that he loved her, but that there were reasons why he did not want her to give him love in return? That was not the way in which a woman had a right to expect to be wooed. It would be a direct affront to her womanly and maidenly pride, which she would promptly, and bitterly, and quite properly, resent. Moreover, by arousing her anger and resentment, it would utterly defeat his purpose, which was to find out his own duty by finding out how far Evelyn had already learned to think of him as a possible lover.

Should he, then, ask her that question, in her own singularly direct and truthful way of dealing?

That would be to affront and wound her by the assumption that she had given her love unasked.

Should he begin by explaining to her the circumstances which prompted him to shrink from wooing her, and then offer her his love if she wanted it?

Nothing could be more preposterous than that.

Should he simply pay her his addresses, ask her for her love, and then, if she should give it, proceed to explain to her the reasons why she should not have permitted herself to love such a man as he?

That question also promptly answered itself in the negative, with emphasis.

What, then, should he do?

Clearly it would be better to await Evelyn’s return to Wyanoke, and trust to good luck to open some possible way. At any rate, he might there approach the subject in indirect ways; while if he could have ridden over to Branton for the express purpose of having a conference with her, no such indirection would have been possible. His very going to her there would have been a declaration of some purpose which he must promptly explain.

Obviously, therefore, it was better that he should not go to Branton, but should await such opportunity as good fortune might give him after Evelyn’s return to Wyanoke. But that necessity postponed the outcome, and Kilgariff was in a mood to be impatient of delay, particularly as every hour consciously intensified his own love, and rendered him less and less capable of saying nay to his passion.

With her woman’s quickness of perception, Dorothy shrewdly guessed what was going on in his mind, and she rejoiced in it. But she made no reference to the matter, even in the most remotely indirect way. She simply went about her tasks with a pleased and amused smile on her face.

XXVIII

EVELYN’S BOOK, CONCLUDED

WHEN Dorothy took up Evelyn’s manuscript again, it was nine o’clock in the evening of the second day, and, moved by her eagerness to follow the story, even more than by her conscientious desire to finish it before the author’s return on the morrow, she read late into the night. But she had sent Evelyn a note in the late afternoon, in which she had written:—