"We will rest ourselves a little now, for we shall need all our strength and nerve. One more b-b-burst of speed and we shall overhaul them. Have you got your wind, Romeo? Come then, let us be off!"

Once more he sprang into the saddle, the restive horse pawing the ground and leaping forward before he was seated. His master held him back while they ascended the long slope of the hill, and stopped him as they gained its summit.

The descent was a gradual one, down into a beautiful valley. For a mile or two the road was perfectly straight and the rider, shading his eyes, glanced along it. In the distance a moving object attracted his attention, and as he gazed at it, long and strainingly, the terrible smile once more wreathed his white lips.

He opened the holsters, drew out the pistols, examined them carefully, replaced them, felt of the stirrup straps, tightened the girth, settled himself in the saddle and shouted "Go!"

The command electrified the horse, and he dashed forward again faster than ever. As they tore down the slope of the hill, it occurred to the doctor that he had not formed any definite plan as to what he should do to Pepeeta! "Shall I kill her, also?" he asked himself.

The thought sent a shudder through him and he instinctively pulled on the bridle.

"My heart will tell me," he cried aloud, and loosened the reins of his horse and of his passions. The very semblance of humanity seemed to be suddenly obliterated from his countenance. This was no longer a man, but an agent of destruction rushing like a missile projected from a cannon. There were only two things present to his consciousness—the carriage upon which he was swiftly gaining, and the fierce smiting of the horse's hoofs which seemed to be echoing the cries of his heart for vengeance. On he swept, nearer, nearer, nearer. He was now within hailing distance, and his brain reeled; he forgot his discretion and his plan.

"Halt," he screamed, in a voice that cut the silent air like a knife.

A face appeared above the top of the buggy, and looked back. It was his foe.

With a howl of rage, he snatched a pistol from the holster and fired. The bullet went wide of the mark and the next instant he saw the whip-lash cut the air and descend on the flank of the startled mare. The buggy lurched forward, and for an instant drew rapidly away. Overwhelmed by the fear that he might be baffled in his vengeance, he drew the other pistol and fired again more wide of the mark than before.

With a wild oath he flung the smoking weapons into the road, and again drove the spurs into the steaming sides of his horse. There could be no doubt as to the result of the chase after that. The half-maddened animal was overhauling the fugitives perceptibly at every enormous stride, and in a few moments more shot by the buggy and up to the head of the terrified mare. As he did so, his rider reached out his left hand and caught the mare by her bridle, reined up his own horse and threw both of the animals back upon their haunches.

In another instant the two men stood confronting each other on the road, the quack black and terrible, the Quaker white and calm. Not a word was spoken, and like two wild beasts emerging from a jungle they sprang at each other's throats. They were oddly, but not unequally, matched, for while the doctor was short, thick-set and muscular, but clumsy and awkward like a bear, David was tall and slim, but lithe and sinewy as a panther. Locked in each other's arms, they seemed like a single hideous monster in some sort of convulsion.

As it was impossible for them in this deadly embrace to strike, they wrestled rather than fought, and bit with teeth and tore with hands with equal ferocity.

At the instant when the two infuriated men seized each other in this deadly grip, Pepeeta fainted, while the terrified mare backed the buggy into the bushes by the roadside. Romeo, snorting and pawing the ground, approached the combatants, snuffed at them a moment as if profoundly concerned at their strange maneuvers, then, turning away, began to crop the rich blue grass in entire indifference to the results of this mad quarrel between two foolish men.

The combatants surged and swayed back and forth along the dusty road, tripping and stumbling in vain efforts to throw each other to the ground. Their danger lent them strength, and their hatred skill. At last, after protracted efforts, they fell and rolled over and over, now one on top, now the other. Suddenly and as if by a single impulse changing their tactics, their right hands unclasped and began to feel each for the other's throat. A sudden slip of David's hold permitted the doctor to turn him over, and sprawling across his breast he pinioned him to the earth. His great hand stole toward the throat of his prostrate foe and fastened upon it with the grip of an iron vise.

The beautiful face turned pale, then grew purple. This would have been the last moment in the life of the Quaker had not his right hand, convulsively clawing the road, touched a piece of broken rock. It was as if a life-line had swung up against the hand of a drowning man.

Through the body which had seemed to be emptied of all its resources, a tide of reserve energy swelled, under the impulse of which the exhausted youth untwisted the grip of the iron hand, flung off the heavy body, mounted upon it, crowded the great head with its matted hair and staring eyes down into the dust, seized the stone with his right hand, raised it, and struck.

The effect of the blow was twofold—paralyzing the brain of the smitten and the arm of the smiter. Across the low forehead of the quack it left a great gaping wound like a bloody mouth. A death-like pallor spread itself over his countenance, the lids dropped back and left the eyes staring hideously up into the face above them.

David's arm, spasmodically uplifted for a second blow, was suspended in air. He did not move for a long time; and when at length his scattered senses began to return he threw down the stone, rose to his feet and exclaimed in accents of terror, "My God! I have killed him."

He could not overcome the fascination of the lifeless face and wide-staring eyes. They drew him towards them; he stooped down and felt for the pulse, which was imperceptible; laid his hand upon the heart, but could not feel it beat; he raised an arm, and it fell back limp and lifeless.

Suddenly one elemental passion gave place to another. Horror had displaced anger, and now in its turn gave way to the instinct of self-preservation. He looked toward the carriage and saw that Pepeeta had fallen into a swoon. "Perhaps she has not seen what has happened," he said to himself, and a cunning smile lit up his pale face.

Stooping down, he seized the loathsome object lying there in the dust of the road and dragged it off into the thick shrubbery. Stumbling along, he came to a hollow made by the roots of an upturned tree. Into this he flung the thing, hastily; covered it with moss and leaves, and stood staring stupidly at the rude sepulchre. He experienced a momentary feeling of relief that the hideous object was out of sight; but the consciousness of his guilt and his danger soon surged back upon him like a flood. In such moments the mind works wildly, like a clock with a broken spring, but sometimes with an astonishing accuracy and wisdom.

It occurred to him that if he left the body where it was and it should be eventually discovered, it would afford the gravest suspicions of foul play; but that if he dragged it back again to the road and laid it with its face in the dust, against the rock with which the deed was done, it might pass for an accident.

Once more that hideous smile of cunning lit up the face which in these few moments had undergone a mysterious deterioration. He hastily removed the heap of rubbish, shuddered as he saw the loathsome thing once more exposed to view, but seized it, dragged it back, and placed it with consummate art in the position which his criminal prescience had suggested.

As it lay there in the road nothing could have seemed more natural than that it had fallen from the horse; he felt another momentary relief from terror, in which he cunningly conceived a still more sagacious plan, on noticing Romeo. They were the best of friends; it was easy to catch him. He did so, removed the saddle, broke the girth and placed it near the prostrate figure of the quack. Nothing could have more perfectly resembled an accident. An adept in crime could not have performed this task with finer skill, and he was free now to turn to the rest of the work that he must do to conceal this ghastly deed.

Approaching the buggy, he found to his immense relief that Pepeeta was still unconscious. With swift and silent movements he freed the mare, led her out into the road and drove hurriedly away.

The wood through which they were passing was wide and somber. The shadows of the evening had already begun to creep up the tree-trunks and lurk gloomily among the branches. Plaintive bird songs were heard from the treetops, and among them those of the mourning dove, whose solemn, funereal note sent shudders through the heart of the trembling fugitive.

But all had gone successfully so far, and he actually began to cherish hope that he would escape detection. There still remained, however, the uneasy fear that Pepeeta herself had been a witness of the deed. Horrible as was his own consciousness of his crime, he dared to hope that he could stand it, if only she did not know! He dreaded to have her waken, and yet it seemed as if he could not endure the suspense until he found whether she had seen the deed or not.

Without trying to rouse her, he drove rapidly forward, and just as he emerged from the wood came to another brook, so similar to the one by the side of which the struggle had occurred, that he conceived the idea of stopping by its side and awakening Pepeeta from her stupor there. "She will not notice the difference," he said to himself; "and if she did not witness the fatal blow I can persuade her that I overpowered the doctor and forced him to return while she was in her swoon."

Stopping the horse, he lifted her inanimate form from the carriage, bore it to the side of the brook, laid it gently upon the bank and dashed a handful of the cold water into her white face. She gasped, opened her eyes, and, sitting up, looked about her with an expression of terror.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Do you not remember? You are here in the wood where the doctor overtook us," he replied.

"And where is he?"

"He has returned."

"Has something dreadful happened?"

"Nothing."

"But I saw you clench with each other, and it was awful! What happened then? I must have fainted. Did I?"

"Yes, you fainted. Were you so frightened?"

"Oh, terribly! I thought that you would kill each other! It was horrible, horrible! But where is he now?"

"He has returned."

"Returned? Do you mean that he has gone back without me? How did you persuade him to do that?"

"How did I persuade him? Ha! ha! I persuaded him with my fists. You should have seen me, Pepeeta! Are you quite sure that you did not see me? I should like you to know what a coward he was at last, and how he went home like a whipped puppy."

"But did he acknowledge that he had deceived me?"

"He did indeed, upon his knees."

"And do you think he has gone, never to return?"

"Yes, he has gone, never to return," he answered, shuddering at the double meaning of his words. "He made his confession and relinquished his claim, and I made him swear that he would renounce you forever. And so we have nothing to do but forget him and be happy. Are you feeling better now?"

"Yes, I am better; but I am not well; I cannot shake it off. It seems too dreadful to have been real. And yet how much better it is than if one of you had been killed! Oh! I wish I could stop seeing it" (putting her hands over her eyes). "Let us go! Let us leave this gloomy wood. Let us get out into the sunshine. See! It is getting dark. We must not stay here any longer."

"Yes, let us go," he said, rising, lifting her gently from the ground and leading her back to the buggy in which they took their seats and drove rapidly forward.

In a few moments they emerged from the forest. The sun was still a little way above the horizon; its cheerful beams partially restored Pepeeta's spirits, and David felt a momentary pleasure as he saw a slight smile upon her pale countenance.

"Do you feel happier now?" he said.

"Yes, a little," she answered, looking into his face with eyes suffused with tears. "And I am so thankful that you are safe!"

"And so you fainted before we fell?" he asked, compelled to reassure himself.

"Did you fall?" she said, trembling again and laying her hand upon his arm.

"There, there," he answered gently; "I ought not to have asked you. We must never allude to it again. We must forget it. Will you try?"

"Yes, I will try, but it is hard. It belongs to the past, and we must live in the present and in the future. I will try. I love you so, and I am so thankful that you are safe." As she said this, she took his hand in both of hers and pressed it to her breast.

This tender caress produced a revulsion in his heart and he shuddered. Pepeeta observed it. "What makes you tremble so?" she asked.

"Nothing," he answered, regaining his self-control. "It is only that I have been very angry, and I cannot recover from it at once."

"No wonder," she said, taking his hand again and kissing it.

In the distance they saw the steeple of a church. "Look," said David, "there must be a village near. We will top and rest here to-night, and in the morning we will push on toward New Orleans and forget the past."

They rode in silence. Pepeeta's thoughts were full of gladness; and David's full of agony—they rushed tumultuously back and forth through his mind like contrary winds through a forest.

"Was it not enough that I should be an Adam, and fall? Must I also become a Cain and go forth with the brand of a murderer on my forehead?" he kept saying to himself.

His life seemed destined to reproduce that whole series of archetypal experiences, whose records make the Hebrew Scriptures the inspired mirror of human life.



CHAPTER XVIII.

A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND

"That is the bitterest of all,—to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing!"—Daniel Deronda.

The morning after the fight David and Pepeeta hurried on to Louisville, and from there took a steamer to New Orleans.

However hard it is to find stepping-stones when one wishes to rise, those by which he can descend have been skilfully planted at every stage of life's journey, and Satanic ingenuity could not have devised an instrument better fitted to complete the destruction of the young mystic's moral nature than a Mississippi steamboat, such as he found lying at the wharf. He had been subjected to the fascination of love, now he was to be tried by that of money. It is by a series of such consecutive assaults upon every avenue of approach to the soul that it is at last reduced to ruin.

Pepeeta was radiant with joy as they embarked. "How happy I am!" she cried. "It seems as if I had left my old life and the old world behind me!"

"And I am happy to see you glad," answered the wretched youth, whose heart lay in his bosom like lead and whose conscience was writhing with a torture of whose like he had never even dreamed. They embarked unknown and unobserved; but as soon as the first confusion had passed, their singular beauty and unusual appearance made them the cynosure of every eye.

"Who is that splendid fellow?" women asked each other, as David passed with Pepeeta on his arm, while under their breaths men swore that his companion was the loveliest woman who had ever set foot on a Mississippi steamer.

The pilot forgot to turn his wheel and the stevedores to put out the gang plank when she stood looking at them. Love, and her freedom, had transfigured her. She was radiant with health, happiness and hope, and entered into the novelty and excitement of this floating world with the ardor of a child.

All was gaiety and animation oh board the vessel. People from countries widely separated mingled with each other and chatted with the greatest freedom on every subject of human interest. Acquaintances were made without the formality of an introduction, and it was not long before the two adventurers were drawn into conversation.

"I have traveled all over the world," said a gentleman of foreign air, "but I have never seen anything so picturesque as this boat. Look at the variegated colors and styles of these costumes, at the manifold types of countenance, at the blending of races—black and white and red! Listen to the discordant but altogether charming sounds, the ringing of the great bell, the roar of the whistle, the splash of the paddlewheels, the songs of the negroes, and the clatter of dishes in the cabins! It is a hurly-burly of noise! Then what varied scenery, what constant excitement at the landing, what a hodge-podge, a pot-pourri of merchandise! There is nothing like it in the world."

"Wait until you see a race with another steamer," said an officious Yankee, who rejoiced in a knowledge which frequent trips had given him.

"Are they exciting?" asked the foreigner.

"Well I should say! I have seen horse races and prize fights in my day, but I never ran against anything that shook up my nerves like a race between two of these river boats! Every pound of steam is crowded on, the engines groan like imprisoned devils, a darkey sits on the safety valve, the stokers jam the furnaces, the passengers crowd the gunwales, everybody yells at the top of his voice until pandemonium is mere silence compared to it! And then the betting! Lord, you never saw betting if you never saw a river race."

"They bet, do they?"

"Bet? They don't do anything else! Just got on at Louisville? Oh! well, you'll see sights in the cabin to-night that will open your eyes. Isn't that so?" he asked, turning to a southern planter who had been edging his way toward Pepeeta.

"Reckon the gentleman'll see a little gambling, sah, if that's what you refeh to. I've heard those that ought to know say that a Mississippi river boat is the toughest spot on top of earth for little games of pokah and that soht of thing, sah. 'Spect the gentleman can be accommodated if he likes a lively game of chance."

"I don't expect to be surprised in that line," the foreigner said, with the air of one who knew a thing or two; "for I have been in Monte Carlo, Carlsbad and every famous gambling place in Europe."

"Well, sah, I don't know; I have never been in those places myself, but I have heard those who have say that what they play there is mere 'penny ante' to what goes on in one of these yere Mississippi boats. Like a little game now and then myself, sah. Glad to have you join me."

While these men and others pretended to address their remarks to David or to each other, their free glances were more and more directed to Pepeeta who began to be embarrassed by them and gently drew David away to more retired places. He went with her reluctantly, for he was in need of excitement. The thought of his crime was constantly agitating his heart, the prostrate form of the doctor with the bloody wound on his forehead was never absent from his mind, and through all the ceaseless rumble around him he could hear the dull thud of the stone upon the hard skull. The efforts which he made to throw off these horrible weights that crushed him were like those of a man awakening from a nightmare. He scarcely dared to speak for fear of uttering words which would betray him and which seemed to tremble on his lips. Had he been on shore he would have fled to the solitude of a forest; but here he was resistlessly impelled to that other solitude—a crowd. The necessity of being gay with his beautiful bride and of concealing every trace of his terror and remorse taxed his resources to their utmost limit, and in his nervousness he kept Pepeeta moving with him all day long. At its close she was completely exhausted, and retired early to her stateroom. Freed from her company and craving relief from thought, David made his way straight to the gambling tables where the nightly games were in full swing.

The claim of the southerner that the excitement at those tables, when the river traffic was at its height, had never been surpassed in the history of games of chance, was no exaggeration. Not a semblance of restraint was put upon the players, and experts from all over the world gathered to pluck the exhaustless supply of victims, as buzzards assemble to feed on carrion. Fortunes were made and lost in a night. Men sat down to play worth thousands of dollars, and rose paupers! They staked and lost their money, their slaves, their business and their homes. In the wild frenzy which such misfortunes kindle the most shocking crimes were committed, but the criminals were never called to account, for the law was powerless.

What the fugitive sought was diversion, and he found it! Tragedies became commonplace in those cabins. Men crowded into single hours the experience and excitement of months. It was this very night that an encounter occurred which is still a tradition on the river.

An old planter approached a table where his son, who did not know of his father's presence on the boat, was playing. He stood in the background and watched a gambler strip the boy of his last penny, and when the young fellow rose from his chair, white as a sheet, he turned to look into the whiter face of his father. The enraged parent did not speak a word, but took the seat left vacant by the boy and commenced playing. Rage at the financial loss, mortification at the boy's defeat, and old scores to be settled with this very gambler, conspired to rouse him to a frenzy. His terrible earnestness paralyzed the dealer, who seemed to form some premonition of a tragic termination and lost his nerve. In a little while, in the presence of a crowd of excited spectators, the father won back the exact amount his son had lost, and then rising from his chair sprang at the gambler, seized him, dragged him from the cabin and flung him into the river.

Terrible as was the furor which this tragedy aroused, it subsided almost as soon as the ripples of the water which closed over the drowning man, and the players returned to their games as if nothing had happened.

In the months which they had spent together the quack had indoctrinated David into all the best-known secrets of this vice, and besides this, had familiarized him with the use of a certain "hold out" of his own invention, with which he had achieved incredible results and which was new to the fraternity of the river. Having watched the players for a long time, David convinced himself that he could employ this trick successfully, and took his place at the table.

The young man's nerves were tested by the circumstances in which he found himself, if nerves are tested to tension anywhere, for he faced the most experienced masters of the craft who could be found anywhere in the world, and staked not only his little fortune, but his existence, for, as he had just seen, these determined and reckless men thought no more of taking life than of taking money.

David felt his way along with a coolness that astonished himself, and his very first experiment with the delicate apparatus concealed in his sleeve was such a brilliant triumph that he saw it was undetected. With a strengthened confidence, he made the stakes larger and larger, and his winnings increased so rapidly as to make him the center of attention. The crowd swarmed round the table. The spectators became breathless. The gamblers were first astonished, then bewildered. As their nerve failed them, David's assurance increased, and when day broke ten thousand dollars lay upon the table before him as the result of his skilful and desperate efforts.

Their loss astonished and enraged the gamblers to such a degree that with a preconcerted signal they sprang at their opponent, determined to regain their money by violence. The move was not unexpected, nor was he unprepared. He fought as he had played, and so won the sympathies of the bystanders that in an instant there was a general melee in which he was helped to escape with the winnings.

He was the hero of the trip, and a career had opened before him. Satellites began to circle around him and to solicit his friendship and patronage.

When he disembarked at New Orleans he had already entered into a partnership with one of the most notable members of the gambling fraternity, and purchased an interest in one of those "palaces" where games of chance attracted and destroyed their thousands.

The newspapers made the gay throngs of that gayest of all cities familiar with the incidents of David's advent. He and Pepeeta became the talk of the town. They rented a fashionable house, and swung out into the current of the mad life of the metropolis of the South.

For a little while this excitement and glory softened the pain in the heart of the man who believed himself to be a murderer and encouraged him to hope that it might eventually pass away. He played recklessly but successfully, for he was a transient favorite of the fickle goddess. When gambling lost its power to drown the voice of conscience, there was the race, the play and the wine cup! To each of them appealing in turn, he went whirling madly around the outer circles of the great maelstrom in which so many brilliant youths were swallowed in those ante-bellum days.



CHAPTER XIX.

ALIENATION

"There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world."—Emerson.

For two years David and Pepeeta lived together in New Orleans. They were years full of import, and of trouble. A baby came to them, lingered a few weeks, and then died.

David pursued the occupation he had chosen, with the vicissitudes of fortune usually attending the votaries of games of chance, and the moral and spiritual deterioration which they invariably develop.

Pepeeta altered strangely. Her bloom disappeared and an expression of sadness became habitual on her face. She was surrounded by luxuries of every kind, but they did not give her peace. With an ambition which never flagged she sought self improvement, and attained it to a remarkable degree. Endowed with an inherited aptitude for culture, she read and studied books, observed and imitated elegant manners, and rapidly absorbed the best elements of such higher life as she had access to, until her natural beauty and charm were wonderfully enhanced. Yet she was not happy, for her life with David had brought her nothing but surprise and disappointment; something had come between them, she knew not what.

"Dey des growed apaht," said the old negro "mammy," who was with them during those two years. "Seemed to des tech each other like mahbles at a single point, stade of meltin' togedder lak two drops of watah runnin' down a window pane. Mars' David, he done went he own way, drinkin', gamblin' and cussin'; he lak a madman when he baby die. He seem skeered when he see Miss Pepeeta. She look at him wid her big black eyes full of wonder and s'prise, stretch out her li'l han's, and when he run away or struck her, she des go out to the li'l baby's grave, creeping along lak a shadder through the gyahden, soft lak and still. Dar she des set down all alone and sigh lak de breeze in de ole pine tree. Some days she gone away all alone and de brack folks say she wanner all aroun' in de woods. When Sunday come, she des slip into de churches lak a li'l mouse and nibble up de gospel crumbs and den run away before de priests cotch her. Dark days dose, in de ole Ballantrae mansion! And den come de night when dey pahted. You done heah about dat?"

The old colored mammy was right. "They just grew apart," as it was inevitable that they should. Perfect self-manifestation is the true principle and law of love, and when a guilty secret comes between two lovers, suspicion and fear inevitably result. They become incomprehensible to each other.

David's secret preyed upon him night and day like that insect which, having once entered the brain of an elk, gnaws ceaselessly at it until the miserable victim's last breath is drawn. While he retained for Pepeeta a devotion which tormented him with its intensity, his guilt made him tremble in her presence. He shuddered when he approached her, like a worshiper who enters a shrine with a stolen offering. Instead of calming and soothing him as she would have done had he only suffered some misfortune instead of committing a sin, she filled him with an unendurable agitation. If the nerves are diseased, a flute can rasp them as terribly as a file.

As for Pepeeta, she must have been bewildered by this phenomenon which she could not possibly comprehend, for while she saw her lover swayed from his orbit she could not see the planet which produced the disturbance. Feeling that he had not given her his full confidence she resented his distrust, and as his melancholy and irritability increased, withdrew more and more into herself, and in that solitude sought the companionship of God.

It was a frightful discipline; but she was sanctified by it.

Day by day she became more patient, gentle and resigned, and in proportion as she grew in these graces, her lover's awe and fear increased, and so they drifted farther and farther apart.

Such relationships cannot continue forever, and they generally terminate in tragedy.

After the first few months' excitement of his new life, David's conscience began to torment him anew. He became melancholy, then moody, and finally fell into the habit of sitting for hours among the crowds which swarmed the gambling rooms, brooding over his secret. From stage to stage in the evolution of his remorse he passed until he at last reached that of superstition, which attacks the soul of the gambler as rust does iron. And so the wretched victim of many vices sat one evening at the close of the second year with his hat drawn down over his eyes, reflecting upon his past.

"What's the matter, Davy?" asked a player who had lost his stake, and was whistling good-humoredly as he left the room.

"Nothing," he muttered.

"Brace up, old man! There is no use taking life so hard! You've got everything, and I've got nothing; and I am happy and you are miserable. Brace up, I say!" And with that he slapped him familiarly on the shoulder.

"Leave me alone," David growled, and reached for a glass mug containing a strong decoction to which he was resorting more and more as his troubles grew intolerable. A strange thing happened! As he put it to his lips its bottom dropped upon the table and the contents streamed into his lap and down to the floor. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, for it had aroused a superstitious terror.

With a smothered cry he sprang to his feet and gazed around upon his companions. They, too, had observed the untoward accident, and to them as well as to him it was a symbol of disaster. Not one of them doubted that the bottom would fall out of his fortunes as out of his glass, for by such signs as these the gambler reads his destiny.

He pulled himself together and made a jest of the accident, but it was impossible for him to dissipate the impression it had made on the minds of his companions or to banish the gloom from his own soul. And so after a few brave but futile efforts to break the spell of apprehension, he slipped quietly away, opened the door and passed out into the night.



CHAPTER XX.

THE INEVITABLE HOUR

"How shall I lose the sin yet keep the sense, And love th' offender, yet detest the offense?" —Pope.

After wandering aimlessly about the city for awhile the half-crazed gambler turned his footsteps toward home. He longed for and yet dreaded its quiet and repose. The forces of attraction and repulsion were so nearly balanced that for a long time he oscillated before his own door like a piece of iron hung between the opposite poles of a battery.

At last he entered, both hoping and fearing that Pepeeta would be asleep. He had a vague presentiment that he was on the verge of some great event. The guilty secret so long hidden in the depths of his soul seemed to have festered its way dangerously near to the surface, and he felt that if anything more should happen to irritate him he might do something desperate.

So quiet had been his movements that he stood at Pepeeta's door before she knew that he had entered the house, and when he saw her kneeling by her bedside he stamped his foot in rage. The worshiper, startled by the interruption, although she was momentarily expecting it, hastily arose.

As she turned toward him, he saw that there was a light on her pale countenance which reflected the peace of God to whom she had been praying, as worshipers always and inevitably reflect, however feebly, the character of what they worship. Her beauty, her humility, her holiness goaded him to madness. He hated her, and yet he loved her. He could either have killed her or died for her.

She smiled him a welcome which revealed her love, but did not conceal her sadness nor her suffering, and, approaching him, extended her hands for an embrace. He pushed her aside and flung himself heavily into a chair.

"You are tired," she said soothingly, and stroked his hair.

He did not answer, and her caress both tranquilized and frenzied him.

She placed before him the little lunch which she always prepared with her own hands and kept in readiness for his return.

"Take it away," he said.

She obeyed, and returning seated herself upon an ottoman at his feet.

The silence was one which it seemed impossible to break, but which at last became unendurable.

"How often have I told you never to let me find you on your knees when I come home?" he at last asked, brutally.

"Oh! my beloved," she exclaimed, "you will at least permit me to kneel to you! See! I am here in an attitude of supplication! Listen to me! Answer me! What is the matter? Do you not love me any more? Tell me!"

He drew away his hands which she had clasped, and folded them across his breast.

"What has come between us?" she continued. "Tell me why it is that instead of growing together, we are continually drawing apart? Sometimes I feel that we are drifting eternally away from each other. I can no longer get near to you. An ocean seems to roll between us! What does it mean? Is this the nature of love? Does it only last for a little time? Do you not love me any more? Will you never love me again?"

He still gazed sullenly at the floor.

"Will you not answer me?" she begged imploringly. "I cannot endure it any longer. My heart will break. I am a woman, you must remember that! I need love and sympathy so much. It is my daily bread. What is the matter? I beseech you to tell me! Is it your business? Do you feel, as I do, that it is wrong? I have sometimes thought so, and that you were worried by it and would be glad to give it up but for the fear that it might deprive me of some of these luxuries. Is it that? Oh! you do not know me. You do not know how happy I should be to leave these things forever, and to go out into the street this very night a pauper. It is wrong, David. I see it now. I feel it in the depths of my heart."

"Wrong, is it," he cried savagely, "and whose fault is it that I am in this wrong business?"

"It is mine," she said, "mine! I own it. It was I who led you astray. How often and how bitterly have I regretted it! How strange it is, that love like mine could ever have done you harm. I do not understand this. I cannot see how love can do harm. I have loved you so truly and so deeply, and I would give my life for you, and yet this love of mine has been the cause of all your trouble! It would seem that love ought to bless us. Would you not think so?"

He sat silent; any one but Pepeeta could have seen that this silence would soon be broken by an explosion.

"Speak to me, my love!" she pleaded, "speak to me. I confess that I have wronged you. But is there not something that I can do to make you happy? Surely a wrong like this cannot be irreparable. Tell me something that I can do to make you happy!"

With a violent and convulsive effort, he pushed her away and exclaimed fiercely, "Leave me! Do not touch me! I hate you!"

"Hate me?" she cried, "hate me? Oh! David. You cannot mean it. You cannot mean that you hate me?"

"But I do!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I hate you. You have ruined me, and now you confess it. From the time that I first saw you I have never had a moment's peace. Why did you ever cross my path? Could you not have left me alone in my happiness and innocence? Look at me now. See what you have brought me to. I am ruined! But I am not alone. You have pulled yourself down with me. What will you say when I tell you that you are involved in a crime that must drag us both to hell?"

"A crime?" she cried, clasping her hands in terror.

"Yes, a crime. You need not look so innocent. You are as guilty as I, or at least you are as deeply involved. We are bound together in misery. We are doomed."

"Doomed! Doomed! What do you mean? Tell me, I implore you—- do not speak in riddles!"

"Tell you? Do you wish to know? Are you in earnest? Then I will! You are not my wife! There! It is out at last!"

Pepeeta sprang to her feet and stood staring at him in horror.

"Not your wife?" she gasped.

"No, not my wife," he said, repeating the bitter truth. "I deceived you. You were married to your beast of a husband lawfully enough; but as you would not leave him willingly, I determined that you should leave him any way. And so I bribed the justice to deceive you."

"You-bribed-the-justice-to-deceive-me?"

"Yes, bribed him. Do you understand? You see now what your cursed beauty has brought you to?"

She stood before him white and silent.

He had risen, and they were confronting each other with their sins and their sorrows between them.

It was as if a flash of lightning had in an instant lit up the darkness of her whole existence, and she saw in one swift glance not only her misery, but her sin. He was cruel; but he was right. She had been ignorant; but she had not been altogether innocent. There was a period in this tragedy when she had gone against the vague but powerful protest of her soul. With a swift and true perception she traced her present sorrow to that moment in the twilight when, against that protest, she besought David to accompany them on their travels. She felt, but did not observe nor heed that admonition. She had even forgotten it, but now it rose vividly before her memory.

These moments of revision, when the logic of events throws into clear light the vaguely perceived motives of the soul, are always dramatic and often terrible.

It was Pepeeta who broke the silence following David's outburst. In a voice preternaturally calm, she said, "We are in the presence of God, and I demand of you the truth. Is what you have told me true?"

"As true as life. As true as death. As true as hell," he answered bitterly.

"This, then," she said, "is the clue to all this mystery. The tangled thread has begun to unravel. Many times this suspicion has forced itself upon my mind; but it was too terrible to believe! And yet I, who could not endure the suspicion, must now support the reality."

They had not taken their eyes from each other and were trying to penetrate each other's minds, but realized that it was impossible. There was in each something that the other could not comprehend.

The strain on his overwrought nerves soon became unendurable to David, and he sank into a chair.

"Well," he said, as he did so, "what are you going to do about it?"

She had not at first realized that the emergency called for action, but this inquiry awakened her to the consciousness that she was in a situation from which she must escape by an effort of her will. She was before a horrible dilemma and upon one horn or the other she must be cruelly impaled.

But David, who asked the question, had not realized this necessity at all.

"Do?" she said, "do? Must I do something? Yes, you are right. We cannot go on as we are. Something must be done. But what? Is it possible that I must return to my husband? How can I do that—I who cannot think of him without loathing! What is the matter? Why do you tremble so? Is it then as terrible to you as to me? I see from your emotion that I am right. And yet I cannot see what good it will do! How can it undo the wrong? It will be a certain sort of reparation, but it cannot bring him happiness, for I cannot give him back my heart. To whom will it bring happiness? Has happiness become impossible? Are we all three doomed to eternal misery? Oh! David, why have you done this?"

He did not reply, but sat cowering in his chair.

"Forgive me," she cried, when she noticed his despair, "I did not mean to reproach you, but I am so bewildered! And yet I see my duty! If he is my husband, I must go back to him. A wife's place is by her husband's side. I do not see how I can do it, but I must. How hard it is! I cannot realize it. The very thought of seeing him again makes me shudder! And yet I must go!"

"It is impossible," gasped the trembling creature to whom she looked for confirmation.

"Why impossible?"

"Because, because—he—is—dead," he whispered, through his dry lips.

"Dead? Did you say dead?" Pepeeta cried. "When did he die? How did he die?"

"I killed him," he shouted, springing to his feet and waving his hands wildly. "There! It has told itself. I knew it would. It has been eating its way out of my heart for months. I should have died if I had kept it secret for another moment. I feel relieved already. You do not know what it means to guard a secret night and day for years, do you? Oh, how sweet it is to tell it at last. I killed him! I killed him! I struck him with a stone. I crushed his skull and turned him face downward in the road and left him there so that when they found him they would think that he had fallen from his horse. It was well done, for one who had had no training in crime! No one has suspected it. I am in no danger. And yet I could not keep the secret any longer. Explain that, will you? If my tongue had been torn out by the roots, my eyes would have looked it, and if my eyes had been seared with a red-hot iron, my hands would have written it. A crime can find a thousand tongues! And now that I have told it, I feel so much happier. You would not believe it, Pepeeta. I am like myself again. I feel as if I should never be unkind or irritable any more. The load has fallen from my heart. Come, now, and kiss me. Let me take you in my arms."

Extending his hands, he approached her. As he did so, the look of horror with which she had regarded him intensified and she retreated before him until she reached the wall, looking like a sea-bird hurled against a precipice by a storm. Such dread was on her face that he dared not touch her.

"What is the matter?" he said. "Are you afraid of me?"

She did not reply, but gazed at him as if he were some monster suddenly risen from the deep. He endured the glance for a single moment, and then, realizing the crime which he had committed had excited an uncontrollable repulsion for him in her soul, he staggered backward and sank once more into his chair, the picture of helpless and hopeless despair.

For a long time Pepeeta gazed at him without moving or speaking. And then, as she beheld his misery, the look of horror slowly melted into one of pity, until she seemed like an angel who from some vast distance surveys a sinful man. Gradually she began to realize that he who had committed this dreadful deed was her own lover, and that it was the result of that guilty affection which they bore each other. The consciousness of her own complicity softened her. She moved towards him; she spoke.

"Forgive me," she said, "for seeming even for a moment to despise and abhor you. It was all so sudden. I do not mean to condemn you. I do not mean to act or feel as if I were any less guilty than you are in all this wrong. But when one has to face something awful without preparation, it is very hard. No wonder that we do not know what to do. Who but God can extricate us from this trouble? We are both guilty, David. I think that it is because I have had so large a share in all the rest that has been wrong that I cannot now feel towards you as I think I ought. It is true that you have injured me terribly and irretrievably. It is true that your hands are stained with blood, and yet I love you! My heart yearns for you this moment as never before since we have known each other. I long to take you in my arms."

He interrupted her by springing from his chair and attempting to embrace her; but she waved him back with a strange majesty in her mien, and continued. "I long to take you to my heart and comfort you. I could live with you or I could die with you. But there is a voice within my soul that tells me that we must part. Lives cannot be bound together by crime. While misfortunes and mistakes may knit the hearts of lovers together, evil deeds must force them apart! We are not lawfully married, and so—"

"But we can be!" he exclaimed.

"No," she answered, in a voice that sounded to him like that of destiny. "No, we cannot. No one would marry us if the facts were known. And if we concealed them from others, we could not hide them from ourselves! We have no right to each other. We could not respect and therefore we could not truly love each other. Into every moment of our lives this guilty secret would intrude. No, it is impossible. I see it clearly. Every passing moment only makes it more plain. It is terrible, but it is necessary, and what must be, must!"

"We shall not part!" he cried, springing towards her and seizing her by the wrist. "God has bound us together and no man shall put us asunder! We are as firmly linked by vice as by virtue. This secret will draw us together! We cannot keep away from each other. I should find you if you were in heaven and I in hell. You are mine! mine, I say! Nothing shall part us. Have I not suffered for you and sinned for you? What better title is there than that? It was not the sin, but the secret which has alienated us, and now that I am not compelled to guard it any longer, there can be no more trouble between us. The deed has passed unsuspected. We should have heard of it long ago if any one had ever doubted that it was an accident. Let the dead past bury its dead! Let us be happy."

He looked down upon her as if his will were irresistible; but she remained unmoved and immovable, and gazed at him with deep, sad eyes in which he saw his doom.

"No," she answered, calmly, "it is impossible. You need not argue. You cannot change my mind. I see it all too clearly. We must part."

"Oh! pity me," he cried, falling on his knees. "What shall I do? I cannot bear this burden alone. It will crush me. Have mercy, Pepeeta. Do not drive me away. I cannot endure to go forth with this brand of Cain upon my forehead and realize that I shall never hear from your lips another word of love or comfort. Pity me. You are not God. He has not put justice into your hands for execution. You are only human!"

"Alas," she cried, "and all too human. But, my beloved, I am not acting for myself. It is not my mind or heart that speaks. It is God speaking through me. I feel myself to be acting under an influence apart from myself. We have resisted these voices and this influence too long. Now we must obey them."

"But, Pepeeta," he continued, "you do not really think that you have the power to suppress the love you feel for me?"

"I shall not try," she answered.

"But can you not see that this passion of ours will bring us together again? Sooner or later, love will conquer. It conquers or crushes. Everything gives way to it at last. It disrupts the most solemn contracts. It burns the strongest bonds like tow. Always and everywhere, men and women who love will come together. It is the law of life, it is destiny. We cannot remain apart, we are linked together for time and eternity."

She listened to him calmly until he had finished and then said, "Nevertheless, I must go. And I will go now; delay is useless. I see only too clearly that as long as I am near, you must steadily get worse instead of better. While you possess the fruits of your sin you will not truly repent. You must either surrender them or be deprived of them. We can never become accustomed to this awful secret. Our lives are doomed to loneliness and sorrow; we must accept our destiny; we must go forth alone to seek the forgiveness of God. Good-bye; but remember, David, in every hour of trial, wherever you may be, there will be a never-ceasing prayer ascending to God for you. My life shall be devoted to supplication. I shall never lose hope; I shall never doubt. Love like that I bear you must in some way be redemptive in its nature. All will be well. Once more, good-bye."

She smiled on him with unutterable tenderness, and with her eyes still fixed upon his haggard face began to move slowly toward the door.

He did not stir; he could not move, but remained upon his knees with his hands extended towards her in supplication.

Like some exalted figure in a dream he saw her vanish from his sight; the world became empty and dark; his powers of endurance had been overtaxed; he lost all consciousness, and fell forward on the floor.



CHAPTER XXI.

A SIGNAL IN THE NIGHT

"How far that little candle throws his beams!"

—Merchant of Venice.

A month of dangerous and almost fatal sickness followed. When at last, through the care of a faithful negro "mammy," the much-enduring man crept out from the valley of the shadow of death, he learned that Pepeeta had secured a little room in a tenement house and was supporting herself with her needle, in the use of which she had become an expert in those glad hours when she made her baby's clothes, and those sad ones when she sat far into the night awaiting David's return.

On the morning of the first day in which he was permitted to leave the house he made his way to Pepeeta's new quarters.

"And so this is to be her home," he said with a shudder as he looked up to the attic window. Every day this pale young man was seen, by the curious neighbors, hovering about the place. As for the object of his love and solicitude, she began at once to be a bread-winner. The delicate girl who never in her life until now had experienced a care about the necessities of existence began to struggle for bread in company with the thousands of poor and needy, creatures by whom she found herself surrounded. The only hunger she experienced was that of the heart. She soon became conscious of David's presence, and derived from it a pleasure which only added to her pain. She avoided him as best she could, and her determination and her sanctity prevented him from approaching her.

David could never remember how many days were passed in this way, for he lost count of time, and lived more like a man in a dream than like one in a world of life and action.

But as his strength slowly returned, he grew more and more restive under the restraint which Pepeeta's will imposed upon him. And so, while he did not dare to approach her in person, he determined to put his case to a final test, and if he could not win her back to leave forever a place in which he was doomed to suffer perpetual torment.

In the execution of this purpose, he wrote her a letter in which, after passionately pleading for her love, he asked her to give him a sign of willingness to take him once more back into her life. "If I may cherish hope of your ultimate relenting," he wrote, "place your candle on the window sill. I will wait until midnight, and if you extinguish it then, I shall accept your decision as final, and you will be responsible for what follows. I am a desperate man, and life without you has become intolerable."

With this letter in his hand, he waited until the street was quiet and the halls of the tenement house deserted, and then crept up the long staircase with trembling knees.

On tiptoe he picked his way across the corridor and slipped the note under the door. So quietly did he step that he did not hear his own footfall; but it did not escape the ears of the woman who sat stitching her life into the garment lying upon her knees. There is often in a footfall music sweeter than bird songs or harp tones.

Having thrust the letter under the door, David fled hastily down the stairway and into the street, where he began to pace back and forth like a sentry on his beat, never for a single instant losing sight of the window whence streamed the feeble rays of the candle from which he was to receive the signal of hope or despair.

Never did a condemned felon in a cell watch for the coming of a messenger of pardon with more wildly beating heart than his as he gazed at that window up in the wall of the gloomy tenement house. Never did a mariner on a storm-tossed vessel keep his eye more resolutely fixed on beams from a distant lighthouse.

It was then ten o'clock, and as he watched the slow-moving hands upon the moonlit dial in the church tower, it seemed to him they were held back by invisible fingers, and there came to his mind a forgotten story of a man who, having been accidentally imprisoned in a sepulchre, suffered in the twenty minutes which elapsed before his release all the pangs of starvation, so powerfully was his imagination excited. This story which he had once discredited he now believed, for it seemed to him as if eternities were being crowded into single moments.

He had also heard that drowning men could review their entire lives in the few instants that preceded their loss of consciousness, and he acquired a new comprehension of this mystery. All the experiences of his entire existence swept through his mind again and again with a rapidity and a distinctness that astonished him. Like a great shuttle darting back and forth through a fabric, his mind seemed to be passing again and again forward and backward through all the scenes of the past. Finally, and after what seemed uncounted ages, the great clock struck the hour of midnight. One, two, three—he stood like a man rooted to the ground,—four, five, six—his heart beat louder than the bell,—seven, eight, nine—the blood seemed bursting through his temples,—ten, eleven, twelve!—the light went out! The universe seemed to have been instantaneously swallowed up in darkness. He could not see the figure that crept to the window and gazed down upon him from behind the drapery of the curtains. He did not know that Pepeeta had fallen upon her knees in an agony deeper than his own, and was gazing down at him through streaming tears. In those few succeeding moments the sense of his personal loss was displaced by a sudden and overpowering sense of his personal guilt. The full consciousness of his sin burst upon him. He saw the selfishness of his love and the wickedness of his lust in a light brighter than day.

There is a kind of rhododendron about Trebizond of which the bees make a honey that drives people mad! He saw that illicit love was that honey of Trebizond! He felt, as he had never felt before, the pressure of that terrible power that over all and through all the discords and sins of life makes resistlessly for righteousness. He perceived that a system of wheels is attached to every thought and act, and that, each one sets in motion the entire machinery of justice. He felt that every sleepless starry eye in heaven penetrated the guilty secrets of his soul and was pledged to the execution of judgment.

These perceptions confounded him with fear. His thoughts ceased to move in order, tossing and teasing each other like straws in the wind. They ceased to illumine the depths of his soul and only hung like flickering candles above a dark mine.

Whether he looked up or down, without or within, he saw no hope, but it was not until after the lapse of many and unnoted moments that the disturbed machinery of his mind began to move. He awakened as from a nightmare, drew his hands across his eyes and looked this way and that as if to get his bearings.

"What next?" he said aloud, as if speaking to some one else. Receiving no answer, he turned instinctively toward his gambling house, and went stumbling along through the deserted streets. What is a man, after all, but a stumbling machine? Progress is made by falling forward over obstacles! The poor stumbler tottered across his own threshold into that brilliant room where he had always received an enthusiastic welcome, but which he had not visited since his sickness. If ever a man needed kindness and encouragement it was he; but his sensitive spirit instantly discovered that all was changed.

His superstitious companions had not forgotten the broken glass, and had heard of his subsequent calamities. With them the lucky alone were the adorable! The gods of the temples of fortunes are easily and quickly dethroned and the worshipers had already prostrated themselves before other shrines.

The coldness of his greeting sent a chill to his already benumbed heart and increased his desperation. He was nervous, excited, depressed, and feeling the need of something to distract his thought from his troubles, he sat down and began to play; but from the first deal he lost—lost steadily and heavily.

The habitues of the place exchanged significant glances as much as to say, "I told you so!"

Whispered phrases passed from lip to lip.

"He is playing wild."

"He has lost his nerve."

"His luck has turned."

And so indeed it had! Within a few short hours he had staked his entire fortune and lost it. It had gone as easily and as quickly as it had come.

"I guess that is about all," he said, pushing himself wearily back from the table at which he had just parted with the title to his desolated home.

"Shall I stake you, Davy?" asked one of his friends, touched by the pathos of the haggard face and hopeless voice.

"No," he answered, rising. "I have played enough. I am going away. Good-bye, boys."

Without another word, he left them and passed out of the door.

"Good-bye," they cried, as he vanished, scarcely raising their eyes from the tables.

Even in a crowd like that there will generally be found some heart which still retains its tenderness. The young man who had offered to stake him, followed the ruined gambler into the street.

"Where are you going, old man?" he said kindly, slipping his hand through David's arm.

"I don't know," he answered absently.

"Are you dead broke, Davy?"

"Dead broke," in a lifeless echo.

"Will you accept a little loan? You can't go far without money."

"It's no use."

"Take it! I wouldn't have had it if it hadn't been for you, and I won't have it long whether you take it or not."

As he spoke he slipped a roll of bills into his friend's pocket.

"Thanks!" said David.

"Don't mention it," he replied.

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

The sun was just rising as they parted. The first faint stir of life was perceptible in the city streets; the green-grocers were coming in with their fresh vegetables; the office boys were opening the doors and putting away the shutters; there was a bright, morning look on the faces which peered into the haggard countenance of the gambler as he crept aimlessly along, but the fresh, sweet light gave him neither brightness nor joy. His heart was cold and dead; he had not even formed a purpose.

And so he drifted aimlessly until the current that was setting toward the levee caught him and bore him on with it. The sight of a vessel just putting out to sea communicated to his spirit its first definite impulse and he ascended the gang-plank without even inquiring its destination.

In a few moments the boat swung loose and turned its prow down the river. The bustle of the embarkation distracted him. He watched the hurrying sailors, gazed at the piles of merchandise, walked up and down the deck, listened to the fresh breeze that began to play upon the great, sonorous harp of the shrouds and the masts, and when at last the vessel glided out into the waters of the gulf he lay down in a hammock and fell into a long and dreamless sleep.



CHAPTER XXII.

HEART HUNGER

"Only; I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

—Browning.

For a moment after she had read the note which David thrust beneath her door, Pepeeta held her breath; then sinking to her knees, she prostrated herself before that august Being to whom all men bow in last extremities; her head resting upon arms pathetically crossed on the low window sill—bruised but not broken, cast down, but not destroyed—she drank the cup of sorrow to its dregs.

Men hang birds in dark rooms, sometimes, until they learn to sing, and it was to a kindred discipline of her Heavenly Father's that Pepeeta was being subjected. In that supreme hour of trial she performed the greatest feat of which the soul is capable. She defied her own nature; she committed an act of sacred violence against the most clamorous propensities of her heart.

What that struggle cost her no mortal mind can know. That in her decision she chose the better part some will doubt. The most common justification of our conduct is that we have followed the "dictates of our natures." But because those natures are double, and the good and evil perpetually struggle for the mastery, we are sometimes compelled to reverse their most strenuous demands.

Those lofty souls who are enabled to perceive their duty clearly and to commit bravely this act of sacred violence must always remain a mystery to those who meanly live upon a lower plane of existence.

It was as certain when this pure soul entered upon her renewed struggle to find the path of duty that she would succeed, as that the carrier pigeon, launched into an unknown region, will find the homeward way; but for a little time she fluttered her wings in ignorance and despair; she found no rest for the soles of her feet, and the ark of refuge was nowhere to be seen.

The nearness of her lover, she could see him in the street; his sorrow, she could behold his white face even by the pale light of the moon; his tender love, whose real depth she had never for a moment doubted; his bitter agony, which she knew she could terminate in a single instant, all appealed to her with an indescribable power. Her own sorrow and loneliness were eclipsed by the consciousness of the sorrow and loneliness of the man whom she loved more than life. She felt the pain in his bosom far more than in her own; but this feeling which added so much to her suffering became a clear interpreter of her duty.

She acted from a single, undivided impulse; it was to do him good and bring to him the final beatitude of life. She saw as clearly as when the facts about this tragedy were flashed upon her that her presence in David's life would be a perpetual source of irritation, and that so long as he possessed her he would never be able to face the truly spiritual problems which remained to be solved.

How she acquired those powers of divination is a mystery. Such women possess a certain prescience that cannot wholly be accounted for. What Pepeeta did was right because she was Pepeeta. It does not follow that because such natures see so clearly that they act with less pain than others. Indeed, the more clear those spiritual perceptions, the more poignant are the sufferings which they involve; life can scarcely afford a situation more pathetic than hers.

Alone in a great city, young and beautiful, capable of enjoying happiness with a singular appreciation, the victim of a complicated set of circumstances for the comprehension and management of which her early life had afforded no training; guilty of a great sin, but if one could say so, innocently guilty, and penitent; consecrated to duty, but torn asunder by conflicting emotions as if upon a wheel—of what deeper sorrow is the soul capable?

When she extinguished that candle she extinguished the sun of her human happiness; but it happened to her as it has happened to countless others, that in the darkness which ensued she saw a myriad beautiful stars.

The next morning Pepeeta resolutely took up the heavy burden of her life and bore it uncomplainingly, adjusting herself as the brave and patient have ever done, to the necessities of her daily existence. Her little attic room became a sort of sanctuary, and began to take upon itself a reflection of her nature. She built it to fit her own character and needs, as a bird builds its nest to fit its bosom.

It may be said of most of us that we secrete our homes as the snails do their shells. They become a sort of material embodiment of our spirits, a physical expression of our whole thought about life. Before long flowers were blooming in Pepeeta's window; a mocking bird was singing in a cage above it; on the wall hung the old tambourine and one after another many little inexpensive but brightening bits and scraps of things such as women pick up by instinct found their places in this simple attic.

She seldom left it for the outside world, except when she went to deliver the work she had finished, and on Sundays when she spent the morning wandering from one church to another. As a consequence of these brief but regular pilgrimages her beautiful face became familiar to the residents of some of the side streets where the women and children made her low courtesies and the men doffed their hats by that divine instinct of reverence which we all feel in the presence of the beautiful and the good.

A double craving devours our human hearts—for solitude and for companionship. As there are hours when we thirst to be alone, there are others when we hunger for the touch of a human hand, the glance of a human eye, a smile from human lips. Even gross, material things like food and drink lose half their flavor when taken in solitude. Pepeeta needed friends and found them.

We never know how small a part of ourselves that fraction may be which we have taken for the whole! We come to know ourselves by struggle and endeavor, more than by thought and meditation. We have only to do our work each day in hope and trust. We can only find rest in effort. It is not in repose, but in activity—not in joy, but in sorrow, that the soul comes to its second birth. Pepeeta needed labor and suffering, and they were sent her.

She accepted all that followed her supreme decision without a question and without a murmur for many months, and then—a reaction came! The draughts upon her physical and emotional nature had been too great.



CHAPTER XXIII.

WHERE I MIGHT FIND HIM

"Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt, Nothing's so hard but search will find it out."

—Herrick.

During several months of loneliness and sorrow a great change had been taking place in the mind of the patient sufferer, of which she was only vaguely conscious.

Purposes are often formed in the depths of our souls, of which we know nothing until they suddenly emerge into full view. Such a purpose had been slowly evolving in the heart of Pepeeta.

The strain which she had been undergoing began at last to exhaust her physically.

Her vital force became depleted, her step grew feeble, the light died out of her eyes, she drooped and crept feebly about her room. The determination which she had so resolutely maintained to live apart from her guilty lover slowly ebbed away. She was, after all, a woman, not a disembodied spirit, and her woman's heart yearned unquenchably for the touch of her lover's hand, for the kisses of his lips, for the comfort of his presence.

This longing increased with every passing hour. Fatigue, weariness, loneliness, steadily undermined her still struggling resistance to those hungerings which never left her, till at last, when the failing resources of her nature were at their lowest point, all her remaining strength was concentrated into a single passionate desire to look once more upon the face which glowed forever before her inner eye, or at least to discover what had befallen the wanderer in his sin and wretchedness.

Slowly the diffused longing crystallized into a fixed purpose, to resist which was beyond her power. Having nobly conquered temptation while she had strength, and yielded only when her physical nature itself was exhausted, she gathered up the few possessions she had accumulated, sold them for what they would bring, and, with a heart palpitating wildly, broke every tie she had formed with the life around her and turned her face toward the little village where her happiness and sorrows had begun.

It was a long and tedious journey from New Orleans to Cincinnati in those days, and it told terribly upon the weakened constitution of the wayfarer. Her heart beat too violently in her bosom; a fierce fever began to burn in her veins; she trembled with terror lest her strength fail her before she reached her journey's end. It was not of Death himself that she was afraid; but that he should overtake her before she had seen her lover!

Husbanding her strength as shipwrecked sailors save their bread and water, she counted the days and the miles to the journey's end, and having arrived at the wharf of the Queen City, the pale young traveler who had excited the compassion of the passengers, but who would neither communicate the secret of her sorrow nor accept of any aid, took her little bundle in her thin hand and started off on the last stage of her weary pilgrimage. It was the hardest of all, for her money was exhausted and there was nothing for her to do but walk.

It was a cold December day. Gray clouds lowered, wintry winds began to moan, and she had proceeded but a little way when light flakes of snow began to fall. The chill penetrated her thin clothing and shook her fragile form. She moved more like a wraith than a living woman. Her tired feet left such slight impressions in the snow that the feathery flakes obliterated one almost before she had made another, and she was haunted by the thought that every trace of her passage through life was thus to disappear!

Ignorant of the distance or the exact direction, and stopping occasionally to inquire the way, she plodded on, the exhaustion of hunger and weariness becoming more and more unendurable. All that she did now was done by the sheer force of will; but yield she would not. She would die cheerfully when she had attained her object, but not before. The winds became more wild and boisterous; they loosened and tossed her black hair about her wan face; they beat against her person and drove her back. Every step seemed the last one possible; but suddenly, just as she descended the slope of a steep hill, she saw the twinkling lights of the village and the feeble rays shot new courage into her heart. Under this accession of power she pushed forward and made her way toward the old Quaker homestead.

The night had now deepened around her; but every foot of the landscape had been indelibly impressed upon her memory, and even in the gathering gloom she chose the road unerringly. There were only a few steps more, and reeling toward the door yard fence she felt her way to the gate, opened it, staggered forward up the path in the rays of light that struggled out into the darkness, and with one final effort fell fainting upon the threshold.

The scene within the house presented a striking contrast to that without. In a great open fireplace the flames of the beech logs were wavering up the chimney. Seated in the radiance of their light, on a low stool, was a young boy with his elbows upon his knees and his cheeks in the palms of his hands. His mother sat by his side stroking his hair and gazing at him in fond, brooding love. The father was bending over a Bible lying open on the table; it was the hour of prayer. He was reading a lesson from the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew, and had just articulated in slow and reverent tones the words of Jesus, "I was a stranger and ye took me in," when they heard a sound at the door.

Father, mother and son sprang to their feet and, hurrying towards the door, flung it open and beheld a woman's limp form lying on the threshold.

It was but a child's weight to the stalwart Quaker who picked it up in his great arms and carried it into the radiance of the great fireplace, and in an instant he and Dorothea his wife were pushing forward the work of restoration. They forced a cordial between the parted lips, chafed the white hands, warmed the half-frozen feet, and in a few moments were rewarded by discovering feeble signs of life. The color came back in a faint glow to the marble face, the pulses fluttered feebly, the bosom heaved gently, as if the refluent tide of life had surged reluctantly back, and the tired heart began once more to beat. She had regained her life but not her consciousness, and lay there as white and almost as still as death. The little boy stood gazing wonderingly at her from a distance. The calm features of the Quaker were agitated with emotion. His wife knelt by the side of the pale sleeper, and her tears dropped silently on the hand which she pressed to her lips.



CHAPTER XXIV.

SAFE HAVEN

"The human heart finds shelter nowhere but in human kind."

—George Eliot.

For many days Pepeeta's life hung in the balance, her spirit hovering uncertainly along the border land of being, and it was only love that wooed it back to life.

When at length, through careful nursing, she really regained her consciousness and came up from those unfathomable abysses where she had been wandering, she opened her eyes upon the walls of a little chamber that looked out through an alcove into the living room of the Quaker house.

Dorothea had finished her afternoon's work and was seated before the great fireplace, while by her side stood Steven, speaking to her in whispers, and looking often toward the cot on which Pepeeta lay. An almost sacred stillness was in the room, for since the advent of the sufferer, even the quiet of that well-ordered household had deepened and softened.

The silence was suddenly broken by a voice feeble and tremulous, but very musical and sweet. It was Pepeeta, who gazed around her in bewilderment and asked in vague alarm, "Where am I?"

Dorothea was by her side in an instant, and taking the thin fingers in her strong hands, replied: "Thee is among friends."

Pepeeta looked long into the calm face above her, and gathered reassurance; but her memory did not at once return.

"Have I ever been in this place before? Have I ever seen your face? Has something dreadful happened? Tell me," she entreated, gazing with agitation into the calm eyes that looked down into hers.

"I cannot tell thee whether thee has ever seen us before, but we have seen thee so much for a few days that we feel like old friends," said Dorothea, pressing the hand she held, and smiling.

Pepeeta's eyes wandered about the room restlessly for a moment, and then some dim remembrance of the past came back.

"Did I come here in a great storm?" she asked.

"Thee did, indeed. The night was wild and cold."

"Did I fall on the threshold?"

"Upon the very threshold, and let us thank God for that, because if thee had fallen at the gate or in the path we should never have heard thee."

Pepeeta struggled to a sitting posture as her memory clarified, fixed her wide open eyes upon Dorothea and asked, pathetically, "Where is he?"

"I do not know who thee means," said Dorothea, laying her hand on the invalid's shoulders and trying gently to push her back upon her pillow.

"David!" she exclaimed, "David. Tell me if you know, for it seems to me I shall die if I do not hear."

"I do not know, my love. It is a long time since we have heard from David. But thee must lie down. Thee is not strong enough to talk."

She did not need to force her now. The muscles relaxed, and Pepeeta sank back upon her pillow, sobbing like a little child, while Dorothea stroked her forehead. The soothing touch of her hand and her gentle presence calmed the agitated and disappointed heart. The sobs became less frequent, the tears ceased to flow, and sleep, coming like a benediction, brought the balm of oblivion.

The boy, with his great brown eyes, looked wonderingly from the face of the invalid to that of his mother, who sat silently weaving in her imagination the story of this life, from the few strands which she had seized in this brief and broken conversation.

The next morning when Pepeeta awakened she was not only rested and refreshed by this natural sleep, but was restored to the full possession of her consciousness and her memory.

When Dorothea came in from her morning duties to see how her patient fared, she was startled by the change, for the invalid had recovered that calm self-possession which she had lost before beginning her journey, and now that her uncertainty was ended had already begun to face disappointment with fortitude and resolution.

The nurse seated herself by the patient, who said humbly:

"May I talk now?"

"If thee feels strong enough and can do it without exciting thyself, thee may. But if thee cannot, thee had better wait a little longer. Thee is very weak."

"But I am much better, am I not?"

"Yes, thee is much better, but thee is far from well."

"Yes, I am far from well; but it will do me good to talk. I have much to tell, and I cannot rest until I tell it all."

"Thee need not hurry—need thee?"

"Yes—I feel in haste. I have no right to all this kindness, for I have done this household a great wrong and I must confess it. It is a sad, sad story. Will you listen to it now?"

"If it will do thee good instead of harm, I will."

"Then prop me up in bed, if you please. Place me so that I can talk freely. There, thank you. You are so gentle and so kind. I have never in all my life had any one touch me so gently. And now, if you are ready, be seated in the great chair and turn your face to the wall."

"To the wall?"

"Yes, to the wall. I cannot bear to see the reproaches that must fill those kind eyes."

"But, my dear, thee shall not see any reproaches in my eyes. Who am I that I should judge thee? We are commanded in the holy Bible to judge not, lest we be judged again. Tell thy story without fear. Thee shall tell it to ears that shall hear thee patiently, and a heart that is not devoid of pity."

"I cannot, cannot," cried Pepeeta, "do as I pray! Look out of the window. Look anywhere but at my face. Let me lie here and look up. Let me tell my story as if to God alone. It will be easy for me to do that, for I have told it to Him again and again."

Fearing to agitate her, Dorothea did as she desired.

"Are we alone?"

"Yes, all alone."

"Well, then, I will begin," Pepeeta said, and in a voice choked with emotion, the poor sufferer breathed out the tale of her sin and her sorrow. She told all. She did not shield herself, and everywhere she could she softened the wrong done by David. It was a long story, and was interrupted only by the ticking of the great clock in the hallway, telling off the moments with as little concern as when three years before it had listened to the story told to David by his mother. When the confession was ended a silence followed, which Dorothea broke by asking gently:

"May I look, now?"

"If you can forgive me," Pepeeta answered.

The tender-hearted woman rose, approached the bedside and kissed the quivering lips.

"Have you forgiven me?" Pepeeta asked, seizing the face in her thin hands and looking almost despairingly into the great blue eyes.

"As I hope to be forgiven," Dorothea answered, kissing her again and again.

A look of almost perfect happiness diffused itself over the pale countenance.

"It is too much—too much. How can it be? It was such a great wrong!" she exclaimed,

"Yes, it was a great wrong. Thee has sinned much, but much shall be forgiven if thee is penitent, and I think thee is. No love nor pardon should be withheld from those who mourn their sins. Our God is love! And we are so ignorant and frail. It is a sad story, as thee says, but it is better to be led astray by our good passions than by our bad. I have noticed that it is sometimes by our holiest instincts that we are betrayed into our darkest sins! It was heaven's brightest light—the light of love—that led thee astray, my child, and even love may not be followed with closed eyes! But thee does not need to be preached to."

Astonished at such an almost divine insight and compassion, Pepeeta exclaimed, "How came you to know so much of the tragedy of human life, so much of the soul's weakness and guilt; you who have lived so quietly in this happy home?"

"By consulting my own heart, dear. We do not differ in ourselves so much as in our experiences and temptations. But thee has talked enough about thy troubles. Tell me thy name? What shall we call thee?"

"My name is Pepeeta."

"And mine is Dorothea."

"Oh! Dorothea," Pepeeta exclaimed, "do you think we shall ever see him again?"

"I cannot tell. We had made many inquiries and given up in despair. And now when we least expected news, thee has come! We will cherish hope again. We were discouraged too easily."

"Oh! how strong you are—how comforting. Yes, we will cherish hope, and when I am well I will start out, and search for him everywhere. I shall find him. My heart tells me so."

"But thee is not well enough, yet," Dorothea said, with a kind smile, "and until thee is, thee must be at rest in thy soul and, abiding here with us, await the revelation of the divine will."

"Oh, may I stay a little while? It is so quiet and restful here. I feel like a tired bird that has found a refuge from a storm. But what will your husband say, when he hears this story?"

"Thee need not be troubled about that. His door and heart are ever open to those who labor and are heavy laden. The Christ has found a faithful follower in him, Pepeeta. It was he who first divined thy story."

"Then you knew me?"

"We had conjectured."

"Then I will stay, oh, I will stay a little while, and perhaps, perhaps—who knows?" she clasped her hands, her soul looked out of her eyes, and a smile of genuine happiness lit up her sad face.

"Yes, who knows?" said Dorothea, gently, rearranging the pillows and bidding the invalid fall asleep again.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE LITTLE LAD

"Better to be driven out from among men, than to be disliked of children."

—Dana.

Pepeeta took her place in this hospitable household as an orphan child might have done. Just as a flower unfolding from a plant, or a bird building its nest in a tree is almost instantly "at home," so it was with Pepeeta.

When she was strong enough to work, she began to assume domestic cares and to discharge them in a quiet and beautiful way which brought a sweet relief to the full hands of the overburdened housewife. And her companionship was no less grateful to Dorothea than her help, for life in a frontier household in those pioneer days was none too full of animation and brightness, even for a quiet nature like hers. To Steven she soon became a companion; and Jacob, the father, yielded no less quickly and easily to the charms of this strange guest than did mother and child.

He was a man of earnest piety and of deep insight into human nature. He had, as Dorothea said, made shrewd guesses at Pepeeta's story before she told it, and had formed his own theories as to her nature and her errand.

"I tell thee, Dorothea, she is a lady," were the words in which he had uttered his conclusions to his wife, in one of their many conversations about the mysterious stranger.

"What makes thee think so?" she asked.

"Every feature of that delicate face tells its own history. These three years of contact with David and a different life could never have so completely wiped out the traces of the vulgar breeding of a gypsy camp and the low education of a rogue's society, unless there were good blood in those veins. Mark my word, there is a story about that life that would stir the heart if it were known."

"No wonder David loved her," said the wife.

"No wonder, indeed. But if it is as it seems, there is a mystery in their influence on each other that would confound the subtlest student of life."

"To what does thee refer?"

"Two such natures ought to have made each other better instead of worse by contact. You can predict what frost and sunlight, water and oil, seed and soil will do when they meet; but not men and women! Two bads sometimes make a good, and two goods sometimes make a bad."

"Thee thinks strange thoughts, Jacob, and I do not always follow thee, but even if it be wrong, I cannot help wishing that our dear David could have had her for his lawful wife," said Dorothea.

"The tale is not all told yet," responded her husband, opening his book and beginning to read.

With feelings like these in their hearts, they could not but extend to Pepeeta that sympathy which alone could soothe the sorrow of her soul. The sweet atmosphere of this home; the consciousness that she was among friends; the knowledge that they would do all they could to find the wanderer whom every one loved with such devotion, gave to Pepeeta's overwrought feelings an exquisite relief.

Her natural spirits and buoyant nature, repressed so long, began to reassert themselves, and soon burst forth in gladness. The change was slow, but sure, and by the time the spring days came and it was possible to get out into the open air, the color had come back to the pale face and the light to the dimmed eyes. She was like a flower transplanted from some dark corner into an open, sunny spot in a garden. But that which, more than all else, tended to develop within her graces still unfolded, was her constant contact with Steven. A subtle sympathy had been established between them from their very first meeting and they gradually became almost inseparable comrades. Their common love of outdoor life took them on long walks into the woods, from which they came burdened with the first blossoms of the springtime, or they would return from the river, laden with fish, for Steven insisted upon making Pepeeta his companion in every excursion; nor was it hard to persuade her to join him, she was so naturally a creature of the open air and sunlight.

Among the many happy days thus passed, one was especially memorable. Steven had told her much of a famous fishing place in the big Miami, several miles away, and had promised that if she would go with him on the next Saturday he would show it to her and also reveal a secret which no one knew but himself and in which she could not but take the greatest interest. The day dawned bright and clear, and while the dew was still on the grass they started.

One of Pepeeta's sources of enjoyment in these excursions was the constant prattle of the boy about that uncle whose long absence had served rather to increase than to diminish the idolatry of his heart. This morning, so like the one on which Pepeeta had seen David by the side of the brook when first they met, awakened all the fervor of her love and she could think of nothing else.

"You must point out to me all the places where you and your uncle have ever been together, little brother," she said to him, as they crossed the field where she had first caught sight of David at the plow.

"Why does thee care to know so much about him?" he asked, naeively looking up into her face.

"Do you not know?" she inquired.

"No, I have asked father and mother, but they will not tell me."

"If I tell you, will you be true to me?"

"Won't I, though? I love thee. I would fight for thee, if I were not a Quaker's son! Perhaps I would fight for thee anyway."

"You will not need to fight for me, dearest. I could tell you a story about fighting that would make you wish never to fight again. Perhaps I will, sometime; but not now, for this must be a happy day and I do not want to sadden it by telling you too much about the shadows that cloud my life."

He looked up with a pained expression. "Has thee had troubles?" he asked.

"Great troubles, and they are not ended yet. I should be very wretched, but for you and your dear parents. You are but a child, and yet it would comfort me to tell you that I love your uncle with a love that can never die. And so when I ask you about him you will tell me everything you know, will you not? And remember that in doing so you are helping to make happy a poor heart that carries heavy burdens. There, that will do. I have told you more, perhaps, than I ought; but although you are young, I am sure that you are brave and true. And so, if there is any story about your uncle which you have never told me, let me hear it now. And if there is not, tell me one that you have told me over and over again."

"Did I ever tell thee how he saved a little lamb from drowning?"

"No! did he do that?"

"Yes, he did! Thee knows that when the snow melts, this little brook swells up into a great river and sometimes it happens so suddenly that even the grown people are scared. It did that day, and came just pouring out of those woods and through the meadow where our old Maisie was playing with two little lambs. One of them was bounding around her, and it slipped over the edge of the bank and fell into the bed of the creek. It wasn't a very high bank, you know; but the lamb was little, and it just stood bleating in the bed, and its mother stood bleating on the bank. Well, Uncle David heard them and started to see what was the matter, and though the rain had begun to fall, he ran across the field as hard as he could. But by the time he reached the place the flood caught up the little lamb and rolled it over and over like a ball. Uncle Dave didn't even wait to take off his coat, but plunged right into that water, boiling like a soap kettle, and swam out and grabbed that little lamb and hung to it until he landed down there on a high bank a quarter of a mile away. What does thee think of that, Pepeeta?"

Her eyes kindled; pride swelled in her heart, and her spirits rose with that wild feeling of joy with which women always hear of the bold deeds of those they love.

"How beautiful and noble he is," she cried.

"And strong!" added the boy, to whose youthful imagination physical prowess was still the greatest grace of life. And as he said it they reached a little rivulet so swollen by the spring rains as to be a formidable obstacle to their progress. Steven had not considered it in laying out their route and stood before it in dismay.

"How is thee ever going to get across?" he asked, and then under the impulse of a sudden inspiration rushed to the fence, took off the top rail and hurrying to the side of the brook flung it across for a bridge, with all the gallantry of a Sir Walter Raleigh.

But the spirits of his companion were too high to accept of aid! The strength of her lover had communicated itself to her, and with a light, free bound, she leaped to the other side.

The boy's first feeling was one of chagrin at having his offer so proudly scorned; but his second was that of boundless pride at a feat so worthy of the hero whose praises they had just been sounding. "Hurrah!" he cried, bounding after her and flinging his hat into the air.

"Thee is as good a jumper as a man," he exclaimed, regarding her with astonishment and admiration.

As they moved forward Nature wove her spells around them and they gave themselves utterly to her charms, pausing to look and listen, rapt in an ecstasy of communion and sympathy. Pepeeta's familiarity with the flowers was greater than Steven's, but she knew little about birds, and propounded many questions to the young naturalist whose knowledge of the inhabitants of field, forest and river seemed to be communicated by the objects themselves, rather than by human teachers.

"Hark! What is that bird, singing on the top of that tall stake?" she asked, pausing to listen, her hand lifted as if to invoke silence.

"That? Why, it's a meadow lark," said Steven.

"And there is another, 'way up in the top of that tall tree. Oh! how sweet and rich his song is. What is his name?"

"That's a red bird, and if thee listens thee can hear a brown thrasher over there in the woods."

They paused and drank in the rich music until each of these voices was silenced, and out of a copse of dense shade by the brookside there began to bubble a spring of melody so liquid, so clear, and withal of such beauty, that Pepeeta trembled with delight, hearing in that audible melody the unheard songs of the soul itself.

"What is it, Steven?" she asked in a whisper.

"Why, that is a cat bird! Doesn't thee know a cat bird? I cannot remember when I did not know what that song was! It is such a crazy bird! It has only two tunes and is like our teacher at school. She either praises or else scolds us. And that is the way with the cat bird. It is either talking love to its mate, or else abusing it! I don't like such people or such birds; I like those who have more tunes. Now thee has a lot of tunes, Pepeeta!"

This quaint reflection and delicate compliment broke the bird's spell and made Pepeeta laugh,—a laugh as musical and sweet as the song of the bird itself. It passed through the fringe of trees along the river bank, rippled across it over against the smooth face of a cliff and came back sweetly on the spring air.

"Oh! did you hear the echo?" Pepeeta exclaimed.

"That is what I brought thee here for!" he said. "Uncle David taught me how to make it answer and told me what it was. It frightened me at first. Let us get close up to the water and listen!"

He took her by the hand and drew her along.

"Is it here that you are to tell me the secret?" she asked.

"Oh, no," he said. "The echo tells its secrets! It is nothing but a blab any way. But I do not tell mine until the right time comes! Thee must wait."

They came out upon the edge of the river which makes a sweep around a sharp corner on the opposite side of which was "Echo Rock." There they stood and shouted and laughed as their voices came back upon the still air softened and etherealized.

Becoming tired of this sport at last, the boy picked up a flat stone from the river's edge and said, "Can thee skip a stone, Pepeeta? I never saw a girl that could skip a stone."

"But I am not a girl," she said.

"Oh, but thee was a girl once, and if thee did not learn then thee cannot do it now. Come, let me see thee try. Here is a stone, and a beauty, too; round, flat and smooth. That stone ought to make sixteen jumps!"

"But you must show me how," she said.

"All right, I will," he replied, and sent one skimming along the smooth surface of the water.

"Beautiful," she said, clapping her hands as it bounded in ever diminishing saltations and with a finer skill than that of Giotto, drew perfect circles on the watery canvas.

Delighted with the applause, the child found another stone and gave it to Pepeeta. She took it, drew her hand back and tossed it awkwardly from her shoulder. It sank with a dull plunge into the stream, while out of the throat of the lad came a great and joyous shout of laughter. "I knew thee could not," he said. "No girl that ever lived could skip a stone!"

And then he threw another and another, and they stood enchanted as the beautiful circles widened away from their centers and crossed each other in ever-increasing complexity of curve.

Steven did his best to teach Pepeeta this very simple art; but after many failures, she exclaimed:

"Oh dear, I shall never learn! I am nothing but a woman after all! Let us hasten to the fishing pool, perhaps I shall do better there."

"Don't be discouraged. Thee can learn, if thee tries long enough!" Steven said encouragingly, and led the way to a deep pool a few rods farther up the river. It was a cool, sequestered, lovely spot. Great trees overhung it, dark waters swirled swiftly but quietly round the base of a great rock jutting out into it; little bubbles of froth glided dreamily across it and burst on its edges; kingfishers dropped, stone-like, into it from the limbs of a dead sycamore, and the low, deep murmurs of the flood, as it hurried by, whispered inarticulately of mysteries too deep for the mind of man to comprehend. Except for this ceaseless murmur, silence brooded over the place, for the song-birds had hidden themselves in the wood, and the two intruders upon the sacred privacy, by an unconscious sense of fitness, spoke in whispers.