Part 25 (1/2)

The man raised his whip over his horses' backs and then paused.

Plainly she intended to be slain rather than yield, and though murder was in Sandy's heart he hesitated to commit it. He glanced about him with a movement of impotent rage. Never before had he been balked in his will by man, nor had he ever met the woman who had dared to cross him. And here he was, held up in his own particular saw-log road by one of the despised s.e.x! He remembered, in choking wrath, that he was a pillar of the Glenoro church, that before him was the schoolmistress, and behind the doctor and old Hughie Cameron's niece, and he dared not give adequate expression to the rage with which he was being consumed.

In a voice inarticulate with anger he opened a parley. He declared that he would have the law, that he would publish her high-handed act from one end of the county of Simcoe to the other, that he would get himself elected for trustee and drive her out of the section. He bl.u.s.tered, he threatened, he scolded, he argued. And through it all the obstacle sat on her basket, in the middle of the highway, not deigning him even a glance. But as the maddened man foamed on, there arose once to the surface the lurking twinkle in the Duke's gray eyes.

For there was no doubt Sandy was weakening. He had even stooped to reason with her now.

”The snow's no more nor a half fut deep!” he was bellowing.

The Duke caught the first symptom of yielding, but was too wise to make answer.

”Yon's the doctor back there,” he cried, with a great show of righteous concern, ”he'll mebby be in a hurry.”

There was no sign of impatience from the two, choking down their laughter, in the cutter behind; and though she could not see them, well the Duke knew they were enjoying themselves. Nevertheless, she condescended to answer.

”You'd better not keep him waiting, then,” she advised.

The man darted one more glance around, the glance of an imprisoned lion which suddenly realizes its position. Slowly, his brows erect, his face dark, he descended from the sleigh and walked around to her side.

He stood for a moment regarding her, with a dawning expression of something like respect struggling with the gleam of his fierce eyes.

”If Ah tramp ye a path 'round the sleigh will ye walk in it?” he asked, his voice tremulous with wrath.

The Duke weighed the proposition with great deliberation. She would have died there under the horses' feet rather than show the slightest interest in it. ”Well,” she admitted indifferently, ”I can't say. If I don't get my skirts snowy, I might. You tramp the road, and then I'll see.”

With smothered imprecations, Sandy plunged into the snow.

Dr. Allen, quenching his unseemly mirth, sprang from the cutter and came to his aid. There was something to arouse pity in the downfall of the man of strength. Neither by word nor sign did Sandy recognize either his or Elsie Cameron's presence. The atmosphere was too highly charged to admit of ordinary courtesies. When the two men had trampled a wide pathway, and made it sufficiently smooth and firm, the Duke of Wellington condescended to march out of her citadel. There was no smallest sign of haste in her movements; she stood and eyed the track critically, as if doubtful as to whether she would use it, after all.

Her hesitation proved the last straw to her enemy's endurance. With an inarticulate cry of rage Sandy McQuarry sprang toward her. The Duke was tall and stately, and of no light weight, but he caught her up as if she had been a child, and with a few mighty strides bore her along the pathway. Reaching the road, he planted her in the middle of it with a violent thud.

”The Lord Almighty peety the man that gets a wumman like you!” he exclaimed with vehement solemnity. He strode back to his sleigh, leaped upon his load, and lashed his horses into a gallop.

The Duke was perfectly calm. She bowed in her stateliest fas.h.i.+on to Elsie and the doctor, but the twinkle in her eye answered the laughter in the girl's. Then, arranging her basket more carefully on her arm, she pa.s.sed on her way as if nothing had happened.

Gilbert sprang into his cutter, and the two witnesses of poor Sandy's Waterloo followed his tumultuous retreat up the valley. They were young and light-hearted, and what wonder if one put aside her gravity and the other his troubles, and both laughed all the way to the village?

It was not until they had gained the main highway, and Sandy had disappeared, that they recovered their composure and could speak of other things.

”And you did not get away for your vacation at New Year's,” the girl said. ”That was too bad.”

”No,” said Gilbert, suddenly growing somber at the recollection.

”Everything conspired against me, it seemed. I couldn't get away.”

”Uncle Hughie would say that everything had conspired for you. His theory is the happiest one. He would tell you that if you had gone probably some disastrous circ.u.mstance would have followed.”

”Perhaps he is right,” said the young man meditatively. He could not yet regard his failure to meet Rosalie's demands as anything but a misfortune. And yet, there was that money still in the bank that Martin might have. That was surely a satisfaction.

”Oh, everything seems to me to be guided by the merest chance,” he said half bitterly.

The girl shook her head. ”I think it seems so only on the surface.

There can be no hazard about one's duty. The results are as sure as cause and effect. You know that, Dr. Allen.”

”Yes, I know it,” said Gilbert as he a.s.sisted her to alight at the door. ”I am aware of it, I mean, but I don't act upon it.”