Part 14 (2/2)
”They look like footprints,” ventured Ransom.
”They are footprints,” decided Mr. Harper as they stooped to examine the marks, ”and the footprints of a person dropping from a height. Nothing else explains their depth or general appearance.”
”Couldn't they be those of a person approaching the ell to converse with some one above? I see others similar to these in the open place over there beyond the kitchen door.”
”It is a trail. Let us follow it. It seems to lead anywhere but towards the waterfall. This is an important discovery, Mr. Ransom, and may lead to conclusions such as we might not otherwise have presumed to entertain, especially if we come upon an impression clear enough to point in which direction the person making it was going.”
”Here is what you want,” Ransom a.s.sured him in a low and curiously smothered voice. He was evidently greatly excited by this result of their inquiries, for all his apparent quiet and precise movements. ”It's a woman's step, and that woman was going from the ell when she left these tokens of her pa.s.sage behind her. Going! and as you say not in the direction of the waterfall.”
”Hus.h.!.+ I see some one at the kitchen window. Let us move warily and be sure not to confound these prints with those of any other person. It looks as if a great many people had pa.s.sed here.”
”Yes, this is the way to the chicken-coops and out-houses. But in the ground beyond I think I see a single line of steps again,--small steps like these. Where can they be leading? They are deep like those of a person running.”
”And straggling, like those of a person running in the dark. See how they waver from the direct line down there, turn, and almost come up against that wood-pile! Whose steps are these? Whose, Mr. Harper? Quick! I must see where they go. Our time will not be lost. The key to the labyrinth is in our hands.”
The lawyer was in the rear and the eyes of the other were fixed far ahead. For this reason, perhaps, the former allowed himself a quiet shake of the head, which might not have encouraged the other so very much, had he caught sight of it. They were now on the verge of the garden, or what would soon be a garden if these rains betokened spring. A path ran along its edge and in this path the footsteps they were following lost themselves; but they came upon them again among the hillocks of some old potato-hills beyond, and finally traced them quite across the garden waste to a fence, along which they ran, blundering from ploughed earth to spots of smoother ground, and so back again till they came upon an old turn-stile!
Pa.s.sing through this, the two men stopped and looked about them. They were in a road ridged with gra.s.s and flanked by bushes. One end ran east into a wooded valley, the other debouched on the highway a few feet to the right of the tavern.
”The lane!” exclaimed Mr. Harper. ”The lead towards the waterfall was a feint. It was in this direction she fled, and it is from this point that search must be made for her.”
Ransom, greatly perturbed, for this possibility of secret flight opened vistas of as much mystery, if not of as much suffering, as her death in the river, glanced at the sodden ground under their feet, and thus along the lane to where it lost itself from view among the trees.
”No possible following of steps here,” he declared. ”A hundred people must have come this way since early morning.”
”It's a short cut from the Ferry. They told me last night that it lessened the distance by fully a quarter of a mile.”
”The Ferry! Can she be there? Or in the woods, or on her way to some unknown place far out of our reach? The thought is maddening, Mr. Harper, and I feel as helpless as a child under it. Shall we get detectives from the county-seat, or start on the hunt ourselves? We might hear something further on to help us.”
”We might; but I should rather stay on the immediate scene at present.
Ah, there comes a fellow in a cart who should be able to tell us something! Stand by and I'll accost him. You needn't show your face.”
Mr. Ransom turned aside. Mr. Harper waited till the slow-moving horse, dragging a heavily jogging wagon, came alongside, and he had caught the eye of the low-browed, broad-faced farmer boy who sat on a bag of potatoes and held the reins.
”Good morning,” said he. ”Bad news this way. Any better at the Ferry, or down east, as you call it?”
”Eh?” was the lumbering, half-suspicious answer from the startled boy.
”I've heard naught down yonder, but that a gal threw herself over the waterfall up here last night. Is that a fact, sir? I'm mighty curus to know. My mother knew them Hazens; used to wash for 'em years ago. She told me to bring up these taters and larn all I could about it.”
”We don't know much more than that ourselves,” was the smooth and cautious reply. ”The lady certainly is missing, and she is supposed to have drowned herself.” Then, as he noted the fellow's eyes resting with some curiosity on Mr. Ransom's well-clad, gentlemanly figure, added gravely, and with a slight gesture towards the latter:
”The lady's husband.”
The lad's jaw fell and he looked very sheepish.
”Excuse me, misters, I didn't know,” he managed to mutter, with a slash at his horse which was vainly endeavoring to pull the cart from the rut in which it had stuck. ”I guess I'll go along to the hotel. I've a bag of taters for Mrs. Deo.”
But the cart didn't budge and the lawyer had time to say:
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