Chapter II: Part I: Ford (2)

"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep still."

Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him, he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that, whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear alert in his defence.

Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a girl--certainly not twenty--and yet she acted with the decision of maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild origin--that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized life--which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it in fact.

Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her words.

"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day, but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm quite alone."

Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when, a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that seemed more natural to her had returned.

"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case you're chilly in the night."

She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.

"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"

"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.

He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.

IV

The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.

"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with satisfaction.

"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to penetrate the mystery of her personality.

"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it was--for this."

"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.

"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of embarrassment, "I never saw him--not that I can remember."

"Then he died a long time ago?"

Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:

"Not so very long--about four years ago now."

"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"

"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."

He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to escape from this particular subject.

"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.

Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.

"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.

"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It wouldn't do you any good to know it."

"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as that for me."

"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for more."

Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.

"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she entered his cell.

She paused with a look of surprise.

"At home? Where do you mean?"

"Why--where you live; where your mother lives."

"My mother died a few months after I was born."

"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"

"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."

"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too much of your time."

"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help you to escape."

"Why? Why should you care about me?"

"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."

"Oh, then you're helping me just--on general principles?"

"Quite so."

"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"

"Because I don't like the law."

"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?--or--or this law in particular?"

"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added, resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now. Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber camps, but all the same we must be careful still."

He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at the cabin little more than an hour.

"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be helping you would be the last in their minds."

"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"

She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel remorse for helping any one to evade the law."

"You seem to have a great objection to the law."

"Well, haven't you?"

"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."

"So it is in mine--if you only knew."

"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."

He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in silence, he continued.

"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."

He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.

"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit. The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."

Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse over her eyes.

"He was very cruel to you--your uncle?--wasn't he?" she asked, at last.

"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him in his sleep--whatever I may have said when in a rage."

"I should think it might be."

He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would have laughed.

"Are you so bloodthirsty--?" he began.

"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have killed two or three."

Ford whistled under his breath.

"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law is--hereditary."

"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."

"And your aim is to defeat them?"

"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your escape."

But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been allowed to venture out.

"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about as I choose."

"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."

"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the whole thing out beforehand."

His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"

"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build the studio--last year--I've imagined how easy it would be for some--some hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."

"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he observed, glancing about the cabin.

"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I couldn't do without a studio--till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm afraid it's generally been to--to indulge in day-dreams."

"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."

"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."

"Good for her! Who was she?"

Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.

"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be making up her mind to give the information.

In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.

"That's like the old story of Gilbert à Becket--Thomas à Becket's father, you know."

The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the small task she had in hand.

"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her enlightenment.

She raised her head and faced him.

"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert à Becket," she said, quietly.

It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own turn, making matters worse.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought--"

"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one does--who knows me."

Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:

"You're quite right. I meant that--for them."

They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.

"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated herself with a palette in her hand.

"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur. I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their families generally have."

Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that, notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it overcame his prompting to spare her.

"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be assimilating the information she had given him--"and yet I don't see how that explains _you_."

"I suppose it doesn't--not any more than your situation explains you."

"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."

"Well, so am I--in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the daughter of my parents."

"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your fault."

"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer with the parents I have than be happy with any others."

"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.

"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."

"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.

"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn't like it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very shores of Hudson Bay."

"But you didn't stay there?"

"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."

"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?--or anything like that."

"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."

It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading, apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.

"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they wouldn't take me."

"Oh? So he had money?"

"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a journey--like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that--but he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one of the pioneers of that country--one of the very first to see its possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it to me. I believe it's a good deal."

"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."

"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to realize--who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy until I was among people of my own kind."

"And how did you get there?"

She smiled faintly to herself before answering.

"I never did. There are no people of my kind."

Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance, he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.

"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"

"I should like it well enough if he did--that is, if his wife did. You see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that, but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to her--its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in a way, it's a trial to me to stay."

"Why do you stay, then?"

"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law tells me."

"I see. The law again!"

"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."

"Such as--?"

"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that loves me."

"What's her name?"

The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile and sensitive--lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the inner spirit softened them with a tremor--or it might have been a light--of gentleness.

"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection. "It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."

"Still--if I escape--I should like to know them."

"If you escape, you may be able to find out."

"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to tell me--"

Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong, but his pleasure in talking to a lady--a girl--was undeniable. Sometimes in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.

"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"

She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with which she answered him--

"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's just this: they're not very well off--so I can help. Naturally I like that."

"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it, but everybody wouldn't."

"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they shouldn't need me at all."

"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness. "That's what."

"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."

"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without you, Heaven only knows. It's curious--the effect imprisonment has on you. It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a baby. You want to be free--and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."

He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke without looking up.

"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."

"That's easy to say."

"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd go to the Argentine."

"Why not say the moon?"

"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."

"So is the Argentine--for me."

"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."

"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."

"Some of them were probably in worse."

There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.

"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.

"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little girl I was speaking of just now--whom I'm so fond of--was born there. Her father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."

He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound, just above his breath.

"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many--stranded people."

"I should be just his sort, then."

His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded him of something he had read--or heard--of the wild olive being grafted into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have chosen for a heroine--Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan possibly--or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as he fell asleep, it might be--the Wild Olive.

V

As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them, the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which the situation imposed.

It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case before her.

He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university, where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for himself--his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved fatal.

Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as "the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue, old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious, too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to come into being--the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on his apprenticeship.

In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff and his comrades gave Prince Hal.

The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris Ford was found dead in his bed--shot in his sleep. On the premises there had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the crime--Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered, was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became easy after that--the more respectable people of the neighborhood being agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn. The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen, admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting chance for freedom.

The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly. Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting, while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.

"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help me."

"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it or not."

"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently, "to know that I didn't."

"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."

"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded---"just to oblige me."

"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."

Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of attention.

"I think the time has come for you to--go."

If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive with interrogation.

"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"

"To-morrow."

"How?"

"I'll tell you that then."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you will."

"Then there are objections to be raised?"

"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in advance."

"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"

"You'll have plenty of time for preparation--after you've started. If that seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."

With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.

She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog. The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough material instead of her usual linen or muslin.

"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.

"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."

It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.

"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better start."

He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.

It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet. But it was there, and she traced it--never pausing never speaking, and only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.

They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below, Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.

"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.

They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the twilight.

"The steamer _Empress of Erin_," the girl said, with what seemed like abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St. Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."

There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling information.

"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.

"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake, "your way is there."

There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long, rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded into a mist of bluish-green and gold.

"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."

"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this." From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners. They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."

"But I shan't be," he said, simply.

"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it. You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."

She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it, reddening, but made no attempt to take it.

"I can't--I can't--go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.

"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man. It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me--just to spend--but I never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here, take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."

With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.

"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored--and I am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them. Here are the keys."

He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.

"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till you feel it safe to take your own again."

"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket out of its envelope.

"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name--any name. You can look at it afterward. We'd better go on."

She made as though she would move, but he detained her.

"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"

"Like a good many others," she smiled.

"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You can't think what it means to me."

"I should think you'd see what it means to me."

"I don't. What harm can it do you?"

"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is--- how shall I say it?--a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a way--a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand already--it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that isn't everything."

"Well--what else?"

"When this little episode is over"--her voice trembled, and it was not without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again--"when this little episode is over, it will be better for us both--for you as well as for me--to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."

"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you again?"

"Why should you communicate with me at all?"

"To pay you back your money, for one thing--"

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it wouldn't be my only reason in any case."

Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt him.

"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly. "We really must be going on."

"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you won't want to hear it."

"Hadn't we better wait and see?"

"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if I don't know who you are?"

"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on. It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."

She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up, so they descended--the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.

It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of sand.

"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to Montreal."

She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.

"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most familiar."

"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their glances meet.

"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed. I'd do that, if I were you."

He nodded to show that he understood her.

"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time yourself to go by about nightfall."

He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.

"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore, just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to you?"

Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.

"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've marked a very good train on the time-table--a train that stops at Saint Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."

A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could detect the pale glimmer of a star.

"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the water.

"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how to do it--adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you. That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If you ever have need of it--"

"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."

"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance of making my promise good."

She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck, moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.

VI

On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul. After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to be a law unto himself.

A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was over and done with.