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LUCY, after the burial, returned to her cheerless
room. Mildly as ever, through butternut-boughs
pleasantly rustling, the afternoon sunshine entered.
The brook plashed and drummed; and high in a
maple-top on the forest edge a wood-thrush piped his sweet
melodious whistle.

But to Lucy it was all dreary blank. The lovely summer
weather, the freshness, the murmur, and the stir, awoke no
responsive gladness in her heart. The thrush's whistle, which
she had often heard at that hour when she watched by her
sick babe, stabbed her like a knife. Even Mrs. Brandle's
sympathy seemed a mockery.

“Come, Archy,” said the widow: “I guess we'll go.
There's such a thing as trying too hard to console them that
God has afflicted. If she gets any real peace, it must come
within herself; and I feel as though, if she should be left
all alone, she'll by and by find the Comforter.”

But the Comforter comes not as long as the spirit clings to

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any earthly support; nor until all is given up, and from the
depths of the soul springs the prayer, “Thy will, not mine,
O Father!” And Lucy still clung to one frail outward
hope, — that Hannah would return with some message of love
and solace from Guy. After the widow's departure, she
closed her eyes and her ears, and lay nursing that hope in her
bosom, even as she had nursed her sick babe. She prayed,
not to God, but to Guy. “Oh, send me some little token!
Save me, save me, from this despair!”

So she lay until Hannah returned. And Hannah had not
seen Guy, because of the woman that was with him during
the hour that she waited. Lucy knew that that woman was
Christina; and, with one wild wail of misery, she turned her
face to the wall.

It was now evening. One by one the stars came out of
the day's blue tent; Arcturus and Lyra marshalling their
golden cohorts, majestical and silent. O beautiful night!
stillness and starry gloom, how excellent! But there is a
night within the night: it envelops the despairing, — darkness
utter and rayless.

The heavenly hosts passed over. The glowing urn of
Aquarius tarnished in the morning's beam. The mists curled,
the mountains bathed their foreheads in the red sunrise,
the dew sparkled, and all the earth was glad. But Guy
awoke in prison; and Lucy still lay in her trance of misery.

In the afternoon, Hannah became alarmed about her, and

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went to consult Mrs. Brandle. Jehiel was away. Then
little Teddy crept up stairs, pushed Lucy's door open softly,
entered, went to the sofa where she lay, and sat down on a
stool by her side.

Strange boy! What his mother suffered before he was
born must have inspired him with that wise sympathy, so extraordinary
in a child. He made no noise, but, as if afraid
of waking Lucy, folded his tiny hands, pressed his quivering
lips together, and looked at her, while large sorrowful tears
ran down his cheeks clear as lilies.

Lucy did not hear him at all, but felt his presence by that
sixth sense of which physiologists make little or no account.
When she opened her eyes, and saw him sitting there on
the low stool, with patient hands crossed, and lips pressed
into silence, while his tears streamed, she was touched; her
frozen grief thawed; a gush of love surprised her; and she
caught him to her heart.

“Teddy loves you,” he said, putting his arms about her
neck. “Don't feel bad! Poor little baby!”

“My darling boy! God bless you, my darling Teddy!”
she sobbed; for it seemed to her that he had delivered her
soul from death.

After that her burden was lightened, and she grew strong
to bear the life which had seemed since yesterday so utterly
intolerable to her.

And now Jehiel, coming into the house, called Hannah;
having picked up, in the world's great wilderness, a little human
waif; namely, our young friend Job.

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“I will go and get him something to eat,” said Lucy.
And with a heart lightening more and more as she found that
there was still love in the world, and work of love and mercy
to perform, she went down and astonished Jehiel by her newborn
strength and cheerfulness.

He showed her his forlorn charge, — frightened, wishful,
wondering Job, whose starved, scared looks moved her pity;
seeming to say, “I am an orphan, with none to care for me.”
An orphan; and she was childless. Then why should she
wish to die?

“Where's the doctor?” asked Jehiel.

“Gone off. He's afraid,” said Job.

“What's he afraid of?”

“Don't know. Guess he's afraid he'll be hung. Runs
into the woods, and acts orful.”

Jehiel sat resting his lame foot, and questioning the boy;
and Lucy was getting him some bread and milk; when Teddy
said, “Folks coming!” Jehiel went to the door, and admitted
a visitor into the parlor.

“Some one to see you, Lucy.” But he did not tell her
who.

She gave Job his bread and milk, and, unsuspecting, unprepared,
went to the parlor; saw a lady rise to meet her;
advanced wonderingly; and found herself suddenly face to
face with Christina.

“Lucy!” said a low, winning voice. Slowly, step by
step, backwards, with her eyes fixed as if she saw a serpent,

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Lucy shudderingly recoiled. Christina at the same time advanced,
extending her hand, and entreating her.

“What have you to do with me?” demanded Lucy; at
sight of whose white revolted face the heart of Christina sank
within her.

“I come as a friend, — as the friend of him who loves
you.”

“His friend! — my friend! Hear it, O Heaven! Well
you may weep!” added Lucy. “You have dragged him
to ruin and death; you have robbed me of him and of my
babe! I hope your tears are sincere!”

Christina was dumb. For this was not the Lucy she had
expected to meet; not by any means the soft, passive, pliable
creature whom she had imagined unworthy of Guy, and
so inferior to herself. The scorn, the flashing loveliness, the
roused and wronged womanhood, stunned and convicted her;
and she saw too late the error which women of her type —
the fiery and restless women — almost invariably commit,
when they complacently measure, and contemptuously label
“Tame,” those other domestic women, with natures more
constant but not colder, more quiet but not less deep, than
their own.

It still remained for Lucy to correct her judgment of
Christina, — a harder task. Slowly the seeress was gathering
into herself the power which she knew so well how to
wield, but which had quite gone from her at the moment;
and, when she spoke, her voice was gentle and sad and
sweet.

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“Will you be kind, and hear me a moment? — not for
my sake, — for it is my lot to be misjudged, — but for your
sake and for his sake.”

Lucy could not refuse. “Speak!” — and, trembling, she
sat down. She was near a window: for relief to her burning
and agitated feelings, she opened it, and looked out. A
stranger was walking up and down under the trees. At a
glance from him, full of that peculiar, surprised interest with
which certain men regard a new and beautiful female face, she
drew back instinctively. His respectable manners and intellectual
features could not disguise from her the character of
the man accustomed to fascinate and to be fascinated. He took
up Teddy in his arms, and gave him his watch to play with.
Lucy looked out listlessly at the very charming picture they
made; while she heeded with a jealous woman's ear every
word of Christina's.

For Christina had now fairly begun her good work; pouring
out her spirit in a manner which must soon have softened
Lucy, and prepared her for a perfect reconciliation with Guy.
But the antagonism between these two feminine natures,
which had hitherto been so fruitful of misunderstandings and
mischiefs, now followed them up with a new fatality. There
was a stir without, a fall, a scream from Teddy. Lucy
rushed from the room. Christina ran to the window, and
saw, not a hurt child, but a woman, swooning on the turf, —
Lucy hastening to lift her; Teddy standing by, dumb with
terror after his first scream; and the Honorable Cephas Snow
pale as marble, and fixedly staring.

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Jehiel was on the spot in an instant, demanding to know
what was the matter.

“She came round the corner, saw him,” said Lucy, with
a glance at Cephas, “and fell.”

Jehiel glanced at the Congress-man; then turning his eyes
upon his wife, with all his soul in them, spoke to her tenderly
as only a strong, tender man can speak.

“Hannah! — I am with you!”

She clung to him an instant; then, recovering, looked
wildly around.

“Where is he?”

“Who? That man?”

“My boy! — my child!” And she snatched Teddy to
her heart.

Jehiel and Lucy took them into the house. The Honorable
Mr. Snow looked on with a glassy countenance; the muscles
of his mouth working as if he would speak. Then he mechanically
smoothed his garments which Teddy had ruffled
when he struggled from his arms.

“Cephas,” said Christina, coming to his side, “do you
know that woman?”

“She seemed afraid,” stammered the Congress-man, “that
I might do the child some harm. Who is that man? — her
husband?”

“Cephas,” — Christina grasped his arm, and looked into
his face searchingly, — “is this the Hannah that lived at your
brother's? who disappeared mysteriously when it became

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necessary to hide her shame, and save your respectability?
So our sins follow not ourselves only, but live to plague
others! You have done an ill turn to Guy, to me, to us all.
I can have no more influence with Lucy, after such an interruption.
Come, let us go; for this woman is married, — may
be happy, — and your face cannot be a pleasant sight either
to her or to her husband.”

Mr. Snow stood confusedly wiping with his white handkerchief
his forehead, scarcely less white, when Jehiel came
out.

“Sir!” — stepping up to the honorable gentleman, and
speaking in a voice ominously deep and quivering, — “this
woman is my wife. I am the father of her fatherless child.
You could wrong her once, and play the villain's part: but
she has a protector now; and damn you, Cephas Snow, if
ever you dare to trouble her again!”

The honorable gentleman covered his forehead with his
handsome hand, and struggled within himself.

“I am not quite the heartless wretch you think me,” he
said with twitching lips. “If she knew the painful uncertainty
I have felt on her account and the child's! I think I
have a right to ask to see the child.”

“You have; and I have a right to refuse. She thought
you had come to claim the boy, — that's what startled
her: don't imagine 'twas any thing else. Now go: you'd
better.”

And Cephas went.

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Christina lingered, seeing Job, forgotten by everybody,
staring out of the door. She had heard of Doctor Biddikin's
insanity and flight; and she took pity upon the homeless
orphan.

“Job, come here.” And he came obediently. “Where
do you live now?”

“Don't live nowheres,” said Job, simply smiling. “Got
starved out.”

“Jehiel,” said Christian, “I know you, and honor you.
Though you are poor, you would not refuse a home to this
child. But let me take him, and he shall be cared for.”

The young farmer's knotted fists relaxed, and his threatening
visage softened, as he turned from looking after Cephas,
and confronted Christina.

“If he will go with you, I have no objection.”

“Job, will you go with me?”

“Y-a-a-s!” said Job, brightening; for he had learned to
love Christina.

Then she offered Jehiel her hand, and he grasped it convulsively;
for his heart was full.

“You are one of Nature's noblemen, Jehiel. You have
done one of those rare, courageous, and generous actions
which redeem the world.”

He knew that she alluded to his marriage with one of those
whom society calls fallen, unites to cast out irretrievably, and
hunts with endless scorn; and his manly countenance lighted
up with a proud smile.

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“I have my reward,” he said. “God bless you!”

She hurried to the gate where Snow was untying his horse,
and presented to him little Job.

“Cephas, behold your son!”

“Don't mock me!” he pleaded; for he had seen the beauty
of Hannah's child, and been thrilled by a parent's yearning.

“Do unto this fatherless boy as another has done unto
yours,” said Christina. “This shall be your atonement.
You refuse? Then I adopt him.”

“It is very bitter!” said he with a writhing smile. “But
it shall be as you say. With my means, perhaps something
can be made of him. Let us both adopt him: I will be his
father, you his mother. Would you like that, my son?”

“Y-a-a-s!” grinned Job.

And they took him between them into the carriage; and,
from that day, Job wanted not a home nor friends.

“We ought to go up on the hill, and see if any thing can
be done for the doctor,” said Christina. “And Mr. Murk—
I feel that there is something wrong about him. When I
have thought of him lately, I have had a strange sensation of
starving.”

“Guess I know where Murk is,” whispered Job.

“Tell us, my son,” said Christina.

“I got scaret. Went up on the mountain, find doctor;
heard somebody in the hole,” said Job.

“What hole? — the shaft?”

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“Y-a-a-s! Day o'fore yis'dy. Scaret me, and I run.”

“Cephas, turn about!” exclaimed Christina.

Snow remonstrated. It was late: already the sun had
dropped behind the mountains; the valley was in shadow, and
it would be dark before they could get to the crags. But
Christina enforced her command with an imperious gesture;
and he obeyed.

They arrived at Biddikin's house: it was empty. There
they left Job, and set out for the summit. Up through the
woods they toiled in the deepening twilight, and reached the
shaft just as the stars were appearing.

“Murk!” called Christina with clear, shrill voice.

“Murk!” echoed back the forest on the eastern slope;
but there issued no sound from the shaft. And they stood
listening on the sombre, silent, sublime crag; no living
thing near, — only a night-hawk sweeping by in his zigzag
flight.

The night-hawk sailed over the valley, betwixt them and the
purple ships of cloud floating in the orange sea of sunset, and
disappeared, a speck in the expanse of brightness; leaving
the mountain more lonely for his brief visit. Christina gazed
at the sky, the dim mountainous world darkening under its
gloriously tinted rim, the light fading from the peaks; and
remembered with grief the last time she stood upon those
rocks, — the evening when Guy was with her, and she fled
from him, as she believed, forever.

“There's no Murk here,” said Cephas. “Here's the

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tub; and how could he get into the shaft? Come, let's go:
it will soon be dark.”

“We used to have a lantern in the hut,” replied Christina.
“Have you matches?”

“Yes; but what do you mean to do?”

Christina hastened to the hut, entered in the darkness, and
groped till she found the lantern hanging in its place. She
was returning with it, when a dismal groan came up from a
corner of the hut, thrilling her blood cold.

“What was that?” cried Cephas at the door.

“Give me a match!” whispered Christina. A scratch on the
rough board; and she lighted the lantern. The yellow beams
fell upon the low roof and the beds of straw, and revealed
an object, like a human form, rising from the ground.

It was a man, shrunken and shrivelled to a mere thing of
skin and bone. He rested on his knees, grimacing with
fright, and making unintelligible gestures like one appealing
for mercy.

“Doctor Biddikin!” ejaculated the horrified girl. “What
are you doing here?”

He seemed bereft of the power of speech; but, in his
ghostly pantomime, he pointed to something on his breast. It
was a card of pasteboard, suspended by a string from his
neck. She advanced the light towards it, and read, scrawled
in large uncouth letters, with red ink, — or it might have been
blood, — these words: —

“NOT GUILTY.”

[figure description] Page 509.[end figure description]

With irrepressible loathing, Christina crept out of the
hut.

“Speak to him, Cephas! I am sick!”

“Where is Murk, doctor?” asked Cephas, holding the
lantern.

The wretch made a motion of putting a noose about his
neck, and pointed to the cross-pole of the hut.

“We can get nothing from him; and we have no time to
loose.”

“Come, then,” said Christina. “We will attend to him
afterwards.”

They went back to the shaft, tried the windlass, and,
finding it safe, prepared the tub for a descent. She stepped
into it with the lantern. Cephas swung her off, and slowly
unwound the rope.

Down into the pit she goes, lighting it with a sallow gleam
as she descends; looking up at the diminishing space above
her; peering into the darkness beneath; till the bucket settles
upon the rocky floor, and the rope slackens in her hand.
Then she steps out; looks timidly around; alone in the tragical
place.

Tragical indeed! For in this rocky nest the egg of Fate
had been hatched for Pelt, untimely. Here Biddikin had dug
the grave of his soul. Into this pit Guy had fallen, by her
own hand led to its brink. Sepulchre of enthusiasm and sacred
hopes! And, lo! what is this?

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Within the cavern branching from the shaft, bolt upright,
his back against the rock, his head horribly on one side, his
open eyes glazed and fixed, never blinking at the shine of the
lantern, — there he sits, the stolid, silent man.

Let down by his disciple into this rare hiding-place; the
bucket withdrawn to prevent suspicion; deprived of all assistance
by the hand of the law laid upon Madison; his small
stock of provisions got in at night failing him; no angels
bringing him bread, no ravens feeding him; liberty and blue
sky above, but famine down there griping him, — so ended
the days of Murk, philanthropist and prophet!

Cephas, looking down into the lighted bottom of the pit,
guessed what she had found. A minute later she stepped
into the tub, and shook the rope for a signal. The windlass
turned, the lantern-gleam crept up the scraggy walls, and
darkness closed over the horror.

“'Tis as well so,” said Christina, placing the lantern on
the stones, and sitting down by it. “Leave him to his rest.
Farewell, Moses! But who would have thought” — she
smiled a dreary smile — “that all this trouble and toil and
expense was — for what? To shape a fitting and magnificent
sarcophagus for the great Mr. Murk! What a world it
is! And I am sad for his sake, Cephas! I suppose he
had a mother once, who took that head upon her bosom, and
stroked it fondly, and combed it into curls. Now it hangs
there so heavily, with that great nose cold and leaden! And

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the poor man did really think he had a messiahship: don't
you think he did, Cephas? But requiescat! — we must
leave the dead, and look after the living.”

They had almost forgotten the doctor. But now they returned
to the hut: it was empty. Biddikin was gone; and,
after searching and calling in vain about the rocks, they
departed, descending the mountain-path by the light of the
lantern.

p730-517

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