Part 38 (1/2)

and pa.s.sed one arm around the slender girl.

”Please! please!” cried her pleading voice, with her face still away. ”This is my secret--you will not tell--let him find it out for himself--please!”

”Certainly; I will leave to him the joy of hearing it from you,” said the elder, in her inmost soul sympathizing with the younger.

What a deep and tranquil joy possessed the heart of the mother, and with what wonder she contemplated the now conscious maiden! and how she wondered at her own blindness! And so the threatening cloud broke for her: broke into not only a serene peace, but a heartfelt joy and grat.i.tude; and she parted with Julia with the first kiss she had ever bestowed upon her.

At the ensuing fall term of the Geauga Common Pleas, Myers was indicted for horse-stealing. The prosecuting officer refused to make terms with him, and permit him to escape, on condition of furnis.h.i.+ng evidence against others, as he had hoped when he made his confession; and when arraigned, he plead not guilty, and upon proper showing, his case was continued to the next term, in January.

A great crowd from all parts of the adjacent country, and many from a distance, had a.s.sembled to witness the trial of Myers. The region of Eastern Ohio had, like many new and exposed communities, suffered for years from the occasional depredations of horse thieves. It was supposed that an organization existed, extending into Pennsylvania.

The horses taken were traced to the mountain region in that State, where they disappeared; and although Greer and Brown were never before connected with this branch of industry, it was thought that the horses in question, which had been intercepted, were in the regular channels of the trade, which it was hoped, would now be broken up. One noticeable thing at the court was the presence of Greer, who apparently came and went at pleasure. He was cool and elegant as usual, and seemingly unconcerned and a little more exclusive. His being at large was much at variance with the understood programme, and necessitated its reconstruction. Little was said about Bart, and it was apparent that the public mind had returned to a more favorable tone towards him.

CHAPTER XLIV.

FINDING THE WAY.

On an early December evening, in a bright, quiet room, at the Delavan House, in Albany, sat Bart Ridgeley alone, thoughtfully and sadly contemplating a ma.n.u.script, that lay before him, which ran as follows:

”UNIONVILLE, Nov. 27, 1838.

”_My Dear Bart_:--Poor Sartliff has, it seems, finally found the way.

It was that short, direct, everlasting old way, so crowded, which everybody finds, and n.o.body loses or mistakes. You told me of your last interview with him, as did he, not long after you left. It seemed to have depressed him. He spoke of you as one who could have greatly aided him, but did not blame you.

”The next time I saw him, I found him much changed for the worse.

He was thin and haggard--more so than I had ever seen him. His old hopefulness and buoyancy were gone, and he was given to very gloomy and depressing views of things. He thought he had made great progress, in fact had reached a new discovery, and it was not in the least encouraging.

”He finally concluded that the grand and wondrously beautiful spirits that he seemed to get glimpses of, and whose voices he used to hear, were really convict spirits, or angels, imprisoned on or banished to this earth, for a period of years, or for eternity, for crimes committed in the sun, or some less luminous abode; and I presume are cutting up here, much after their old way. Though it must be conceded that this world is a place of severe punishment.

”He went on to a more depressing view of us mortals, and said he had concluded that our souls were also the souls of beings who had inhabited some more favored region of the universe, also sent here for punishment; and that each was compelled to enter and inhabit a human body, for the lifetime of that body; and to suffer by partaking of all of its wretched, sensual, and degrading vicissitudes; and that whenever the soul is sufficiently punished, the body dies and permits it to escape.

”I suggested that it made no difference where the soul came from, if there was one, nor how many bodies it had inhabited; and that it made against his idea, that the soul was older than the body; for if it was, it would be conscious of that pre-existence. He said that every soul did at times have a consciousness of existence in another and older form, which was very dark from its transgressions. But he took the part of the native body against this alien soul, and felt hurt and grieved that our world was a mere penal colony--a penitentiary for all the scabbed and leprous souls and spirits of the rest of G.o.d's creation. It was bad economy; and he grieved over it as a deep and irreparable personal injury.

”This was a month ago; and I never saw him again. He wandered off down into the neighborhood of Erie, where he had many acquaintances, took less care of himself, went more scantily clad, was more abstemious in diet, and more and more disregarded the conditions of human existence.

Finally, his mind became as wandering as his body.

”He wanted nothing, asked for nothing, rejected food, and refused shelter, and as often as taken in and cared for, he managed to escape, and wander away, feebly and helplessly, from human a.s.sociation and ministration. He complained to himself that his great mother, Nature, had deserted him, a helpless child, to wander and perish in the wilderness. He said he had gone after her, until weary, starving, and worn, he must lie down and die. He had called after her until his voice had sunk to a wail; and he finally died of a child's heart-broken sense of abandonment and desertion.

”He was found one day, nearly unconscious, with the tears frozen in his eyes, and on being cared for, wailed his life out in broken sobs.

”Let us not grieve that he has found rest.

”I am too sad to write of other things, and you will be melancholy over this for a month.

”CASE.”