Part 29 (2/2)

”Better. The longer I think on it, the more I see that there is no hope for me, no true repentance,--” Again that expression on Harry King's face filled Larry's heart with deep pity. An inward terror seemed to convulse his features and throw a pallor as of age and years of sorrow into his visage. Then he continued, after a moment of self-mastery: ”No true repentance for me but to go back and take the punishment. For this winter I will live here in peace, and do for Madam Manovska and her daughter what I can, and anything I can do for you,--then I must return and give myself up. The gold only holds out a worldly hope to me, and makes what I must do seem harder. I am afraid of it.”

”I'll make you a promise that if I return I'll not let you have it, but that it shall be turned to some good work. If I do not return, it will rest on your conscience that before you make your confession, you shall see it well placed for a charity. You'll have to find the charity, I can't say what it should be offhand now, but come with me.

I must tell some man living my secret, and you're the only one.

Besides--I trust you. Surely I do.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE MINE--AND THE DEPARTURE

Larry Kildene went around behind the stall where he kept his own horse and returned with a hollow tube of burnt clay about a foot long. Into this he thrust a pine knot heavy with pitch, and, carrying a bunch of matches in his hand, he led the way back of the fodder.

”I made these clay handles for my torches myself. They are my invention, and I am quite proud of them. You can hold this burning knot until it is quite consumed, and that's a convenience.” He stooped and crept under the fodder, and then Harry King saw why he kept more there than his horse could eat, and never let the store run low. It was to conceal the opening of a long, low pa.s.sage that might at first be taken for a natural cave under the projecting ma.s.s of rock above them, which formed one side and part of the roof of the shed.

Quivering with excitement, although sad at heart, Harry King followed his guide, who went rapidly forward, talking and explaining as he went. Under his feet the way was rough and made frequent turns, and for the most part seemed to climb upward.

”There you see it. I discovered a vein of ore back there at the place we entered, and a.s.sayed it and found it rich, and see how I worked it out! Here it seemed to end, and then I was still sane enough to think I had enough gold for my life; I left the digging for a while, and went to find my boy. I learned that he was living and had gone into the army with his cousin, and I knew we would be of little use to each other then, but reasoned that the time was to come when the war would be over, and then he would have to find a place for himself, and his father's gold would help. However it was--I saw I must wait. Sit here a bit on this ledge, I want to tell you, but not in self-justification, mind you, not that.

”I had been in India, and had had my fill of wars and fighting. I had no mind to it. I went off and bought stores and seed, and thought I would make more of my garden and not show myself again in Leauvite until my boy was back. It was in my thought, if the lad survived the army, to send for him and give him gold to hold his head above--well--to start him in life, and let him know his father,--but when I returned, the great madness came on me.

”I had built the shed and stabled my horse there, and purposely located my cabin below. The trail up here from the plain is a blind one, because of the wash from the hills at times, and I didn't fear much from white men,--still I concealed my tracks like this. Gold often turns men into devils.”

He was silent for a time, and Harry King wondered much why he had made no further effort to find his son before making to himself the offer he had, but he dared not question him, and preferred to let Larry take his own way of telling what he would. As if divining his thought Larry said quietly: ”Something held me back from going down again to find my son. The way is long, and in the old way of traveling over the plains it would take a year or more to make the journey and return here, and somehow a superst.i.tion seized me that my boy would set out sometime to find me, and I would make the way easy for him to do it. And here on the mountain the years slip by like a long sleep.”

He began moving the torch about to show the walls of the cave in which they sat, and as he did so he threw the light strongly on the young man's face, and scrutinized it sharply. He saw again that terrible look of sadness as if his soul were dying within him. He saw great drops of sweat on his brow, and his eyes narrowed and fixed, and he hurried on with the narrative. He could not bear the sight.

”Now here, look how this hole widens out? Here was where I prospected about to find the vein again, and there is where I took it up. All this overhead is full of gold. Think what it would mean if a man had the right apparatus for getting it out--I mean separating it! I only took what was free; that is, what could be easily freed from the quartz. Sometimes I found it in fine nuggets, and then I would go wild, and work until I was so weak I could hardly crawl back to the entrance. I often lay down here and slept with fatigue before I could get back and cook my supper.”

As they went on a strange roaring seemed gradually to fill the pa.s.sage, and Harry spoke for the first time since they had entered. He feared the sound of his own voice, as though if he began to speak, he might scream out, or reveal something he was determined to hide. He thought the roaring sound might be in his own ears from the surging of blood in his veins and the tumultuous beating of his heart.

”What is it I hear? Is my head right?”

”The roaring? Yes, you're all right. I thought when I was working here and slowly burrowing farther and farther that it might be the lack of air, and tried to contrive some way of getting it from the outside. I thought all the time that I was working farther into the mountain, and that I would have to stop or die here like a rat in a hole. But you just wait. You'll be surprised in a minute.”

Then Harry laughed, and the laugh, unexpected to himself, woke him from the trancelike feeling that possessed him, and he walked more steadily. ”I've been being more surprised each minute. Am I in Aladdin's cave--or whose is it?”

”Only mine. Just one more turn here and then--! It was not in the night I came here, and it was not all at once, as you are coming--hold on! Let me go in front of you. The hole was made gradually, until, one morning about ten o'clock, a great ma.s.s of rock--gold bearing, I tell you--rich in nuggets--I was crazed to lose it--fell out into s.p.a.ce, and there I stood on the very verge of eternity.”

They rounded the turn as he talked, and Larry Kildene stood forward under the stars and waved the torch over his head and held Harry back from the edge with his other hand. The air over their heads was sweet and pure and cold, and full of the roar of falling water. They could see it in a long, vast ribbon of luminous whiteness against the black abyss--moving--and waving--coming out from nothingness far above them, and reaching down to the nethermost depths--in that weird gloom of night--into nothingness again.

Harry stepped back, and back, into the hole from which they had emerged, and watched his companion stand holding the torch, which lit his features with a deep red light until he looked as if he might be the very alchemist of gold--red gold--and turning all he looked upon into the metal which closes around men's hearts. The red light flashed on the white ribbon of water, and this way and that, as he waved it around, on the sides of the pa.s.sage behind him, turning each point of projecting rock into red gold.

”Do you know where we are? No. We're right under the fall--right behind it. No one can ever see this hole from the outside. It is as completely hidden as if the hand of the Almighty were stretched over it. The rush of this body of water always in front of it keeps the air in the pa.s.sage always pure. It's wonderful--wonderful!”

He turned to look at Harry, and saw a wild man crouched in the darkness of the pa.s.sage, glaring, and preparing to leap. He seized and shook him. ”What ails you, man? Hold on. Hold on. Keep your head, I say. There! I've got you. Turn about. Now! It's over now. That's enough. It won't come again.”

Harry moaned. ”Oh, let me go. Let me get away from it.”

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