Part 41 (1/2)

”'Tisn't true,” broke in the other again, in unexpected denial of his own words, ”that that's all I know. I know something more; 'tisn't much, perhaps, but as I value my soul's salvation, I'll say it here. Before I left the neighbourhood of Turrifs, I heard of this old gentleman here a-making his way round the country, and I put in currency the report that he was Cameron, and I've no doubt that that suggestion made the country folks head him off towards Turrifs Station as far as they could influence his route; and that'll be how he came there at Christmas time.

Look you here! I didn't know then, and I don't know now, whether he _was_ or _wasn't_--I didn't think he was--but for a scheme I had afoot I set that idea going. I did it by telegraphing it along the line, as if I'd been one of the operators. The thing worked better than I expected.”

Alec listened without the feeling of interest the words were expected to arouse. To his mind a fellow who spoke glibly about his soul's salvation was either silly or profane. He had no conception that this man, whose way of regarding his own feelings, and whose standard of propriety as to their expression, differed so much from his own, was, in reality, going through a moral crisis.

”Well?” said he.

”Well, I guess that's about all I have to say.”

”If you don't know anything more, I don't see that you've told me anything.” He meant, anything worth telling, for he did not feel that he had any interest with the other's tricks or schemes.

”I do declare,” cried Harkness, without heeding his indifference, ”I'm just cut up about this night's affair; I never thought Job would set on anyone but his wife. I do regret I brought this good old gentleman to this place. If some one offered me half Bates's land now, I wouldn't feel inclined to take it.”

Trenholme returned to his pacing, but when he had pa.s.sed and re-pa.s.sed, he said, ”Cameron doesn't seem to have been able to preach and pray like an educated man; but Bates is here, he will see him to-morrow, and if he doesn't claim the body, the police will advertise. Some one must know who the old man is.”

The words that came in return seemed singularly irrelevant. ”What about the find of asbestos the surveyor thought he'd got on the hills where Bates's clearing is? Has Bates got a big offer for the land?”

”He has had some correspondence about it,” said Trenholme, stiffly.

”He'll be a rich man yet,” remarked the American, gloomily. ”Asbestos mines are piling in dollars, I can tell you. It's a shame, to my mind, that a snapping crab-stick like that old Bates should have it all.” He rose as with the irritation of the idea, but appeared arrested as he looked down at the dead man. ”And when I think how them poor ladies got their white skirts draggled, I do declare I feel cut up to that extent I wouldn't care for an asbestos mine if somebody came and offered it to me for nothing this minute.”

Then, too absorbed in feeling to notice the bathos of his speech, he put his hands in his pockets, and began strolling up and down a beat of his own, a few yards from the track Trenholme had made, and on the other side of the dead.

As they walked at different paces, and pa.s.sing each other at irregular times, perhaps the mind of each recurred to the remembrance of the other ghostly incident and the rumour that the old man had already risen once.

The open spot of sloping ground surrounded by high black trees, which had been so lately trodden by many feet, seemed now the most desolate of desolate places. The hymn, the prayer, that had arisen there seemed to leave in the air only that lingering influence which past excitement lends to its acute reaction.

A sudden sharp crack and rustling, coming from out the gloom of the trees, startled them.

”Ho!” shouted the American. ”Stand! Is there any one there?”

And Alec in his heart called him a fool for his pains, and yet he himself had not been less startled. Nothing more was heard. It was only that time--time, that mysterious medium through which circ.u.mstance comes to us from the source of being; that river which, unseen, unfelt, unheard, flows onward everywhere--had just then brought the moment for some dead branch to fall.

END OF BOOK II.

BOOK III.

”_Nothing is inexorable but Love_.”

CHAPTER I.

That which is to be seen of any event, its causes and consequences, is never important compared with the supreme importance of those unseen workings of things physical and things spiritual which are the heart of our life. The iceberg of the northern seas is less than its unseen foundations; the lava stream is less than the molten sea whence it issues; the apple falling to the ground, and the moon circling in her orbit, are less than the great invisible force which controls their movements and the movements of all the things that do appear. The crime is not so great as its motive, nor yet as its results; the beneficent deed is not so great as the beneficence of which it is but a fruit; yet we cannot see beneficence, nor motives, nor far-reaching results. We cannot see the greatest forces, which in hidden places, act and counteract to bring great things without observation; we see some broken fragments of their turmoil which now and again are cast up within our sight.

Notwithstanding this, which we all know, the average man feels himself quite competent to observe and to pa.s.s judgment on all that occurs in his vicinity. In the matter of the curious experience which the sect of the Adventists pa.s.sed through in Ch.e.l.laston, the greater part of the community formed prompt judgment, and in this judgment the chief element was derision.

The very next day, in the peaceful Sunday suns.h.i.+ne, the good people of Ch.e.l.laston (and many of them were truly good) spent their breath in expatiating upon the absurdity of those who had met with the madman upon the mountain to pray for the descent of heaven. It was counted a good thing that a preacher so dangerously mad was dead; and it was considered as certain that his followers would now see their folly in the same light in which others saw it. It was reported as a very good joke that when one white-clad woman had returned to her home, wan and weary, in the small hours of the night, her husband had refused to let her in, calling to her from an upper window that _his wife_ had gone to have a fly with the angels, and he did not know who _she_ might be.

Another and coa.r.s.er version of the same tale was, that he had taken no notice of her, but had called to his man that the white cow had got loose and ought to be taken back into the paddock. Both versions were considered excellent in the telling. Many a worthy Christian, coming out of his or her place of wors.h.i.+p, chuckled over the wit of this amiable husband, and observed, in the midst of laughter, that his wife, poor thing, had only got her deserts.