Instantly I realized it was the work of my hands; I had dropped a half-extinguished match, and it had fallen upon some inflammable substance.
Aghast at the sight, I paused in my turn, and stood staring. Higher and higher the red flames mounted, brighter and brighter glowed the clouds above, the stream beneath; and in the fascination of watching it all, I forgot Mrs. Belden. But a short, agitated gasp in my vicinity soon recalled her presence to my mind, and drawing nearer, I heard her exclaim like a person speaking in a dream, “Well, I didn’t mean to do it”; then lower, and with a certain satisfaction in her tone, “But it’s all right, anyway; the thing is lost now for good, and Mary will be satisfied without anyone being to blame.”
I did not linger to hear more; if this was the conclusion she had come to, she would not wait there long, especially as the sound of distant shouts and running feet announced that a crowd of village boys was on its way to the scene of the conflagration.
The first thing I did, upon my arrival at the house, was to assure myself that no evil effects had followed my inconsiderate desertion of it to the mercies of the tramp she had taken in; the next to retire to my room, and take a peep at the box. I found it to be a neat tin coffer, fastened with a lock. Satisfied from its weight that it contained nothing heavier than the papers of which Mrs. Belden had spoken, I hid it under the bed and returned to the sitting-room. I had barely taken a seat and lifted a book when Mrs. Belden came in.
“Well!” cried she, taking off her bonnet and revealing a face much flushed with exercise, but greatly relieved in expression; “this is a night! It lightens, and there is a fire somewhere down street, and altogether it is perfectly dreadful out. I hope you have not been lonesome,” she continued, with a keen searching of my face which I bore in the best way I could. “I had an errand to attend to, but didn’t expect to stay so long.”
I returned some nonchalant reply, and she hastened from the room to fasten up the house.
I waited, but she did not come back; fearful, perhaps, of betraying herself, she had retired to her own apartment, leaving me to take care of myself as best I might. I own that I was rather relieved at this. The fact is, I did not feel equal to any more excitement that night, and was glad to put off further action until the next day. As soon, then, as the storm was over, I myself went to bed, and, after several ineffectual efforts, succeeded in getting asleep.
XXIX
The Missing Witness
“I fled and cried out death.”
Milton
“Mr. Raymond!”
The voice was low and searching; it reached me in my dreams, waked me, and caused me to look up. Morning had begun to break, and by its light I saw, standing in the open door leading into the dining-room, the forlorn figure of the tramp who had been admitted into the house the night before. Angry and perplexed, I was about to bid her be gone, when, to my great surprise, she pulled out a red handkerchief from her pocket, and I recognized Q.
“Read that,” said he, hastily advancing and putting a slip of paper into my hand. And, without another word or look, left the room, closing the door behind him.
Rising in considerable agitation, I took it to the window, and by the rapidly increasing light, succeeded in making out the rudely scrawled lines as follows:
“She is here; I have seen her; in the room marked with a cross in the accompanying plan. Wait till eight o’clock, then go up. I will contrive some means of getting Mrs. B⸺ out of the house.”
Sketched below this was the following plan of the upper floor:
Hannah, then, was in the small back room over the dining-room, and I had not been deceived in thinking I had heard steps overhead, the evening before. Greatly relieved, and yet at the same time much moved at the near prospect of being brought face to face with one who we had every reason to believe was acquainted with the dreadful secret involved in the Leavenworth murder, I lay down once more, and endeavored to catch another hour’s rest. But I soon gave up the effort in despair, and contented myself with listening to the sounds of awakening life which now began to make themselves heard in the house and neighborhood.
As Q had closed the door after him, I could only faintly hear Mrs. Belden when she came downstairs. But the short, surprised exclamation which she uttered upon reaching the kitchen and finding the tramp gone and the backdoor wide open, came plainly enough to my ears, and for a moment I was not sure but that Q had made a mistake in thus leaving so unceremoniously. But he had not studied Mrs. Belden’s character in vain. As she came, in the course of her preparations for breakfast, into the room adjoining mine, I could hear her murmur to herself:
“Poor thing! She has lived so long in the fields and at the roadside, she finds it unnatural to be cooped up in the house all night.”
The trial of that breakfast! The effort to eat and appear unconcerned, to chat and make no mistake—May I never be called upon to go through such
