Part 40 (2/2)

Presently Mary raised her eyes. He had turned southward, toward the town, but at a pace so swift that he was already far down the road. A jutting curve came soon, and he vanished behind it, out of her sight.

Dusk was falling fast on the wood now. The green of the trees deepened and blackened, turning into a crooked smudge upon the sky-line. The road fell between them like a long gray ribbon. Nothing was to be seen upon it; nothing was to be heard but the rustle of the early night wind and the pleasant sounds of the open road.

Varney's mind as he walked, was a blank white wall. He had forgotten Elbert Carstairs, forgotten the train he was to take, forgotten even the unendurable injury that Higginson had put upon him. His one blind instinct had been to get away as quickly and completely as possible. But now, slowly, it was borne in upon him that he knew this road, that he had walked it once before like this, at the end of the day. His first night in Hunston--he remembered it all very well. It must have been just here--or here--that the rain had caught him, and he had gone on to meet _her_.

The cottage which had sheltered them that night must be close at hand.

His eyes, which had been upon the ground, lifted and went off down the road. They fell upon the dark figure of a man, shuffling slowly along in the gloom, not twenty yards ahead of him.

He was an old man, shambling and gray-whiskered, and stooped as he walked. If he was aware that another wayfarer followed close behind, he gave no sign. Suddenly he stopped short with a feeble exclamation, and began peering about the ground at his feet. The young man was up with him directly, and his vague impression of recognition suddenly became fitted to a name.

”Orrick?”

The bowed form straightened and turned. Through the thickening twilight the two men looked at each other.

”You were not by any chance waiting for me?”

The darkness hid old Orrick's eyes; he shook his head slowly a number of times. ”I pa.s.sed you when you was at Miz Thurston's, sir. I can' walk fas' like you can.” And he bent down over the road again.

”What's the matter with you?” asked Varney. ”Have you lost something?”

”Los' my luck-piece,” said the other, slowly, not looking up. ”I was carryin' it in my hand 's I come along an' it jounced out. A 1812 penny it was an' vallyble.”

He cut rather a pitiful figure, squatting down in the dirt and squinting about with short-sighted old eyes; and Varney felt unaccountably sorry for him.

”I wouldn' los' my luck-piece for nothin',” he added, dropping to his knees. ”I'm a kind of a stoop'sitious man, an' I allus was.”

”Perhaps I can help you; my eyes are good.”

He went back a step or two, bending down and scrutinizing the brown earth. Orrick, presently announcing that the coin might have rolled, made a slow way across the road on his knees, patting the ground with his hand as he moved. Near the edge of it, half in the woods, lay a thick piece of split firewood, long as a man's arm and stouter. The knotted old fingers stealthily closed on it.

”It could n't have rolled far on this soft road,” said Varney presently.

”Just where do you think you dropped it?”

Sam Orrick rose behind his stooping figure with upraised club, a blaze of triumph in his sodden old eyes.

”There!” he cried with a senseless laugh. ”It's _there_, Stanhope!”

The club fell with a thud; and Varney, meeting it as he straightened up, toppled over like a log, face downward.

Old Orrick stared down at the prostrate figure, and presently touched it with his tattered foot. It did not stir. His fierce joy died. He looked about him apprehensively, and his eye fell at once upon a dim-lit cottage off the road just back of him. _His_ cottage--how had he forgotten that? Was that dark thing--a man--standing there at the gate?

Suddenly a great terror seized the old man. He threw his stick into the woods and slunk away, toward the town. A loud yell from behind brought his heart to his throat, and he broke into a wild, lumbering run.

CHAPTER XXI

MR. FERRIS STANHOPE MEETS HIS DOUBLE; AND LETS THE DOUBLE MEET EVERYTHING ELSE

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