Part 7 (1/2)

No color deepened in her fair face under his ardent gaze; and, after a moment, he released her, almost roughly. The next day he told old Fog that he was going.

'Where.'

'Somewhere, this time. I've had enough of Nowhere.'

'Why do you go?'

'Do you want the plain truth, old man? Here it is, then; I am growing too fond of that girl,--a little more and I shall not be able to leave her.'

'Then stay; she loves you.'

'A child's love.'

'She will develop--'

'Not into my wife if I know myself,' said Waring, curtly.

Old Fog sat silent a moment. 'Is she not lovely and good?' he said in a low voice.

'She is; but she is your daughter as well.'

'She is not.'

'She is not! What then?'.

'I--I do not know; I found her, a baby, by the wayside.'

'A foundling! So much the better, that is even a step lower,' said the younger man, laughing roughly. And the other crept away as though he had been struck.

Waring set about his preparations. This time Silver did not suspect his purpose. She had pa.s.sed out of the quick, intuitive watchfulness of childhood. During these days she had taken up the habit of sitting by herself in the flower-room, ostensibly with her book or sewing; but when they glanced in through the open door, her hands were lying idle on her lap and her eyes fixed dreamily on some opening blossom. Hours she sat thus, without stirring.

Waring's plan was a wild one; no boat could sail through the ice, no foot could cross the wide rifts made by the thaw, and weeks of the bitterest weather still lay between them and the spring.

'Along-sh.o.r.e,' he said.

'And die of cold and hunger,' answered Fog.

'Old man, why are you not afraid of me?' said Waring, pausing in his work with a lowering glance. 'Am I not stronger than you, and the master, if I so choose, of your castle of logs?'

'But you will not so choose.'

'Do not trust me too far.'

'Do not trust you,--but G.o.d.'

'For a wrecker and murderer, you have, I must say, a remarkably serene conscience,' sneered Waring.

Again the old man shrank, and crept silently away.

But when in the early dawn a dark figure stood on the ice adjusting its knapsack, a second figure stole down the ladder. 'Will you go, then,' it said, 'and leave the child?'