CHAPTER XXV.
AMONG STRANGERS.
The dark, calm, dewy night closed down presently, and Sheila Kellypromptly finished her wicked work.
The reward was immediately paid into her hands, and she departed inhaste from Ellsworth to spend it in riotous living.
The night was warm and sultry, and few people strayed abroad; so out inthe road, on the grassy bank by a little purling creek, there lay forhours the motionless form of a seemingly dead girl, by her side a bottleof laudanum, and a pathetic little note detailing the reasons for hersuicide.
For awhile all was very still. The bending branches of the treesstirred, and fanned the still, white face, the dew kissed it; the light,airy wings of the summer insects brushed it in flying; the windscaressed it with the sweet odors of clover and daisies, and the watersmurmured by with a soothing song, all alike unheeded by the beautiful,silent sleeper.
"Softly! She is lying with her lips apart; Softly! She is dying of a broken heart!
"Whisper! She is going to her final rest; Whisper! Life is growing dim within her breast!"
Suddenly the sultry darkness was broken by a flash of lightning,followed by a low rumble of thunder. Swift rain-drops flashed downthrough the leaves upon that still, white face, and a summer storm brokein startling fury on the heated earth, drenching the motionless formwith a steady downpour of water.
The wind howled through the trees, breaking and twisting branches,tossing leaves about like feathers, and swelling the little creek to abrawling stream.
All the while the blue sheets of lightning lighted up the sky withsplendor, and gleamed through the tossing tree-branches down on thefair, quiet face seemingly locked in death's awful repose. For half anhour the war of the elements raged, then ceased as suddenly as it hadbegun, and the last faint gleam of lightning showed a startling change.
The lips of Dainty Chase were parted in long, gasping breaths; the blueeyes were dilated in a blank and straining gaze. She rose slowly,staggeringly, to her feet, and as the black clouds parted overhead, andthe full moon glimmered through, flooding the wet earth with splendor,as though diamonds strewed every blade of grass, she stepped, slowly,falteringly, down to the road, dragging her drenched body alongaimlessly toward the open country that lay beyond.
It would seem as if a miracle had been wrought, giving back life to thedead.
But Dainty's draught of laudanum had been too small to induce death, andthe wholesome bath of rain and the electric elements abroad in the airhad combined to rouse her from a stupor that might otherwise haveterminated fatally. Life--feeble, and faltering, yet still life--stoleback along her veins to her numb heart, and set it beating again.
With a strength almost incredible after the terrible week she hadendured, she wandered slowly down the road, obeying blind impulse, notreason; for her mind was yet clouded by delirium, and she had as yet norealization of who she was or where she was.
Her mind was a pitiful blank, and her lips babbled vacant nothings asshe dragged herself on and on, further and further away from Ellsworth,and into the lonely woods, unconsciously leaving the beaten track, andpursuing a lonely bridle path that led her into the very heart of theforest.
Now and then, when her strength failed, she would drop down and rest;then start up and wander on again, aimlessly and drearily, until sheseemed to be lost in a maze of thick woodland that looked like thehaunts of savage creatures and crawling serpents, whose dens were fitlychosen among these jagged gray rocks.
"And when on the earth she sank to sleep, If slumber her eyelids knew, She lay where the deadly vine doth weep Its venomous tear, and nightly steep The flesh in blistering dew, And near her the she-wolf stirred the brake, And the copper snake breathed in her ear."
She came staggering out at last from a great thicket of ferns and foundherself near a brawling mountain stream--one of those pellucid troutstreams dear to the disciples of gentle Isaak Walton. On its green,sloping banks she sank down to rest, lulled by the low murmur of thewaters, and presently the gray shadows of dawn were pierced by thesun's bright rays lighting the solitary wilderness with glory.
Higher and higher mounted the sun, and all the woodland dwellers startedabroad, while the mists of the night fled at the warmth of the advancingday; but wearily, wearily, slumbered the exhausted girl, crouching onthe grass, with her pallid cheek in the hollow of her little hand, herhair a tangle of glory glinting in the sun, as it shone through thebranches of the trees.
Heavily, wearily, she slept on as one too exhausted ever to wake again,and presently the deep forest stillness was broken by the dip of oars inthe murmuring stream, while a man's voice cried, eagerly:
"Another speckled beauty for our string, Peters! Ye gods, what a royalbreakfast we shall have this morning! Is your wife a good cook, say? Forit would be a thousand pities to have these spoiled!"
The voice had the shrill twang of the commercial traveler, the daringexplorer who penetrates the depths of the forests as well as the heartof the cities, and the answer came in the distinct _patois_ of the WestVirginian backwoodsman:
"Stranger, thar mought be better cooks than my Sairy Ann whar you hailfrom up yon in New Yorrok; but, I swow, thar hain't another saw-mill inWest Virginny as can ekal the cookin' in my camp! Wait till Sairy Annbr'ils these mountain trout and slaps 'em on to a pone of sweet cornbread. See?"
"Yes, I see--in imagination--and my mouth waters! Let us go back to themill at once, Peters, and realize our anticipations. Hal-loo! what isthat--over on that bank, man?"
"Gee-whillikins! what, indeed?" roared the saw-mill man, rowing rapidlyto the bank and springing out so quickly as to almost upset hiscompanion into the pellucid stream.
Stooping over the sleeping form, the rough backwoodsman scrutinizedDainty with amazement, ending by shaking her vigorously, as heexclaimed, in wonder:
"Wake up, honey; wake up, and tell us whar in thunder you come from,a-sleepin' here like the dead, your clothes all wet and drabbled, andyour little feet bare and torn and bloody with the rocks and briars!Why, 'tis a sight to make that soft Sairy Ann cry her eyes out! What'syour name, chile, and whar'd you cum from anyway?" as the blue eyesflared wide open and Dainty stared at his kindly, gray-bearded face witha pitiful, unrealizing moan.
The commercial traveler fastened the boat to a tree and came on thebank, too, full of curiosity; but all their efforts failed to elicitanything intelligible from the sick girl, and at length they came to thevery intelligent conclusion that she must be some invalid strayed awayfrom home, and that the only thing to do under the circumstances was totake her back to the saw-mill with them and await developments.
They did so, and thus our forlorn heroine found shelter in a rude shantydeep in the forest, among a few sturdy toilers who were camping here forthe summer, a half score of rough but kindly men, the husband and sonsof a good soul, Sarah Ann Peters, who did all the household work for thecrowd, and accepted with open arms and heart this new claimant on hersympathy.