Hand and Ring

immensity of those great limbs which branched above him. His imagination was so powerfully affected at last, he had a notion of leaving the spot and seeking a nearer lookout in the belt of evergreens that hid the crouching form of Hickory; but a spell seemed to emanate from the huge trunk against which he leaned that restrained him when he sought to go, and noticing almost at the same moment that the path which Miss Dare would have to take in her departure ran directly under this tree, he yielded to the apathy of the moment and remained where he was.

Soon after he was visited by Hickory.

“I can see nothing and hear nothing,” was that individual’s hurried salutation. “She and Mr. Orcutt are evidently still in the library, but I cannot get a clue to what is going on. I shall keep up my watch, however, for I want to catch a glimpse of her face as she steps from the window.” And he was off again before Byrd could reply.

But the next instant he was back, panting and breathless.

“The light is out in the library,” he cried; “we shall see her no more tonight.”

But scarcely had the words left his lips when a faint sound was heard from the region of the piazza, and looking eagerly up the path, they saw the form of Miss Dare coming hurriedly toward them.

To slip around into the deepest shadow cast by the tree was but the work of a moment. Meantime, the moon shone brightly on the walk down which she was speeding, and as, in the agitation of her departure, she had forgotten to draw down her veil, they succeeded in obtaining a view of her face. It was pale, and wore an expression of fear, while her feet hasted as though she were only filled with thoughts of escape.

Seeing this, the two detectives held their breaths, preparing to follow her as soon as she had passed the tree. But she did not pass the tree. Just as she got within reach of its shadow, a commanding voice was heard calling upon her to stop, and Mr. Orcutt came hurrying, in his turn, down the path.

“I cannot let you go thus,” he cried, pausing beside her on the walk directly under the tree. “If you command me to save Craik Mansell I must do it. What you wish must be done, Imogene.”

“My wishes should not be needed to lead you to do your duty by the man you believe to be innocent of the charge for which he is being tried,” was her earnest and strangely cold reply.

“Perhaps not,” he muttered, bitterly; “but⁠—ah, Imogene,” he suddenly broke forth, in a way to startle these two detectives, who, however suspicious they had been of his passion, had never before had the opportunity of seeing him under its control, “what have you made of me with your bewildering graces and indomitable soul? Before I knew you, life was a round of honorable duties and serene pleasures. I lived in my profession, and found my greatest delight in its exercise. But now⁠—”

“What now?” she asked.

“I seem”⁠—he said, and the hard, cold selfishness that underlay all his actions, however generous they may have been in appearance, was apparent in his words and tones⁠—“I seem to forget everything, even my standing and fame as a lawyer, in the one fear that, although lost to me, you will yet live to give yourself to another.”

“If you fear that I shall ever be so weak as to give myself to Craik Mansell,” was her steady reply, “you have only to recall the promise I made you when you undertook his case.”

“Yes,” said he, “but that was when you yourself believed him guilty.”

“I know,” she returned; “but if he were not good enough for me then, I am not good enough for him now. Do you forget that I am blotted with a stain that can never be effaced? When I stood up in court today and denounced myself as guilty of crime, I signed away all my chances of future happiness.”

There was a pause; Mr. Orcutt seemed to be thinking. From the position occupied by the two detectives his shadow could be seen oscillating to and fro on the lawn, then, amid the hush of night⁠—a deathly hush⁠—undisturbed, as Mr. Byrd afterward remarked, by so much as the cracking of a twig, his voice rose quiet, yet vaguely sinister, in the words:

“You have conquered. If any man suffers for this crime it shall not be Craik Mansell, but⁠—”

The sentence was never finished. Before the words could leave his mouth a sudden strange and splitting sound was heard above their heads, then a terrifying rush took place, and a great limb lay upon the walk where but a moment before the beautiful form of Imogene Dare lifted itself by the side of the eminent lawyer.

When a full sense of the terrible nature of the calamity which had just occurred swept across the minds of the benumbed detectives, Mr. Byrd, recalling the words and attitude of Imogene in face of a similar, if less fatal, catastrophe at the hut, exclaimed under his breath:

“It is the vengeance of Heaven! Imogene Dare must have been more guilty than we believed.”

But when, after a superhuman exertion of strength, and the assistance of many hands, the limb was at length raised, it was found that, although both had been prostrated by its weight, only one remained stretched and senseless upon the ground, and that was not Imogene Dare, but the great lawyer, Mr. Orcutt.

XXXVIII

Unexpected Words

It will have blood: they say, blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have,
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks, brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.
⋮
Foul whisperings are abroad; unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.

Macbeth

“Mr. Orcutt dead?”

“Dying, sir.”

“How, when, where?”

“In his own