We have taken advantage of a pause in the conversation, during which William Richardson resumed his reverie, and his wife plied her cards, to make this digression. At length the mother laid her cards into the basket of wool, and folding her hands in her lap, remained a few moments wrapped in thought. She then said,—

"Husband, I feel so sure that good will come of this, that it will be, in the end, the best thing for us all (for I know you can do whatever you put your[Pg 20] hand to), that I am willing to undergo almost anything to bring it about. There are three articles that will always sell at the store for half cash and half goods—butter, woollen cloth, and linen yarn. I will sell what we have to get your tools, and, perhaps, a little iron."

"Susan, what did you make this cloth for, and what shape is it in?"

"cloth that I meant to make clothes of for you and the boys, some that I wove for a gown for myself and the girls, and some blanket stuff."

"I won't take it; I won't take the clothes from your back and the children's if I never have any tools: the butter, I suppose, you have laid down for winter, and the blankets are needed for the children's beds."

"Yes, you must take it; if you can work iron, we shall have the house as full of butter, meat, and cloth as John Drew's is."

"But we can't get along without these things It is true that when I am there where.."

"We can if we only think so. We can put some brush on the children's beds, over the clothes,—hemlock brush over a few clothes is real warm,—then, when it is very cold, we can leave a large fire when we go to bed, and you can get up at twelve o'clock and put on wood. The children can get along with their old clothes, and I with mine; there's nobody to look at us here. We have pork enough, and can do without butter[Pg 21] till we can make some. One of the cows calves in March. I meant to have made some towels of the linen yarn, but tow will do just as well."

"Susan, I think a man must be made of poor material who could be discouraged with a wife like you."
 

So, in the fair October dusk, we five went down the Plank Road—where Summer lingers late. The air was gentle with the soft, impending dark. I wonder why the colonnade of sweet influences, down which we stepped, did not win us to themselves. But I remember how, instead, our imminent visit drew us back to the days of Mrs. Johnson's coming, so that presently we were going over the incident of the Java entertainment, and, as Calliope would have put it, "crystallizing and boiling over" again in the old distaste.

But when we reached the little cottage of the Johnsons, our varied motives for the visit were abruptly merged in a common anxiety. For Doctor[Pg 142] Heron's buggy stood at the gate and the little one-story cottage was dark save for a light in what we knew to be a corner bedroom. The hallway was open to the night, but though we could distinctly hear the bell jingle in the kitchen no one answered the summons. Then, there being somewhere about a murmur of voices, Calliope stepped within and called softly:—

"Doctor, Doctor Heron—you there? Is they anything we can do?"

The doctor came momentarily to the lighted doorway down the hall.

"That you, Calliope?" he said. "You might come here, will you? Tell the rest to sit down somewheres. And you tell Mr. Johnson he can come."

On which, from out the dark living room, some one emerged very swiftly and without a word pushed by us all where we were crowded in the passage and strode down to the little lighted chamber. Calliope hurried after him, and we four shrank back in sudden dread and slipped silently into the room which the young husband had left, and stood together in the dimness. Was she so sick? In that room he must have heard the door-bell as we had heard it, and yet he had not answered. Was it possible that we had come too late It is true that when I am there where. ?

save that[Pg 143] great Mis' Amanda Toplady, who said three times or four, "Oh, dear, oh, dear, I'm always waitin' till somethin's too late—either me or the other thing." It seemed very long before we heard some stir, but it can have been only a few minutes until the doctor came down the little hall and groped into the room. In answer to all that we asked he merely occupied himself in lighting a match and setting it deliberately to the candles on the table and adjusting their shades. They were, we noted afterward, the same candles whose presence we had detected and derided at those long ago tête-à-tête suppers in that house. The light glowed on the young doctor's pale face as he looked at us, each in turn, before he spoke. And when he had done with his slow scrutiny—I think that we cannot wholly have fancied its accusation—he said only:—
 

above any thought of his own safety, which was left to the man who had come to him with so little ceremony.

"You have twenty hours at the best, six at the worst," Benny said, ignoring the outbreak and knowing that it would pass. "If the little Frenchman who saw him fall doesn't blab, the police may not be here until the morning. You'll have to answer for this sooner or later, but you'll answer it better across the frontier. Are you going to start at once, or wait for them to come for you? Take another drop of that whisky, and then tell me. I can give you that long."

a child. He was already trying to excuse himself, to make a case which might be put to a jury subsequently.

"It's no more than mischance, look at it how you like. He provoked me—I had no intention to kill him. If he'd have gone away, it would have been all right. What business had he to follow me, I ask you, what business had he? Is this a free country? Then why did he spy on me? Let the police answer that: what right had he to spy on me?"

Benny became contemptuous now.

"They'll answer it sharp enough when they are here. You'll learn pretty quick whether it's a free country or not. If I were you, I would choose another, and let my lawyers do the talking from there. You could catch the afternoon train through the tunnel, if you were quick about it. You'd be in Italy to-morrow, and in my house opposite Magadino the day after. There's nobody there but an old Italian woman, and she couldn't pronounce your name if she knew it. I have the shanty until the winter—the hydroplanes I was running in the fall are still there, and some other stuff. Say you come on my business, and no one will question you. That's what I would do if I were you, and I wouldn't be long in doing it either."

He stood waiting for an answer, his arms still thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his hat awry. The expression of low cunning which crept upon the baronet's face did not deter him in any way. He cared not a straw for any imputations of motive, whatever they might be. A determination to save Lily Delayne from the shame of this madness drove him as a spur. Had it been otherwise he would not have crossed the street at this man's beck　If they don't come down soon, I shall race by myself..

Delayne understood the situation perfectly, and was upon the point of confessing as much. He knew how sure was his wife's influence over men, and for an instant a savage impulse of jealousy impelled him to turn on the man who would have befriended him for his wife's sake and to say all that was in his mind. From this an instinct of prudence saved him at the last moment. He remembered the words: "The man is dead," and began to shudder. Yes, flight was his only chance—but flight must imply guilt!

her the "little widow" down at Sierre, and the embarrassing distinction of a pardonable error had followed her to Andana. So much she had achieved by her desire to obliterate the past and to recall, if it were possible, the innocence and the freedom of her girlhood. But she knew now that the attempt had failed, and that she stood upon the brink of a discovery which must be attended by shame. Luton Delayne would come to Andana sooner or later, and all would know the truth.

It is true that she did not lack courage, and had the perception to see that worldly sympathy, so far as she cared to win it, must be upon her side; but the ordeal through which she must pass, in a sense the exposure, affrighted her and robbed her even of a desire to sleep. The morning of the day might bring the man to the hotel; the evening might send her upon her way again, a derelict upon a lonely sea which offered no safe harbourage.

There had been no child of her marriage, and thus no chain upon her desire for freedom. Her father, Sir Frederick Kennaird, had married again at the age of fifty-seven; and while the gates of the old home were not shut against her, she shrank from the thought of such a shelter. Her only brother, Harold, was with his regiment in India, and had already condemned her conduct in strenuous letters full of childish complaints. "Would she drag her story into the papers? Wash their dirty linen in public?"—and all that sort of thing. To these she made answer that she would be the arbiter of her own fortune, and that if the family honour depended upon her tolerance of such a man as Luton Delayne, she would not lift a finger to save it　If they don't come down soon, I shall race by myself..

This was well enough as an expression of her promise, but more difficult as a practice. Enjoying an allowance of three thousand a year from her father, whose collieries brought him ten times that sum, she discovered presently that candour is a factor in the due enjoyment of life, and that the world has little love of anonymity. Go where she would, to remote cities of Europe, to the East, even to America, there were some who knew her story and would sell secrecy at a price. She made no friends, won no sure refuge, could find no sanctuary. Sometimes she regretted her determination to be known henceforth as Lily Kennaird, and wondered if her brother were not right when he described such a subterfuge as madness. Sacrifice carried her into a new world, and one with which she was unfamiliar. She missed the amenities of the state she had abandoned, its overt dignities, its influence and power. Mrs. Kennaird was merely the "little widow" to the multitude. It had been otherwise when she was Lady Delayne.

 

The "little widow" replied with a commonplace, but both were silent for a full mile or more, and when next Clavering spoke, they had come out upon a wide plateau of the snow and were within twenty minutes of their destination. Here the scene changed in a measure, for there were woods upon the right hand, while the broad expanse of the snow hid the valley from their sight. A little village with a winding street and houses that should have come out of a child's play-box, stood between the plateau and the hotel; and when they had passed it, they entered the forest itself, following a tortuous path amid the pines and already meeting many of the revellers. From these, news of Andana was to be had, especially from a delightful woman of the world, whose age was thirteen and whose uncle was a Cabinet Minister. Skis permitted her to follow the sledge gracefully, and she talked as though the end of the world were at hand and would find her budget undelivered.

"Keith Rivers is here and he's winning everything," she said. "I'm in for the doubles with him to-morrow, and it's a certainty. Dr. Orange came yesterday. Of course, everyone is more in love with him than ever. The ice has been beastly, but we've put in a protest—in fact, we've riddled the enemy with potholes, and I suppose he'll do something. Do you know Ian Kavanagh, I wonder? He was a blue, and his father left him thousands and thousands. It's awful to start life with that on your shoulders, isn't it? But he seems strong. Of course, he can't skate a bit, but we forgive him, because he can do other things. Then I must tell you, there's Benny—do you know Benny? If you do not, you have missed the joy of your life. He's the most good-natured, stupidest, obstinate creature I ever met in all my days. Think of it—he'd never been on skis before, and he went out the day before the blizzard and actually tried to jump. I thought he was going to fall over the edge of the world before he'd stop. Oh, he is such a dear, and I do wish he'd move into the hotel, and not stop at that awful villa—"
 

day surpassed the expectation even of those who wrote the story of Andana for the English newspapers. People who were out of the hotel by nine o'clock returned to tell their friends that the sun was broiling. Others went to the little bazaar for blue glasses at one franc fifty The short stories were first collected in a little volume in 1879..

There had been mist in the Rhone valley at dawn and wisps of it still hung about the entrance to the Simplon. Weather prophets detected a good omen here, and stood before the porch of the hotel to peer down into that unsurpassable ravine and to say that the cluster of black dots immediately below them stood for the church and streets of Sierre. To the right and left were the great clefts of the mighty chasm, a vast pit digged by the waters that flowed before man was, and were now sown with towns and villages and the iron links of civilisation.