She finished her work in the chamber, and came down-stairs with some knitting-work in hand. She seated herself quietly in her own cushioned rocking-chair, and fell to work with yarn and clicking needles, like any peaceful housewife. She knitted and Eugene read, bending his handsome dark face, smiling with pleasure, over his Shakespeare book. This fierce winter day he was reading "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," and letting his fancy revel with Shakespeare's fairies in an enchanted summer wood. He was, however, alert as a watch-dog. He could at an instant's warning leave that delicate and dainty crew and those flowery shores, and intercept his sister, should she attempt to pass him and escape from the house.

Still, his alertness all came to naught, for Madelon, like some fleeing fox, took a sudden turn which no canny hunter could have anticipated. She sat somewhat away from the hearth and well at Eugene's back. He would have asked her why she did not draw nearer the fire and if she were not cold had he not feared to encounter a sulky humor. He could not see the lengths of linen cloth, which she herself had spun and woven, lying in a great heap on the floor, half at her back, half under her petticoats. However, could he have seen it he would have thought of it merely as some mysterious domestic and feminine proceeding about which he neither knew nor cared to know anything.

Madelon, as she knitted, ever measured the distance between her brother and herself with her great black eyes, training her nerves and muscles for what she had to do as she would have trained a bow and arrow.

Eugene turned a leaf in his Shakespeare book. Madelon made a leap, so soft and swift that it seemed like an onslaught of Silence itself, and he was smothered and wound about and entangled in folds of linen as if it had been in truth his winding-sheet. He struggled as best he might against his linen bands, and cried out as angrily as he could for the linen that bound his mouth and his eyes, but he could not release himself. Eugene was strong and lithe, but Madelon was nearly as strong as he at any time; and now the great tension of her nerves seemed to inform all her muscles with the strength of steel wire.

Eugene sat bound hard and fast to the settle, with his face swathed like a mummy's, with only enough space clear for breath. "Let me go, or I'll—" he threatened, in his smothered tone.

Madelon made no reply. She watched him struggle to be sure that he could not free himself. Then she went out of the room. Eugene called after her in a choke of fury, but she spoke not a word.

Up-stairs she hastened to her own chamber, and put on her red cloak and hood, and was down the stairs again, out the door, and hurrying up the road to the village. From time to time she glanced behind her to be sure that her brother had not freed himself, and was not in pursuit; then she sped on faster. The road was glare with ice, but she did not slow her pace for that. She was as sure-footed as a hare. She kept her arms close to her sides under her red cloak, and did not pause until she came out on the village street where the houses were thick. Then she went at a rapid walk, still glancing sharply behind her to see if she were followed, until she came to Parson Fair's house. She went up the front walk, between the rows of ice-coated box, and up the stone steps under the stately columned porch, and raised the knocker and let it fall with sharp impetus. The door opened speedily a little way, and Parson Fair himself stood there, his pale, stern old face framed in the dark aperture. He bowed with gentle courtesy and bade her good-morning, and Madelon courtesied hurriedly and spoke out her errand with no preface.

"Can I see your daughter, sir?" said she.

Parson Fair looked at Madelon's white face, touched on the cheeks and lips with feverish red, at her set mouth and desperate eyes. The story of her connection with the Gordon tragedy had not penetrated to his study, neither did he know how Burr had forsaken her for his Dorothy; but he saw something was amiss with her, although he was not well versed in the signs of a woman's face. Parson Fair, moreover, felt somewhat of interest in this Madelon Hautville, for he had a decorously restrained passion for sweet sounds which she had often gratified. Many a Sabbath day had he sat in his beetling pulpit and striven to keep his mind fixed upon the spirit of the hymn alone, in spite of his leaping pulses, when Madelon's great voice filled the meeting-house. It was probable that he also, notwithstanding his Christian grace, shared somewhat the popular sentiments towards these musical and Bohemian Hautvilles; yet he looked with a dignified kindness at the girl.

"I trust you are not ill," he said, without answering her question as to whether she might see Dorothy.

Madelon did not act as if she heard what he said. "Can I see your daughter, sir?" she repeated. She cast an anxious glance over her shoulder for fear Eugene might appear in the road.

Parson Fair still eyed her with perplexity. "I believe Dorothy is ill in her chamber," he said, hesitatingly. "I do not know—"

Madelon gave a dry sob. "I beg you to let me see her for a minute, sir," she gasped out, "for the love of God. It is life and death!"

Parson Fair looked shocked and half alarmed. He had not had to do with women like this, who spoke with such fervor of passion. His womankind had swathed all their fiercer human emotions with shy decorum and stern modesty, as Turkish women swathe their faces with veils.

Madelon, still under the fear of Eugene, pressed inside the door as she spoke, and he stood aside half involuntarily. "I beg you to let me see her," she repeated. She looked at the stately wind of the stairs up to the second floor, as if she were minded to ascend without bidding to Dorothy's chamber.

"She is ill in her chamber," the Parson said again, with a kind of forbidding helplessness.

"I would see her only for a minute. I beg you to let me, sir. It is life and death, I tell you—it is life and death!"

Whether Parson Fair motioned her to ascend, or whether he simply stood aside to allow her to pass, he never knew, but Madelon was up the winding stairs with a swirl of her cloak, as if the wind had caught it. Parson Fair followed her, and motioned her to the south front chamber, and was about to rap on the door when it was flung open violently, and the great black princess stood there, scowling at them.

"I have a guest here for your mistress," said Parson Fair; but the black woman blocked his way, speaking fast in her wrathful gibberish.

However, at a stately gesture from her master she stood aside, and he held the door open, and Madelon entered. "You had better not remain long, to tire her," said the parson, and closed the door. Immediately the uncouth savage voice was raised high again, and quelled by the parson's calm tone. Then there was a great settling of a heavy body close to the threshold. The black woman had thrown herself at the sill of her darling's door, to keep watch, like a faithful dog.

Madelon Hautville, when she entered Dorothy Fair's room, had her mind not been fixed upon its one end, which was above all such petty details of existence, might well have looked about her. No such dainty maiden bower was there in the whole village as this. Madelon's own chamber, carpetless and freezing cold, with its sparse furniture and scanty sweep of white curtains across the furred windows which filled the room with the blue-white light of frost, was desolation to it.

A great fire blazed on Dorothy Fair's chamber hearth. The red glow of it was over the whole room, and the frost on the windows was melting. Curtains of a soft blue-and-white stuff, said to have been brought from overseas, hung at Dorothy's windows and between the high posts of her bed. She had also her little rocking-chair and footstool frilled and cushioned with it. There was a fine white matting on her floor, and a thick rug with a basket of flowers wrought on it beside her bed. The high white panel-work around Dorothy's mantel was carved with curving garlands and festoons of ribbon and flowers, and on the shelf stood tall china vases and bright candlesticks. Dorothy's dressing-table had a petticoat of finest dimity, trimmed with tiny tassels. Above it hung her fine oval mirror, in a carved gilt frame. Upon the table were scattered silver and ivory things and glass bottles, the like of which Madelon had never seen. The room was full of that mingled perfume of roses and lavender which was always about Dorothy herself.

The counterpane on Dorothy's bed was all white and blue, and quilted in a curious fashion, and her pillows were edged with lace. In the midst of this white-and-blue nest, her slender little body half buried in her great feather-bed, her lovely yellow locks spreading over her pillow, lay Dorothy Fair when Madelon entered. She half raised herself, and stared at her with blue, dilated eyes, and shrank back with a little whimper of terror when she came impetuously to her bedside.

"You don't believe it," Madelon said, with no preface.

Dorothy stared at her, trembling. "You mean—"

"I mean you don't believe he killed him! You don't believe Burr Gordon killed his cousin Lot!"

Dorothy sank weakly back on her pillows. Great tears welled up in her blue eyes and rolled down her soft cheeks. "They saw him there," she sobbed out, "and they found his knife. Oh, I didn't think he was so wicked!"

Madelon caught her by one slender arm hard, as if she would have shaken her. "You believe it!" she cried out. "You believe that Burr did it—you!"

"They—saw—him—there," moaned Dorothy, with a terrified roll of her tearful eyes at Madelon's face.

"Saw him there! What if they did see him there? What if the whole town saw him? What if you saw him? What if you saw him strike the blow with your own eyes? Wouldn't you tear them out of your own head before you believed it? Wouldn't you cut your own tongue out before you'd bear witness against him?"

Dorothy sobbed convulsively.

"I would," said Madelon.

Dorothy hid her face away from her in the pillow.

Madelon laid her hand on her fair head, and turned it with no gentle hand. "Listen to me now," she said. "You've got to listen. You've got to hear what I say. You ought to believe without being told, without knowing anything about it, that he's innocent, if you're a woman and love him; but I'm going to tell you. Burr Gordon didn't kill his cousin Lot. I did!"

Dorothy gave a faint scream and shrank away from her.

"I did!" repeated Madelon. "Now do you believe he's innocent, when somebody else has told you?"

Dorothy's face was white as her pillows, her eyes big with terror. There was a soft thud against her door. The black woman was keeping arduous watch.

"You couldn't!" Dorothy gasped out.

"I could! Look at my hands; they are as strong as a man's."

"You—couldn't!"

"I could, and I did."

Dorothy shook her head in hysterical doubt.

"Listen," said Madelon—"listen. I'll tell you why I did it, Dorothy Fair. Burr Gordon had been with me a little before he went with you. Perhaps you knew it. If you did, I am not blaming you—he's got taking ways, you couldn't help it; and I am not blaming him—he's a man, and you're fairer complexioned than I am. But I was fool enough to be mad without any good reason—you understand I am not saying anything against him, Dorothy Fair—when I saw him with you at the ball. He had a right to take anybody to the ball that he chose. It was naught to me, but I was mad. I have a quick temper. And I started home when that young man from Kingston offered to fiddle for the dancing after you and Burr went out; and my brother Richard made me take his knife for fear I might meet stragglers, and I had it open under my cloak. And when I got to that lonely part of the road, after the turn, I saw somebody coming, and I thought it was Burr. He walked like him. And I looked away—I did not want to see his face; and when I came up to him the first thing I knew he threw his arm around me and kissed me, and—something seemed to leap up in me and I struck with Richard's knife. And—then he fell down, and I looked and it was not Burr—it was his cousin Lot. And—then Burr came, and we heard whistling, and others were coming, and he made me run, and the others came up and found him; and now they say he did it and not I. It was I who stabbed Lot Gordon, Dorothy Fair!"

"It was Burr's knife, with his initials cut in the handle, that they found," said Dorothy, with a kind of piteous doggedness. There was in this fair little maiden the same power of adherence to a mental attitude which her father had shown in his religious tenets. Wherever the men and women of this family stood they were fixed beyond their own capability of motion.

Madelon gave a bewildered sigh. "I know not how that was," said she, "unless—" a red flush mounted over her whole face. "No, he would not have done that for me," she said, as if to herself.

A red flush on Dorothy's face seemed to respond to that on Madelon's. "You think he put his knife there to take suspicion from you?" she cried out, quickly.

Madelon shook her head. "I don't know about the knife," she said, "but I know I stabbed Lot Gordon."

"He would not have done that," said Dorothy, with troubled, angry blue eyes on her face. "He would have thought of—others. He never changed the knife, Madelon Hautville!"

"I know nothing about the knife," repeated Madelon, "but Burr Gordon did not kill his cousin."

"He was there, and it was his knife," said Dorothy. There was now a curious indignation in her manner. It was almost as if she preferred to believe her lover guilty of murder rather than unduly solicitous for her rival.

Madelon Hautville turned upon her with a kind of fierce solemnity. "Dorothy Fair," said she, "look at me!" and the soft, blue-eyed face, full of that gentle unyielding which is the firmest of all, looked up at her from the pillows—"Dorothy Fair, did that man, who's locked up over there in jail in New Salem, for a crime he's innocent of, ever kiss you?"

Madelon's face seemed to wax stiff and white. She looked like one who bared her breast for a mortal hurt as she spoke. Dorothy went pink to the roots of her yellow hair and the frill on her nightgown. She made an angry shamed motion of her head, which might have signified anything.

"And you can believe this thing of him after that!" said Madelon, with a look of despairing scorn. "He has kissed you, Dorothy Fair, and you can think he has committed a murder!"

Dorothy gasped. "They said—" she began again.

"They said! Are you a woman, Dorothy Fair, and don't you know that the man you love enough to let him kiss you should do no wrong in your eyes, or else it's a shame to you, and you should kill him to wipe it out?" Dorothy shrank away from her in the bed, her frightened blue eyes staring at her over her shoulder. "My God! don't you know," said Madelon, "the man you love is yourself? When you believe in his guilt you believe in your own; when you strike him for it you strike yourself. Don't you know that, Dorothy Fair?"

Dorothy looked at her, all white and trembling. She gave a half-sob. Suddenly Madelon's tone changed. "Don't be afraid," said she. "I'm different from you. I don't wonder he liked you better. It's no blame to him. I know you care about him. You don't believe he did it."

"I don't know," sobbed Dorothy. The door opened a crack, and the black woman's watchful eyes appeared.

"Oh, you do know, you do know! I tell you, I did it—I! Can't you believe me? I'm a wicked woman, and I love anybody I love in a different way from any that a woman as good as you are can. I did it, Dorothy, and not Burr! He mustn't suffer for it. We must see him, you and I together! Don't you believe me?"

"I don't—know," sobbed Dorothy. The dark face appeared quite fully in the door. Madelon cast a quick glance about the room. Dorothy's pretty Bible, with a blue-silk-ribbon marker hanging from it, lay on her dimity dressing-table. Madelon sprang across and got it. The black woman stood in the doorway, muttering to herself. She looked all ready to spring to Dorothy's defence. Madelon did not notice her at all. She went close to Dorothy, put the Bible on the bed, and laid her right hand upon it.

"I swear upon this Holy Book," said she, "that this hand of mine is the one that stabbed Lot Gordon. I swear, and I call God to witness, and may I be struck dead as I speak if what I say is not true. Now do you believe what I say, Dorothy Fair?"

Dorothy looked at her and the Bible in bewildered terror. She nodded.



Chapter VIII

Something like joy came into Madelon's face. "Then we will save him, you and I!" she cried out. "We will save him together! He shall not be hung! He shall be set free! They shall let him out of jail to-day, and put me there instead. We will save him! He would not own that I was guilty and he innocent; Lot would not own it, nor my brother Richard, but now—we will save him—now!"

"How?" asked Dorothy, feebly.

"He will own it to you. Burr will own it to you if you go and plead with him. He can't help owning it to you. And then you shall go to Lot, and when you ask him for your sake, that you may marry Burr, if he knows Burr has told you, and does not care about me, he will speak. He will be sure to speak for you. Come!"

Dorothy raised herself on one elbow and stared at Madelon, her yellow hair falling about her fair startled face. "Where?" said she.

"With me to New Salem."

"To New Salem?"

"Yes, to New Salem—to see Burr."

"But I am ill, and the doctor has bid me stay in bed. I have been ill ever since the ball with a headache and fever."

"You talk about headache and fever when Burr is there in prison! I tell you if my two feet were cut off I would walk to him on the stumps to set him free!"

"How can I go?" said Dorothy. Her blue eyes kindled a little under Madelon's fiery zeal.

"We will take your father's horse and sleigh."

"But the horse is gone lame, and has not been used for a month."

"I will get one from Dexter Beers at the tavern," said Madelon, promptly. "I will lead him over here and harness him into the sleigh."

"My father will not let me go," said Dorothy.

"He is a minister of the gospel—he will let his daughter go to save a life."

"I tell you he will not," said Dorothy. "I know my father better than you. He will not let me go out when I am ill. It is freezing cold, too. If I go I must go without his knowledge and consent."

"I am going without my father's," said Madelon, shortly, "and I go at a greater cost than that, too."

"It's the second time I have deceived and disobeyed my father in a week's time," Dorothy said.

"You talk about your father when it is Burr—Burr—that's at stake!" Madelon cried out. "What is your father to Burr if you love him? That ought to go before anything else. It says so in your Bible—it says so in your Bible, Dorothy Fair!"

Dorothy, with her innocent, frightened eyes fixed upon the other girl's passionate face, as if she were being led by her into unknown paths, put back the coverlet and thrust one little white foot out of bed. Then swiftly the black woman, who had entered the room, backed against the door as stiffly as a sentinel, darted forward, and would have thrust her mistress into bed again, making uncouth protests the while, had not Dorothy motioned her away with a gentle dignity, which was hers for use when she chose.

"Go down-stairs, if you please," said she, "and see if my father is in his study. If he is in there, and busy over his sermon, go to the barn, and drag out the sleigh for us."

Dorothy, white and fair as an angel, in her straight linen nightgown, stood out on the floor, in front of her great black guardian, who made again as though she would seize her and force her back, and pleaded with her in a thick drone, like an anxious bee, not to go.

"Do as I bid you!" said Dorothy, and glided past her to her dimity dressing-table, and began combing out her yellow hair.

The black woman went out, muttering.

"If my father is in his study on the north side of the house, and busy over his sermon, we can get away; otherwise we cannot," said Dorothy, combing the thick tress over her shoulder.

Madelon went to a south window of the room and looked out. She could see the barn, and across the road, farther down, the tavern. She watched while Dorothy bound up her hair, and soon she saw the black woman run, with a low crouch of her great body like a stealthy animal, across the yard.

"Your father is in his study," Madelon said, quickly. "I will go over to the tavern for a horse if yours is too lame."

"He can scarce stand," said Dorothy. Her soft voice trembled; she trembled all over—then was still with nervous rigors. Bright pink spots were on her cheeks. A certain girlish daring was there in this gentle maiden for youthful love and pleasure, else she had not stolen away that night to the ball, but very little for tragic enterprise. And, moreover, her fine sense of decorum and womanly pride had always served her mainly in the place of courage, which she lacked.

Sorely afraid was Dorothy Fair, if the truth were told, to go with this passionate girl, who had declared to her face she had done murder, to visit a man who she still half believed, with her helpless tenacity of thought, was a murderer also. The love she had hitherto felt for him was eclipsed by terror at the new image of him which her fearful fancy had conjured up and could not yet dismiss, in spite of Madelon's assurances. She was, too, really ill, and her delicate nerves were still awry from the shock they had received the night of the ball. Parson Fair had been sternly indignant, and his daughter had quailed before him, and then had come the news concerning Burr. Sage tea, and hot foot-baths, and the doctor's nostrums had not cured her yet. Her very spirit trembled and fluttered at this undertaking; but she could not withstand this fierce and ardent girl who upbraided her with the cowardice and distrust of her love. Instinctively she tried to raise her sentiment to the standard of the other's and believe in Burr.

Madelon paused a second as she went out, and gave a strange, scrutinizing glance at her.

"Why do you not wear your blue-silk quilted hood with the swan's-down trimming?" said she. "It becomes you, and it is warm over your ears."

"Yes, I will," said Dorothy, looking at her wonderingly.

Madelon went softly out of the house, and ran across and down the road to the tavern. Dexter Beers, the landlord, was just going around the wide sweep of drive to the stable with a meal-sack over his shoulder. No one else was in sight; it was so cold there were no loafers about. Madelon ran after him, and overtook him before he reached the stable door.

"Can you let me take a horse?" said she, abruptly.

Dexter Beers looked slowly around at her with a quick roll of a black eye in a massive face. He had an enormous bulk, which he moved about with painful sidewise motions. His voice was husky.

"What d'ye want a horse for?" said he.

"I want it to put in Parson Fair's sleigh."

"What for?"

"To take Dorothy to ride."

"Parson's horse lame yet?"

Madelon nodded.

"Where's yours?"

"I can't have him."

Dexter Beers still moved on with curious lateral twirls of his shoulders and heaves of his great chest, with its row of shining waistcoat buttons.

"Pooty cold day for a sleigh-ride," he observed, with a great steam of breath.

"I'll pay you well for the horse," said Madelon, in a hard voice. She followed him into the stable. He heaved the meal-sack from his shoulder to the floor with a grunt. Another man came forward with a peck measure in his hand. He was young, with a frosty yellow mustache. He had gone to school with Madelon and knew her well, but he looked at her with uncouth shyness without speaking. Then he began unfastening the mouth of the sack.

Madelon stepped forward impatiently towards the horse-stalls. There were the relay of coach-horses, great grays and bays, champing their feed, getting ready for their sure-footed rushes over the mountain roads when the coaches came in. She passed them by with sharp glances.

A man whose face was purplish red with cold was out in the rear of the stable, rubbing down a restive bay with loud "whoas," and now and then a stronger word and a hard twitch at the halter. He looked curiously at Madelon as she walked up to one of the stalls.

"Better look out for them heels!" he called out, as she drew nearer. She paid no heed, but went straight into the stall, untied the horse, and began to back him out. "Hi, there!" the man shouted, and Dexter Beers and the young man came hurrying up. "Better look out for that gal—I believe she's gone crazy!" he called out. "I can't leave this darned beast—she'll get kicked to death if she don't look out. That old white won't stan' a woman in the stall. Whoa, there! whoa, darn ye! Stan' still!"

"Hullo, what ye doin' of?" demanded Dexter Beers, coming up.

Madelon calmly backed the horse out of his stall. "I want to hire this horse," said she, holding his halter with a firm hand.

"That horse?"

"Yes. I'll pay you whatever you ask."

Dexter Beers stared at her and the horse dubiously. "Jest as soon set a woman to drivin' the devil as that old white," volunteered the man who was cleaning the bay. The young man stood gaping with wonder.

"Can I have this horse or not?" demanded Madelon. Her black eyes flashed imperiously at Dexter Beers. Her small brown hand held the halter of the old white with a grasp like steel.

"Dunno 'bout your drivin' that horse," said Dexter Beers. "'Fraid you'll get run away with. Better take another."

"Isn't this horse the fastest you've got on a short stretch?"

"S'pose he is, but I dunno 'bout a woman's drivin' of him."

Madelon looked as if she were half minded to spring upon the back of the old white and settle the matter summarily. She fairly quivered with impatience.

"A woman who can drive David Hautville's roan can drive this horse, and you know it," said she. She moved forward as she spoke, leading the high-stepping old white, and Dexter Beers stood aside.

"Well, David Hautville's roan is nigh a match for this one," he grunted, hesitatingly, "but then ye know your own better. Hadn't ye better—"

But the old white was out of the stable at a trot, with Madelon running alongside.

"Don't ye want a man to hitch him up?" Dexter Beers called after her; but she was out of hearing.

"If the gal's ekal to drivin' that horse, she's ekal to hitchin' of him up," said the man who was cleaning the bay. "If a gal wants to drive, let her hitch. Ye'd better let a woman go the whole figger when she gits started, just as ye'd better give an ugly cuss of a horse his head up hill an' down. It takes the mischief out of 'em quicker'n anything. Let her go it, Dexter—don't ye fret."

"I don't want her breakin' any of the parson's daughter's bones with none of my horses," said Dexter Beers, uneasily. "Wonder where the parson is?"

"Let 'em go it! They won't git smashed up, I guess," said the other. "I've seen that gal of Hautville's with that mare of his'n. She kin drive most anythin' short of the devil, an' old white's got sense enough to know when he's well driv, ugly's he is. He wa'n't on the track for nothin'. He ain't no wuss, if he's as bad, as that roan mare. Let 'em go it!"

"Wonder what's to pay?" said the young man, who had not spoken before.

"Dunno," said Dexter Beers. "Somethin's to pay—that girl acted queer."

"S'pose she takes it hard 'bout Burr Gordon. He used to fool 'round her, I've heerd, afore he went courtin' the parson's gal."

"Dunno—queer she's so thick with the parson's gal all of a sudden."

"Lord, I wouldn't tech a gal that could git the upperhand of a horse like that roan mare with a ten-foot pole," half soliloquized the man at work over the bay. "Wouldn't have her if she owned half the township, an' went down on her knees to me—darned if I would. Don't want no woman that kin make horse-flesh like that knuckle under. Guess a man wouldn't have much show; hev to take his porridge 'bout the way she wanted to make it. Whoa, there! stan' still, can't ye? Darned if I want nothin' to do with sech woman folks or sech horses as ye be."

Dexter Beers moved laboriously out to the stable door and peered after Madelon, but she had disappeared in Parson Fair's yard. The white horse had gone up the road at a brisk trot, but she had easily kept pace with him. She also harnessed him into the sleigh with no difficulty. The animal seemed docile, and as if he were to belie his hard reputation. There was, however, a proud and nervous cant to his old white head, and he set his jaw stiffly against his bit.

Dorothy came out in her quilted silk pelisse and her blue hood edged with swan's-down, and got into the sleigh. The black woman was keeping watch at the parson's study door the while, but he never swerved from his hard application of the doctrines. The sleigh slipped noiselessly out of the yard and up the road, for Madelon had not put on the bells. The old white went rather stiffly and steadily for the first quarter-mile; then he made a leap forward with a great lift of his lean white flanks, and they flew.

Dorothy gave a terrified gasp. "Don't be frightened," Madelon said. "It's the horse that used to beat everything in the county. He's old now, but when he gets warmed up he's the fastest horse around for a short stretch. He can't hold out long, but while he does he goes; and I want to get a good start. I want to strike the New Salem road as soon as I can."

Madelon had a growing fear lest Eugene might have freed himself, and might ride the roan across by a shorter cut, and so intercept her at the turn into the New Salem road. He might easily suspect her of attempting to see Burr again. If she passed the turn first she could probably escape him if her horse held out; and, indeed, he might not think she had gone that way if he did not see her.

Dorothy held fast to the side of the sleigh, which seemed to rise from the track as they sped on. "Don't be frightened," Madelon said again. "This is the only horse in town that can beat my father's on a short stretch, and I don't know that he can always, but I don't think he has been used, and father's was ridden hard yesterday. I can manage this one in harness better than I can father's. Don't be frightened." But Dorothy's face grew pale as the swan's-down around it, and her great blue eyes were fixed fearfully upon the bounding heels and flanks of the old white race-horse.

Madelon strained her eyes ahead as they neared the turn of the New Salem road. There was nobody in sight. Then she glanced across the fields at the right. Suddenly she swung out the reins over the back of the old white, and hallooed, and stood up in the sleigh.

Dorothy screamed faintly. "Sit still and hold on!" Madelon shouted. Dorothy shut her eyes. It seemed to her she was being hurled through space. Her slender body swung to and fro against the sleigh as she clung frantically to it.

Eugene Hautville, on the roan, was coming at a mad run across the open field on the right towards the turn of the road. It seemed for a second as if Madelon would reach it before he did; but they met there, and the roan reared to a stop in the narrow road directly in front of the old white, who plunged furiously.

"Look out there!" shouted Eugene, as the sleigh tilted on the snow-crust. The old white's temper was up at this sudden check, but the woman behind him had a stronger will than he. She brought him to a straining halt, and then she spoke to her brother.

"You let us pass!" she said, sternly.

"Where are you going?" he demanded. He looked uneasily at Dorothy as he spoke. It was easy enough to see that she was a restraint upon him, and that fair, timid face in its blue hood held his indignation well in check.

"We are going to New Salem," replied Madelon. "Let us pass."

"I want to know what you are going for," said Eugene; and he tried to speak with fire, but he still looked furtively at Dorothy.

Nobody had ever suspected how that lovely face of hers had been in his dreams, unless it had been for a time Dorothy herself. Nobody had noticed in meeting, of a Sabbath day long since, when Dorothy had first returned from her Boston school, sundry glances which had passed between a pair of soft blue eyes in the parson's pew and a pair of fiery black ones in the singing-seats.

Dorothy, half guiltily in those days, had arranged her curls and tied on her Sunday bonnets with a view to Eugene Hautville's eyes; and always, when she returned from meeting, had gone straight to her looking-glass, to be sure that she had looked fair in them. But nobody had ever known, and scarcely she herself.

She had come to think later that she had perhaps been mistaken, for never had Eugene made other advances to her than by those ardent glances; and Burr had come, and she had turned to him, and thought of Eugene Hautville only when he crossed her way, and then with a mixture of pique and shame. Never by any chance did her eyes meet his nowadays of a Sabbath day, and she listened coldly to his sweet tenor in the hymns. Now, suddenly, she looked straight up in his face and met his eyes, and a pink flush came into her white cheeks.

"Please to let us pass," she said, in her gentle tone, which had yet a tincture of command in it. Any woman as fair as she, who has a right understanding of her looking-glass, has, however soft she may be, the instincts of a queen within her. She felt a proud resentment for her own old folly and for Eugene's old slighting of her, and indignation at his present attitude as she looked up at him with sudden daring.

Eugene threw back his head haughtily. "She wants to see Burr Gordon," he thought, and would have died rather than let her think he would stand in the way of it. He jerked the roan aside, and seemed as if he would have been flung into the way-side bushes with her curving plunge.

"Pass, if you wish," he said, with a graceful bend in his saddle, and was past them, riding the other way towards the village.



Chapter IX

When they reached the county buildings, the court-house and the jail, in New Salem, the old race-horse was still not nearly spent, although he breathed somewhat hard. When Madelon sprang out to blanket and tie him he seemed to vibrate to her touch like electric steel, and showed that the old fire had not yet died out of his nerves and muscles.

Poor Dorothy Fair's knees were weak under her as she got out of the sleigh. Her pretty face was pitiful, her sweet mouth drooping at the corners like a troubled child's.

Madelon looked at her sharply when they stood before the jail door waiting for admittance. "I have seen you wear a curl each side of your face outside your hood," said she.

"I didn't think of it to-day," Dorothy replied, with forlorn surprise.

Madelon went close to the other girl peremptorily, as if she had been her mother, pulled forward two soft curls from under her hood, and arranged them becomingly against the pale cheeks; and Dorothy submitted.

Alvin Mead opened the jail door, and his great face took on a forbidding scowl when he saw Madelon Hautville.

"Can't let ye in," he said, gruffly. "Ain't a visitin' day." He would have shut the door in their faces had not Madelon made a quick spring against it.

"I don't want to come in!" she cried. "I don't want to see him to-day. It's this lady who wants to see him."

"Can't see nobody," said Alvin Mead, filling up the door like a surly living wedge.

"You must let us see him," persisted Madelon. "She's Parson Fair's daughter. She is going to marry Burr Gordon—she must see him."

Alvin Mead shook his head stubbornly. Then Dorothy spoke, thrusting her fair face forward, and looking up at him with terrified, innocent pleading, like a child, and yet speaking with a gentle lady's authority. "I beg you to let me come in, only for a few moments," said she. "I will not make you any trouble. I will come out directly when you bid me to."

Alvin Mead looked at her a second, then at Madelon with rough inquiry. "Who did ye say she was?" he growled.

"Parson Fair's daughter, the lady that's going to marry Burr Gordon."

"I can't let but one of ye see him, and she can't stay more'n ten minutes," said Alvin Mead, and moved aside, and Madelon and Dorothy entered.

They followed Alvin Mead down the icy, dark corridor to Burr's cell door. He unlocked it, and bade Dorothy enter. He cast a forbidding look at Madelon. "I will stand here," she said with a strange meekness, almost as if her heart were broken; but when the jailer prepared to follow Dorothy into Burr's cell she caught him by the arm and tried to force him back, and cried out sharply that he should let her see him alone. "She is the girl he is going to marry, I tell you!" she said. "Let them see each other alone. You cannot come between two like that when they are in such trouble."

Alvin Mead looked at her a second irresolutely. Then he stepped back in the corridor and locked the cell door. "That the gal? Thought ye was the one," he said, with a half-chuckle, with coarse, sharp eyes upon her face.

"He is going to marry her," Madelon repeated. She stood stiff and straight like a statue, and waited. Once, when Alvin made an impatient motion as though to open the door, she restrained him with such despairing eagerness that he drew back and looked at her wonderingly, and stood in surly silence awhile longer.

"She's got to come out now," he said, at last. "I've got other things to tend to. Can't stay here no longer, nohow." He unlocked the door and threw it open with a jerk. "Time's up!" he shouted, and Dorothy came out directly, almost as if she were running away. Alvin Mead clapped to the door with a great jar and locked it. Madelon, had she tried, could not have got a glimpse of Burr; but she did not try. She sprang at Dorothy Fair, and took her by the shoulders, and looked into her scared face with agonized questioning.

"Did—he confess?" she gasped out. "Did—he tell you, did he—tell you, Dorothy Fair?"

Dorothy shook her head in a mute terror that was almost horror. It seemed as if she would sink to the floor under Madelon's heavy hands. Alvin Mead stood staring at them.

"Didn't he—tell you—I was the one who—stabbed Lot? Didn't he—tell you?"

"She's at it again," muttered Alvin Mead.

Dorothy shook her head. "He wouldn't speak," she said, faintly. "He would say nothing about it."

Madelon fairly shook her. "Couldn't you make him speak? You!"

"I couldn't, I couldn't, Madelon!"

"Did you tell him your heart would break if he didn't—that you couldn't marry him if he didn't?"

"Yes—don't, don't—look at me so, Madelon."

Alvin Mead stepped forward. "Look at here—you're scarin' of that gal to death," he interfered. "You'd better take your hands off her."

Then Madelon turned to him, and grasped at the keys in his hands, as if she would wrest them from him. "Unlock the door and let me in, and let Burr Gordon out!" she demanded, wildly.

The jailer wrested his keys away with a contemptuous jerk, and took the skin from Madelon's hands with them. "You're crazy," he said.

"I am not crazy! You've got an innocent man locked up in there, and I, who am guilty and tell you so, you will not arrest. It is you who are crazy. Let me in!"

Alvin Mead laid a rough hand on Madelon's shoulder. "Now you look at here, gal," said he. "I've had about all this darned nonsense I'm a-goin' to stan'. That chap is in jail for murder, an' in jail he's a-goin' to stay till I git orders from somebody besides you to let him out. An' what's more, don't you come here on no sich tom-fool arrant agin. If you do you won't git in. I ain't no objection to gals he was goin' to marry ef he hadn't broke the laws comin' to see him a leetle spell, if they'll go away peaceable when they're bid, but as for havin' sech highstericky work as this, I'll be darned if I will. Now I can't stan' here foolin' no longer; you'd better be gittin' right along home, an' don't you break this other gal's neck with that old stepper you've got out there."

Madelon Hautville said not another word. She went out of the jail quickly, and she and Dorothy were soon in the sleigh and flying down the road. The old racer was not so old nor so weary that the impetus of the homeward stretch failed to stir him—for a mile or so, at least. After that his pace slackened, and then Madelon turned to the other girl, who looked up at her with a kind of piteous defiance. "What did you say to him?" she demanded.

"I—begged him—if he—did not kill Lot to—say so," replied Dorothy, faintly; then she shrank and quivered before the other girl, who started wrathfully, half as if she would fling her from the sleigh.

"If he did not kill Lot to say so!" repeated Madelon. "If he did not! You know he did not."

"He would not tell me so," said Dorothy, with her stubbornness of meekness, and her blue eyes met Madelon's, although there were tears welling up in them.

"Tell you so!" cried Madelon. "What are you made of, Dorothy Fair?"

"He would not," repeated Dorothy. "If he was innocent, why should he not have told me if he loved me?"

Madelon looked at her. "You don't love him!" she cried out, sharply. "You don't love him, and that's why. You don't love him, Dorothy Fair!"

Dorothy flushed red and drew herself up with gentle stiffness. "You cannot expect me to unveil my heart to you," said she.

"You have betrayed it," persisted Madelon. "You don't love him, Dorothy Fair! Shame on you, after all!"

"What right have you to say that?" demanded Dorothy, and this time with some show of anger.

"The right of another woman who does love him, and would save his life," Madelon answered, fiercely. "The right of a woman who can love more in an hour than such as you in a lifetime!"

"You—don't know—"

"I do know. You don't love him or you would not have distrusted him. You would have made him tell you the truth. You would have flung your arms around him, and you would not have let him go until he told you. Did you do that? Answer me: did you do that?"

A great wave of red crept over Dorothy's face, but she replied, with cold dignity: "I throw my arms around no man unbidden!"

"Unbidden!" repeated Madelon, and scorn seemed to sound in her voice like the lash of a whip. She flung out the reins over the horse's back, and they slipped along swiftly over the icy crust, and not another word did she speak to Dorothy Fair all the way home.



Chapter X

When they entered Parson Fair's south yard there was a swift disappearance of a dark face from a window, and the door was flung open, and the grimly faithful servant-woman came forth and lifted Dorothy out of the sleigh, crooning the while in tender and angry gutturals. Poor Dorothy Fair shook like a white flower in a wind, for beside the rigor of the cold, which seemed to pierce her very soul, the chill of fever was still upon her. She chattered helplessly when she tried to speak, and there were sobs in her throat. The black woman half carried her into the house, and up-stairs to her own chamber, where the hearth-fire was blazing bright. She covered her up warm in bed, with a hot brick at her feet, and dosed her with warm herb drinks, and coddled her, until, after some piteous weeping, she fell asleep.

But for Madelon Hautville there was no rest and no sleep. She felt not the cold, and if she had fever in her veins the fierce disregard of her straining spirit was beyond it. No knowledge of her body at all had Madelon Hautville, no knowledge of anything on earth except her one aim—to save her lover's life. She was nothing but a purpose concentrated upon one end; there was in her that great impetus of the human will which is above all the swift forces of the world when once it is aroused.

She unharnessed the horse quickly from the parson's sleigh, and led him, restive again at the near prospect of his stall and feed, back to the tavern stable, paid for him, and struck out on the homeward road, straight and swift as one of her Indian ancestors. A group of men in the stable door stood aside with curious alacrity to let her pass; they stared after her, then at each other.

"I swan!" said one.

"Wouldn't like to be in the way when that gal was headed anywheres," said another.

"If that gal belonged to me I'd get her some stronger bits," said the man who had been cleaning the bay horse when Madelon came for the white.

"I believe she's lost her mind," said the tavern-keeper. "It's the last time I'll ever let her have a horse, and I told her so." There came a blast of northwest wind which buffeted them about their faces and chests like an icy flail, and they scattered before it, some to their duties in the stable, some into the warm tavern for a mug of something hot to do away with the chill. It was too cold a day to gossip in a doorway. It was not long past noon, but the cold had seemed to strengthen as the sun rode higher. The wind blew from the icy northwest more frequently in fiercer gusts. Madelon Hautville sped along before it, her red cloak flying out like a flag, and took no thought of it at all. She was, while still in the flesh and upon the earth, so intensified in spirit that there existed for her consciousness neither heat nor cold. She reached the old road, the short-cut, stretched down through the stiff white woods to her own home; she hastened along it a little way, then she stopped and faced back and stood irresolute. The icy wind stiffened her face, but she did not note it. She looked back at the road with its blue snow-furrows stretching between the desolate woods, at the spires and roofs of the village beyond. If one followed that road to the village and took the first one upon the right, and travelled ten miles, one would come to the town of Kingston.

Madelon began moving along on the road to the village, vaguely at first, as if half in a dream, then with gathering purpose. Back she went, in her tracks, straight to the village and the tavern stable, and asked of Dexter Beers another horse to drive to Kingston. But he refused her, standing before her, blocking the stable door, looking aside with a kind of timid doggedness. "Can't let ye have another horse to-day nohow," said he; "too cold to let 'em out."

"I'll pay you well," said Madelon.

"Pay ain't no object. Can't let none of 'em out but the stage-horses in no sech weather as this." Still Dexter Beers did not look at Madelon's stern and angry eyes; he gazed intently at a post in an icy slant of snow in the yard on the left.

He had the usual masculine dread of an angry woman, and, moreover, he had a sharp-tongued wife, but he had also the masculine tenacity of a position. He stared at the post as if his spirit held fast to it, and braced itself against the torrent of feminine wrath which he expected; but it did not come. Madelon Hautville set her mouth hard, wrapped her red cloak around her with a firm gesture, as if she were a soldier about to start on a long march, and walked out of the yard and up the road without another word.

"I swan!" said Dexter Beers.

The red-faced hostler approached with a pail in each hand bound for the well; he was watering the coach-horses for the next relay. "What's up?" he inquired, pushing past him.

"I'll be darned if I don't believe that gal of Hautville's has started to walk to Kingston, 'cause I wouldn't let her have another horse!"

"Let her go it," droned the red-faced man, with a short chuckle.

"Hope she won't freeze her feet nor nothin'," said Dexter Beers, uneasily.

"Let her go it!" said the red-faced man, swinging across the yard with his pails.

Madelon Hautville walked on steadily. She reached the right-hand turn, and then she was on the direct Kingston road, with a ten-mile stretch before her. It was past one o'clock, and she could not reach her journey's end much before dark.

About two miles after the turn of the road the more thickly set habitations ceased, and there were only isolated farm-houses, with long, sloping reaches of woods and pasture-lands between. The pasture-lands were hummocked with ice-coated rocks and hooped with frozen vines; they seemed to flow down in glittering waves, like glaciers, over the hill-sides. The woods stood white and petrified, as woods might have done in a glacial era. There was no sound in them except now and then the crack of a bough under the weight of ice, and slow, painful responses, like the twangs of rusty harp-strings, to the harder gusts of wind. The cold was so intense that the ice did not melt in the noonday sun, and there were no soft droppings and gurglings to modify this rigor of white light and sound. Occasionally a rabbit crossed Madelon's path, silent as a little gray scudding shadow, and so swiftly that he did not reach one's consciousness until he was out of sight. There was seldom a winter bird, even, in sight. The ice on the trees and the pastures had locked and sealed their larders. Their little beaks could not pierce it for seeds and grubs, and so they were forced to repair to kitchen doors and barnyards in quest of stray crumbs from the provender of men and cattle.

The rabbits, and an ox-team drawing a sled laden with cedar logs, slipping with shrill, long squeaks over the white road, driven by a man with a red face in an ambush of frozen beard, were all the living things she met for the first four miles. The man clambered stiffly down from his sled just before he met her, and began walking, stamping, rubbing his ears, and swinging his arms violently the while. He stared hard at Madelon, and gave a sort of grunt as he passed. It was an instinctive note of comradeship with another in a situation hard for their common humanity. The man, toiling painfully along that hard road, on that bitter day, with hands and feet half frost-bitten, and face smarting as if with fire, his aching lungs straining with the icy air, felt that he and the woman struggling over the same road had common cause for wrath against this stress of nature, and so made that half-surly, half-sympathetic grunt as he passed her. But she did not respond. She did not even glance at him as she went along. Her face glowed all over, red as a rose with the freezing wind; she wrapped her cloak instinctively tight around her, and walked a little stiffly, as if her feet might be somewhat numb; but there was in her fixed dark eyes no recognition of anything but some end she had in view beyond his ken.

The man stopped and looked seriously after her, and past her down the road. "Wonder what she's up to!" he muttered. Then he struggled on after his oxen, who plodded along with goat's-beards of their frozen breath hanging from their jaws.

Two miles farther on there was a sudden loud blast of a horn, and following upon it a great jangle of bells and the tramp of hoofs, and Madelon knew the Ware and Kingston stage was coming. Presently the top of the coach and the leaders' heads appeared above the rise of the road, and Madelon stood well aside to meet it, pressing in among the crackling icy bushes.

There was another blast of the horn, then a wild rush of sure-footed horses down the hill, and the coach was past, going towards Ware. Madelon had caught only a glimpse of the frost-white driver on the box, a man beside him shrugged up miserably in great-coat and comforter, with back rounded and head bent against the cold, and some chilled faces in the windows. Some of the passengers had come from Wolverton, ten miles past Kingston, and one might freeze to death on a long stage journey a day like that. There was, perhaps, less danger in a walk, but there was danger in that should the cold increase, and it did increase hourly. Madelon's feet grew more and more numb. She stamped them from time to time, but more from instinct than from any real appreciation of the discomfort they gave her. So wrought up was she with zeal that it seemed she might have set out to walk through a fiery furnace as soon as through this frozen waste, and perhaps have had her flesh consumed to ashes, with her soul still intent upon its one purpose. All thought of her own self, save as an instrument to save the life of the man she loved, was gone out of the girl. Jealousy was purged out of her; all resentment for faithlessness, all longing for possession were gone. She bore in her heart the greatest love of her life as she sped along down the frozen road to Kingston.

The last two miles of the way poor Madelon struggled hard to cover. She drew short, gasping breaths, as if she were on a high mountain-top. The cold strengthened as the daylight waned. The very air seemed frozen and resolved into a cutting diamond-dust of frost. Suddenly Madelon awoke to the fear that she could not walk much farther. She had eaten nothing since morning; the cold and fatigue were consuming her life as the flame consumes the wick of the lamp when the oil is lacking.

"I must get there!" she said to herself. She stamped her numb feet desperately. She beat herself pitilessly with her stiff hands. She set forth on a run towards Kingston, and quickened her blood a little in that way, although she panted and fairly gasped for breath.

She drew a sigh of relief when she gained the last rise in the road, and the town of Kingston lay before her a mile in the valley. It was growing dark and the village lights were coming out when she had passed the straggling farms and come into the little centre of the town where the stores, the meeting-houses, and the tavern were grouped.

The village main street looked almost deserted. There was only one sleigh in sight, drawn up in front of the store. The horse was well covered with a buffalo-skin and an old bed-quilt in addition, which his master's wife had doubtless provided on account of the terrible cold.

As Madelon reached the store a man came out with a molasses-jug in hand and arms clasping parcels, which he began stowing away under the seat of the sleigh. Madelon went up to him. "Can you tell me where Mr. Otis lives?" said she. She could scarcely enunciate. Her very tongue seemed stiff with the cold.

The man turned and stared at her with sharp blue eyes under red brows frost-white between his cap and twice-wound red tippet. "Hey?" he said, in a muffled voice.

"Can you tell me where Mr. Otis lives?"

"Otis?"

"Yes, sir."

"Which Otis d'ye mean? There's two Otises. D'ye mean Calvin Otis or Jim Otis?"

"He has a son that plays the fiddle," answered Madelon, faintly.

"Then it's Jim ye mean. He died last year. He had a son Jim that plays the fiddle. Lives down the road on the left-hand side, five houses below the meeting-house. House with three popple-trees in front—sets close to the road."

Madelon started, but the man's voice arrested her. "You look most froze," said he. "Hadn't ye better go in there an' warm up?" He pointed towards the store-windows with a rosy glow of light and warmth transfusing their thick layers of frost. "It's pipin' hot in there—warm ye all through in a minute. It's a terrible cold night. Old man in there, lived 'round these parts risin' eighty years, says he never knew sech a night. Better just step in there."

Madelon shook her head and started on.

"Where did ye come from?" called the man.

"Ware Centre," Madelon gasped out, as the freezing wind struck her.

"Good Lord! you don't mean to say you've walked risin' ten mile from Ware Centre a day like this!"

Madelon was gone, bending before the wind, without another word.

"Good Lord!" said the man, "a woman walkin' from Ware Centre this weather!" He stood staring after the girls' retreating figure; then he started to unblanket his horse. But he stopped and stared again, and finally went into the store to tell the news.

Madelon kept on as fast as she was able, but she was nearly spent. Her exultation of spirit might indeed survive fleshly exhaustion and perhaps in a measure overcome it, but it could not prevent it altogether. When she reached the fifth house below the white meeting-house, the house set close to the road, with three poplar-trees in front, she had just strength enough to stagger to the door and raise the knocker. Then she leaned against the door-post, and it was only with a fierce effort that she kept her grasp upon her consciousness. She did not seem to feel her body at all.



Chapter XI

Presently a bolt was shot and the door pushed open with an effort. It was little used, and there was ice against it. Then a man's face peered out irresolutely into the dusk. A knock upon the front door, upon a night like this, seemed so unlikely that he doubted if he had heard rightly.

"Anybody here?" he said. Then he saw the woman's figure propped stiffly against the door-post. "Who is it?" he asked, in a startled voice. "Is it you, Mrs. Lane?"

Madelon aroused herself. "I want to see Mr. Otis's son a minute if I can," she said, with a great effort. Then she raised her piteous eyes to the face before her, and realized dimly that it was the face of the young man who had taken her place at the ball, and sent her homeward to work all this misery on that dreadful night.

"I am Mr. Otis's son," returned the young man, wonderingly. "What"—then he gave a cry—"why, it is you!"

"I want—to—see you—a minute," said Madelon, and her voice sounded far away in her own ears.

The young man started. "Why, you're half frozen," he cried out, "and here I am keeping you standing out here! Come in."

Madelon shrank back. "No," she faltered, "I—only want to ask—"

But Jim Otis took her by the arm with gentle force, and she was so spent that she could but let him have his way, and lead her into the house and the warm living-room, staggering under his supporting clasp.

"Mother," called Jim Otis—"mother, come here, quick!" He placed Madelon tenderly on the settle, and his mother came hurriedly out of the pantry.

"What is it?" she asked. "What is the matter, Jim? Who was it knocked? Why, who's that?"

Madelon leaned back helplessly in the corner of the settle, her head hanging half unconsciously. The young man stooped over her and unfastened her cloak and hood. "Come here, quick, mother!" he cried, and his voice was as sweet with pity as a woman's. "This poor girl is half dead with the cold."

Mrs. Otis, large and fair-faced, with her soft, massive curves swathed in purple thibet, stared for a second in speechless wonder. "Who is it? How did she get here?" she whispered.

"Hush—I don't know. She's from Ware Centre. Her name's Hautville."

"Seems to me I've heard of her. What has she come here for, Jim?"

"Hush—I don't know. She'll hear you. Go and get something hot for her to drink. I saw her at the ball the other night. Go quick, mother."

"I'll get her some brandy cordial," said Mrs. Otis, with sudden alacrity. She needed time always to get her mental bearing thoroughly in any emergency, but action was prompt afterwards. She made a quick motion towards the cupboard, but Madelon aroused herself suddenly. Her senses had lapsed for a few minutes upon coming into the warm room. "Where am I?" she asked, in a bewildered way.

"In our house," replied Mrs. Otis, promptly. "Jim just brought you in, and it's lucky you come just as you did, for I don't know but you'd froze to death if you'd been out much longer. Now, I'll get you some of my brandy cordial, and that'll warm you right up. Did you come way over from Ware Centre this dreadful night?"

"Yes, ma'am," replied Madelon, with the dazed look still in her eyes. Mrs. Otis looked back on her way to the cupboard.

"Rode way over from Ware Centre in an open sleigh?" she said.

"No, ma'am; I walked."

Mrs. Otis stopped and looked at Madelon with a gasp, then at her son. "She's out of her head, I'm afraid," said she.

"You didn't really walk over from Ware Centre?" questioned Jim.

"Yes, I did," replied Madelon. She stood up with sudden decision. "I want to see you a minute," she said to Jim. Then she turned to Mrs. Otis. "I don't need anything to take," said she. "I was only a little dizzy for a minute when I came into this warm room. I feel better now. I only want to ask your son a question, then I must go home—"

Before Mrs. Otis could speak she asked the question with no preface.

"Didn't you see him give me the knife?" she cried out, with fiercely imploring eyes upon Jim Otis's face.

The young man turned deadly white. He looked at her and did not answer.

"Didn't you?" she repeated.

"What knife?" asked Jim Otis, slowly.

"You know what knife! The knife that my brother handed me when I started home from the ball—the knife that I stabbed Lot Gordon with. Tell me that you saw it, that you saw me take it, here before your mother, and then you must go to New Salem and testify, and set Burr Gordon free! He is in prison for murder, and I am guilty, and they will not believe it. You must tell them, and they will. You saw my brother give me that knife."

Still Jim Otis, with his white face, stood looking at her, and answered not a word. His mother, continually opening her mouth to speak, then shutting it, looked first at one, then at the other, with round, dilated eyes, turning her head and quivering all over her soft bulk, like some great agitated and softly feathered bird.

"Why don't you speak?" demanded Madelon.

"What is it you want me to say?" said Jim Otis, then, hesitatingly.

"Say? Say that you saw my brother Richard give me the knife that I did the deed with."

Jim Otis stood silent, with his pale, handsome face bent doggedly towards the floor.

"Say so! You saw it!"

Still Jim Otis did not speak, and Madelon pressed close to him, and thrust her agonized face before his. "Have mercy upon me and speak!" she groaned.

"Jim, what does she mean?" asked his mother, in a frightened whisper. "Is she out of her head?"

"No; hush, mother," replied Jim. Then he turned to the girl. "No," he said, with stern, defiant eyes upon her face, "I did not see your brother give you the knife."

"You did! I know you did!"

"I did not!"

"You did see him! You were looking at us when I went out!"

"I was tightening a string in the fiddle when you went out," said Jim Otis.

"You must have seen."

"I tell you I did not."

Madelon looked at him as if she would penetrate his soul, and he met her eyes fully.

"I did not see your brother give you the knife," he replied, with a steady, unflinching look at her; but a long shudder went over him as he spoke. The first deliberate lie of his whole life was Jim Otis telling, for he had seen Richard Hautville give his sister the knife.

Madelon believed his lie at last, and turned away. What with her sore exhaustion of body and this last disappointment her heart almost failed her. She went back to the settle for her cloak and her hood, and tied them on, while the others stood watching her, seemingly in a maze. She made for the door, but Jim Otis stopped her.

"You cannot go back to Ware Centre to-night," he said.

Madelon looked at him with proud determination, although she could scarce stand. "I must go," said she, and would have pressed past him, but he took hold of her arm.

"Mother," he said, "tell her she cannot go. There has been no such night as this for forty years, and it is dark now. To-morrow morning I will carry her home; but to-night, as she is, it is out of the question. Tell her so, mother."

Mrs. Otis gathered herself together then, and came forward and laid hold of Madelon's arm, and strove to pull her back towards the settle. "Come," said she, as if Madelon were a child—"come, that's a good girl. You stay with us till morning, and then my son shall hitch up and carry you home. I shouldn't dare to have him go way over to Ware Centre to-night, cold as 'tis. He ain't very tough. You stay here with us to-night, and don't worry anything about it. I don't know what you're talkin' about, an' I guess you don't—you are all wore out, poor child; but I guess there didn't nobody have any knife, and I guess he'll git out of prison pretty soon. You just take off your things, and I'll get some pillows out of the bedroom, and you lay down on the settle by the fire while I get some supper. The kettle's on now. And then I'll heat the warming-pan and get the spare-room bed as warm as toast, and mix you up a tumbler of hot brandy cordial, and then you drink it all down and get right into bed, and I'll tuck you up, and I guess you'll feel better in the morning, and things will look different."

"Let me go," Madelon said to Jim Otis.

"She mustn't go, mother," he said, never looking at Madelon at all, although he still held fast to her straining arm.

"Well," said Mrs. Otis, "You ain't no daughter of mine, and if you set out to go I suppose I ain't any right to hinder you. But there's one thing maybe you ain't thought of—I can't let my son take you 'way over to Ware Centre a night like this, nohow. He's all I've got now, and I can't have anything happen to him. He can't go with you, and there ain't any stable here, and there ain't a neighbor round here that will hitch up and carry you there to-night, and—I suppose you know, if you've got common-sense, that if you set out to walk there, the way you are, you don't stand much chance of gettin' there alive."

Madelon stared at her.

"I don't really know myself what you and my son have been talkin' about," continued Mrs. Otis, "but near's I can make out you think you've done something wrong, and somebody's in prison you want to get out. I suppose you've got sense enough to know that if you freeze to death going home to-night you can't do anything more to get him out. Then there's another thing—it's night. You can't do much to get him out anyway before morning. I don't believe they ever let folks out at night, and my son shall carry you over just as soon as it's fit in the morning, and you'll do just as much good as if you went to-night."

Still Madelon stood staring at her. Then presently she began unfastening her hood and cloak. "If you can keep me till morning I shall be obliged," she said, with a kind of stern gratitude.

"Stay just as well as not!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Jim, just take her things and lay 'em in the bedroom. Then you have her set right down close to the hearth, and get all warmed through, while I get supper."

Handsome young Jim Otis stood by with his brows knit moodily while Madelon Hautville removed her wraps, then took them over his arm, and conducted her to the warm seat in the hearth-corner which his mother designated.

In his heart he judged this girl whom he was defending to be guilty, yet was full of intensest admiration, and was sorely torn between the two and his own remorse over his false witnessing. "If I'm called into court and sworn on the Bible, I won't own up that I saw her take that knife," he muttered to himself, as he laid the red cloak and hood on the high feather-bed in his mother's room.

This handsome, stalwart young man, who had hitherto been considered full of a gay audacity where womenfolk were concerned, able to make almost any pretty girl flutter at his smile, was strangely abashed before this beautiful Madelon Hautville, stained, in his eyes, with crime. He brought in wood and mended the hearth fire; he moved about doing such household tasks as were allotted to his masculine hands, and scarcely let his eyes rest once upon the girl in the chimney-corner. He dreaded the sight of that beautiful face which gave him such a shock of pity and admiration and horror. Jim Otis's mind could not compass this new revelation of a woman, but he would not betray her even for her own pleading if he went down perjured to his grave. So valiant was he in her defence that he withstood her against her own self.

Madelon's mother had died when she was a little girl. She could not fairly remember that ever in her whole life she had been so tended and petted as she was that night by Jim Otis's mother. Kind indeed her father and her brothers had always been to her. They had watched over her with jealous fondness, and had taken all rougher tasks upon themselves, but the devotion of woman, which extends to all the minor details of life, she had never known.

She had never had a supper-table set out for her own especial pleasure with this and that dish to tempt her appetite, as Mrs. Otis set out hers that night. A dish of a fine and sublimated porridge did Mrs. Otis make for her—a porridge mixed with cream and sprinkled with nutmeg and fat plums. "I thought some hot porridge would do you good," said Mrs. Otis, when she sat the smoking bowl before Madelon. Then she whispered low, that her son, who was putting another stick on the fire before coming to table, might not hear, "It's the same kind of porridge I had after my son was born—with cream and plums in it. I used to think there never was anything so good." This porridge might well have possessed a flavor of the sweetest memories of motherhood to the older woman, but to the girl, wild with longing to be gone and carry out her purpose, manna from heaven would not have yielded its full measure of sweetness.

She would scarcely have eaten at all had not Jim Otis's mother remarked, as she watched her reluctant sips of the good porridge, "As I said just now, you ain't any daughter of mine, and I ain't any right to dictate, but if you want to get that man, whoever he is, out of prison, you'll have to eat enough to get some strength to do it."

Simply placid as Mrs. Otis looked, she had often wisdom enough to gain her ends by means of that shrewd finesse of government which appeals to the reason of others as applied to the furthering of their own desires.

Madelon after that swallowed her porridge almost greedily, and when supper was over went up-stairs to bed, following Mrs. Otis as readily as any meek young daughter of her own might have done. The spirit of resistance was laid for the time in this poor Madelon Hautville, but it had yielded, after all, more to the will of her own reason than to Jim Otis's mother or the weariness of her own flesh.

When Mrs. Otis came down-stairs she was flushed with pleasant motherly victory. "She's drunk all that hot cordial," she said to her son, "every drop of it, and I've tucked her into bed with the extra comfortables over her, an' she eat quite a good supper, an' I told her to go right to sleep, and I guess she will."

"If she don't she'll be down sick," said Jim, sternly. He sat by the fire, tuning his fiddle.

"She can't hear your fiddle so it'll keep her awake, can she?" asked Mrs. Otis, anxiously.

"Of course she can't, up in the front chamber, with all the doors shut. Wouldn't have touched it if she could."

"Well, I don't s'pose she can. Jim—"

Jim twanged a string. "What is it, mother?"

"I don't want to have you think I'm interferin', Jim. I know you're grown-up now, and I know there's things a young man might not want to tell his mother till he gets ready, but I do kind of want to know one thing, Jim."

Jim tightened the G string. He bent his face low over his violin. "I don't know as I've ever kept much back from you, mother," he said, soberly.

"No, I know you ain't, Jim; you've always told more to your mother than most boys. But I didn't just know but this might be something you hadn't got ready to speak about."

"What is it you want to know, mother?"

"Jim, is that your girl?"

Jim laughed a little, although his eyes were grave; he raise the fiddle to his shoulder. "Lord, no, mother. I wouldn't get a girl without asking you."

"I didn't know but you might have seen her over to Ware when you've been there to parties, and not said anything."

"I never saw her but that once, mother." Jim struck up "Kinloch of Kinloch," but he played softly, lest by any chance Madelon, aloft in her chamber, might hear.

"She's handsome as a picture," said his mother. "Who is it that's in prison, Jim?"

"A young man by the name of Gordon."

"What for?"

"They think he stabbed his cousin."

"My sakes! Do you s'pose he did, Jim?"

"I don't know, mother. I wasn't there."

"I s'pose the young man that did it is this girl's beau, and that's why she's so crazy to get him out."

Jim played the merry measure softly, and made no reply.

His mother stood before him quivering with curiosity, which she restrained lest it defeat its own ends. She had learned early that too impetuous feminine questioning is apt to strike a dead-wall in the masculine mind.

"I didn't quite understand what she meant about a knife," she ventured, with an eager glance at her son. He played a little louder, as if he did not hear.

"I s'pose she come here, walked all that way from Ware Centre, this dreadful night, 'cause she thought you could help to get her young man out of prison."

Jim nodded as he fiddled.

"But I can't see how your seein' her brother give her a knife could do any good. Of course that sweet, pretty girl didn't do it herself. But you didn't see her brother give her the knife, Jim?"

"Didn't you hear me say I didn't?" replied Jim, with sudden force. "Don't let's talk any more about it, mother. It's a dreadful piece of work, anyway. I don't half know what it means myself. That poor girl is 'most crazy because that fellow is in prison. That's why she came on this wild-goose chase after me. You can't tell anything by what she says."

"Wasn't he a nice kind of a fellow before this happened, Jim?"

"No, he was a scamp," said Jim Otis, angrily. He struck into the "Fisher's Hornpipe" with fury, regardless of the girl up-stairs.

"Land sakes, Jim, don't fiddle quite so loud as that—I'm dreadful afraid she'll hear," said his mother. "I shouldn't thought a girl that looks as sweet as she does would ever have taken up with a scamp."

"The sweetest girls are the worst fools," answered Jim, bitterly, but he obeyed his mother and played less loudly. The shadows of the winter night might have footed it to the soft measures of the hornpipe which Jim Otis played on his fiddle. His mother could scarcely hear it in the pantry when she went in there to set away the supper dishes. She shut the door every time, lest her son should feel the icy air from the fireless closet. She had always a belief that Jim was delicate, and took a certain pride in it, although she could not have told why.

Everything that was in the least likely to freeze to its injury had to be removed from the cold pantry and set on the hearth that bitter night. It was quite a while before her soft, heavy pattering, which jarred the house when she stepped on certain parts of the floor, ceased, and she took her knitting-work and sat down in her rocking-chair opposite her son.

Jim continued to fiddle, touching the strings as if his fingers were muffled with down. The wind whistled more loudly than his fiddle; it had increased, and the cold with it. Some of Mrs. Otis's crocks froze on the hearth that night. No such cold had been known in Vermont for years. The frost on the window-panes thickened—the light of the full moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds like those on a straining ship at sea. The old timbers cracked now and then with a report like a pistol. "It's a dreadful night," said Mrs. Otis, and as she spoke the returning wind struck the house, and she gasped as if it had in truth taken her breath away.

A few minutes before nine o'clock Mrs. Otis put away her knitting-work and got the great Bible off the desk. "Stop fiddling now, Jim," she said, solemnly. Mrs. Otis spoke with more direct authority in religious matters than in others. She felt herself well backed by the spiritual law. Jim finished the tune he was playing and lowered his fiddle from his shoulder. His mother found the place in the Bible, and the holy words were on her tongue when there was a sharp clash of sleigh-bells close under the window.

"Somebody's drove into the yard!" cried Mrs. Otis. "Who do you s'pose 'tis this time of night?"

"Hullo!" shouted a man's voice, hoarsely, and Jim shouted "Hullo!" in response, and started towards the door.

"Ask who's there before you open the door," said the mother, anxiously. She stood listening a moment after Jim had gone; then she caught her shawl from a peg, put it over her head, and followed him—she was so afraid some harm would come to her son.

The outer door was open, and before it was drawn up a sleigh and a great, high-shouldered, snorting and pawing horse. In the sleigh was a man muffled in furs like an Eskimo, leaning out and questioning Jim.

"When did she come?" asked the man.

"About five o'clock," answered Jim.

Then Mrs. Otis understood that they were talking about the girl in her spare-chamber, and she interposed, standing in the doorway. "She was just about tuckered out, what with the cold and that awful tramp," said she. "She most ought to have rode over." Mrs. Otis's voice was soft and conciliatory.

"We didn't know she was coming," replied the man in the sleigh, courteously, "or we should not have let her walk so far on such a day."

"Be you her brother?" questioned Mrs. Otis.

"Yes. I'm her brother Eugene."

"And you drove over to see where she was?"

"Yes; we've been very anxious."

"Well, you can be easy about her for to-night," said Mrs. Otis. "She's tucked up nice and warm in my spare-chamber bed, and I give her a tumbler of my brandy cordial, and I guess she's sound asleep."

"He wants to take her home to-night, mother," said Jim, and there was a curious appeal in his tone.

Mrs. Otis, standing there on the door-step in the freezing moonlight, turned quickly upon the man in the sleigh, and all the soft conciliation was gone from her voice. "You ain't plannin' to take that girl way home to Ware Centre to-night?" said she.

"Father sent me for her," replied Eugene Hautville.

"Well, she ain't goin' a step!"

"Her father will expect me to bring her," said Eugene, with his unfailing courtesy. "He has been very anxious. I had hard work to find where she was. My father won't be satisfied if I come home without her."

"That girl ain't going out of this house to-night!"

"I've got a bearskin here to wrap her up in. She is used to being out in all weathers," persisted Eugene, gently.

"She can't go. Pull her out of a warm bed such a night as this! If you try to take that poor child out to-night I'll stand in my spare-chamber door, and you'll have to walk over me to do it—and my son won't see his mother hurt, I guess!"

Jim Otis stepped closer to the sleigh and spoke to Eugene Hautville in a low voice.

"Well," said Eugene, slowly, "maybe you're right, Otis. I don't know what father will say, but if she was as used up as you tell for, I don't know as 'tis safe. It is an awful night."

"I guess it ain't safe, and she ain't going," maintained Mrs. Otis from the door-step.

Then Eugene Hautville bent well out of his sleigh and asked a question in the other man's ear.

"Yes, she did," replied Jim Otis.

"The poor girl is crazy over it," said Eugene. He and Jim talked for a few moments, but Mrs. Otis, straining her ears on the door-step, could not hear.

Suddenly Jim said, quite distinctly, "She wanted to know if I saw him give her the knife."

There was a pause; then Eugene Hautville asked, in a voice with which he might have addressed a judge of his life and death, "Did you?"

"No," said Jim Otis.



Chapter XII

The next morning there took place in a few hours a great change in the temperature. It moderated rapidly. The frost on the windows and the ice-ridges in the roads did not soften yet, since the sun was overcast by heavy clouds, but the terrible rigor and tension of the cold was relaxed, and men could breathe without constraint. At eight o'clock, when Jim Otis and Madelon started for Ware Centre, there was a white film of fallen snow over the distant hills and scattering flakes drove in advance of the storm.

A mile out of Kingston it snowed hard. "Hadn't you better have that extra shawl mother put in over your shoulders?" Jim Otis suggested.

But Madelon shook her head. "The snow won't hurt me," she said. She sat up straight in the sleigh, and there was a look in her eyes, fixed ahead on the white drive of the storm, as if her spirit were out-speeding her body. She had her strength again that morning. She had slept and eaten. She had submitted to the exigencies of life that she might gain power to resist them again.

Jim Otis drove a stout little mare with a good wind for speed, but she had not the stride of David Hautville's great roan. Moreover, after the first stretch, she slacked on the hills and fell into walks in the lonely reaches, almost as if she had learned it in a lesson. Many a pretty girl, flushing sweetly under Jim Otis's gay smile, and perhaps under his caressing arm, had ridden behind that little canny mare, who learned well the meaning of the careless rein along the woodland roads.

However, to-day there was no careless rein. At the first slack Madelon herself had reached the whip and touched the gently ambling neck. "She has more speed in her than this," said she, shortly.

"She hasn't been driven for two days, either," asserted Jim Otis. "Wake up, Molly!" He took the whip himself and flourished it with a quick little snap over her back. In truth, Jim Otis was as anxious to be at this journey's end as Madelon, for he feared every minute lest she should ask him again if he had seen her take the knife, and that he would again have to oppose falsehood to her frantic pleading. But Madelon had believed him. She did not beg him again for his evidence. She sat still at his side with a strained look in her black eyes, and they rode in silence, with the storm heaping its white flakes on their shoulders, until they reached Ware Centre.

Then Madelon turned quickly to Jim Otis. "Don't drive to my home," said she; "I would rather not go home yet. Drive to Burr Gordon's house, please. I want to see his mother. Don't turn—keep straight on."

"Yes, I know where he lives," said Jim, soberly. He drove very slowly. They were drawing near the turn in the road. "See here," he said, suddenly, "don't you think you'd better go home now?" He spoke with nothing of the half-gay, half-caressing authority with which he was wont to turn a pretty girl to his mind, but timidly rather, and kept his eyes fixed on the mare's nodding head, hooded with snow.

"No, I must see Burr's mother," replied Madelon.

"But your folks will be expecting you, won't they?" persisted Jim Otis. He felt that he had a duty of loyalty towards this desperate girl's father and brothers as well as to herself. He had promised Eugene Hautville to bring her home this morning, and who could tell where she might wander and when she might return if he left her now?

He still did not look at Madelon as he spoke, but he felt her turn and fasten her eyes upon his face, and somehow they compelled his. He raised them and saw her beautiful face full of a scorn of passion which he might die and never know in himself.

"What do you think that is to me," said she, "when I've got to save his life? If you do not wish to carry me farther, go back. I will walk."

"I will take you wherever you wish," returned Jim Otis, and touched up the mare, and neither spoke again until they reached Burr Gordon's house, high on its three terraces, with Lot Gordon's opposite. Then Jim halted his mare in the road before it, and would have alighted to assist Madelon, but she sprang out before him. "I am much obliged to you and your mother for what you have done for me," said she, and turned with a swing of her red cloak, and was skimming up the terraces like a red-winged bird.

As for Jim Otis, he slewed his sleigh about recklessly, and shook the whip over the little mare, and drove up the road. When he reached the turn which he knew led to the Hautville house he drew rein, and sat pondering in his sleigh for a few minutes. He was in doubt whether he should inform Eugene Hautville of his sister's whereabouts or not. Finally he spoke to the mare, and continued on his way to Kingston.

The terraces which Madelon mounted were all covered with the gathering snow. When she reached the last the door was opened, and Burr Gordon's mother, Elvira, stood there. "I am sorry there's so much snow for you to wade through," said she, in a sweet, quiet voice.

"I don't mind it, thank you," replied Madelon, harshly. She felt incensed with this mother of Burr's, who came to the door and greeted her as if she were an ordinary caller, and her son were not in prison.

"You had better shake it off your skirts or you'll take cold," said Mrs. Gordon.

"I am not afraid," returned Madelon. She gave her skirts a careless flirt and entered the door with the snow still clinging to her.

"If you will wait a moment," said Mrs. Gordon, "I will get a broom and brush the snow from you before it melts. Then you won't take cold."

"I don't care to have you, thank you," said Madelon. Mrs. Gordon said no more, but led the way to the sitting-room. She was a tall, slender woman with the face of a saint, long and pale, and full of gentle melancholy, with large, meek-lidded blue eyes and patiently compressed lips. She had a habit of folding her long hands always before her, whether she walked or sat, and she moved with sinuous wavings of her widow-bombazine.