He clasped her hand as she lifted it.
"Come back? I'd come back if it were from the ends of the earth!" he protested.
A little thing to say, wrung out of the impassioned moment, when, in good sooth, there was no time to measure phrases or take heed of the cadences of the voice. It changed the world for her. He never forgot that radiant face in its sprite-like beauty amongst the moonlit flowers. If there were other eyes in the world so tender, so pathetic, so exquisite, he never saw them before or afterward. No other creature of the earth so looked like one of the air. Even as he sought his escape through the shadows, the dull sound of his horse's hoofs making scant impression in the midst of the pawing of the posse's steeds, he turned to catch through the trees a flitting glimpse of her light dress, her volant attitude, as she sped silently and secretly back to the waiting group on the porch. Then he rode away—rode for his life, as she had bidden him.
And he had good need of speed. How the distorted idea gained credence amongst the infuriated mountaineers it would be difficult to say. It might have been colored by the circumstance that Guthrie could logically be presumed to have had no connivance with the robbers whom he had slain, and no knowledge of where they had hidden their booty; it might have been suggested by the crafty sheriff as a diversion of attention; but the suspicion presently permeated the group that Guthrie had surprised Shattuck in the act of securing the plunder hidden in the pygmy grave. The discovery of the stranger's flight added the semblance of confirmation, and lent energy to the pursuit, which, leading in diverse directions, served to disperse the posse, and thus annul that formidable engine of the law which the strange happenings of the night had turned against the sheriff, who had himself summoned it into existence. It was doubtless with a view to his own safety that he selected for his share of the search the road back to the county town, and with no expectation of the result that awaited him there. The imputation of flight, and of seeking to elude the responsibility of his act, which might otherwise have attached to this precipitate return, was in a measure eliminated by the fact that the fugitive had arrived before him, and had already surrendered to the authorities.
It was a time to which Shattuck could never look back without a wincing loathing for the part he was constrained to play, although, in truth, he fared much better than he could have hoped. It so chanced that the justice of the peace, an old, gentle, friendly man, whom in those early morning hours he had roused, had himself the spirit of an antiquarian; his conversation was replete with the ancient and fading traditions of the Great Smoky Mountains, and he could well appreciate the strength of the archæological interest which had led Shattuck to open the pygmy grave. It seemed in the magistrate's estimation an ample justification for many risks. They were talking of these things quietly in the justice's office when the sheriff joined them. To his prosaic amaze, instead of details of the operation of the law indigenous to the office—points of examining trials and subpœnaings of witnesses, of arrest and commitment—he heard legends of the old Cherokee settlement, Chota, the "beloved town," city of refuge, where even the shedder of blood was safe from vengeance; of the mysterious Ark before which sacrifices were offered; of Hebraic words in the Indian ritual of worship; of the great chieftain Oconostota, and his wonderful visit to King George in London; of the bravery of Atta-Culla-Culla; of the Indian sibyl known as the Evening Cloud, and the strange fulfilment of her many strange prophecies.
Thus submitting his motives to no uncomprehending utilitarian arbitrament, all the rigors of the misunderstanding that Shattuck feared were averted, and he doubtless owed his admission to bail to this fortuitous circumstance. That he never came to trial he was indebted to a chance as friendly, for Millroy, before his death, so far recovered as to make a sworn statement which inculpated only Cheever and the horse-thief's gang, thus relieving Yates as well as Shattuck of all suspicion of complicity in the murder and the robbery.
The mere passing remembrance that his name had ever been mentioned in connection with these crimes was like the thrust of a knife in Shattuck's heart for years thereafter, most of all as his enthusiasms abated, and the more serious interests of life were asserted, and his worldly consequence increased. Sometimes, amidst the wreaths of a post-prandial cigar, a sprite-like face, that seemed even in his unwilling and disaffected recollection supremely fair, was present to him again, and left him with a sigh half pleasure, half pain. Further than this his words were naught, and easily forgotten.
Easily forgotten! Every day that dawned to Letitia's expectant faith held an hour that would bring him. Never a sunset came that was not bright with his promise for the morrow. Down any curve in the road, as it turned, she might look to see him. For did he not say he would come?—and so surely he would! The years of watching wore out her life, but not her faith. And she died in the belief that her doom fell all too soon, and that he would come to find her gone. And she clung futilely to earth for his fancied sorrow.
