“Tell me here and now. Where in all the world could we be more private?”
Captain Treherne lifted his head and looked about him,—only the bare sand of the bar, dimly visible in the vague light of the clouded moon, and of a differing tint from the dull neutral hue of the atmosphere of darkness. The steamer was absolutely silent, save as a loose chain might clank, swinging in the wind, for at this distance one could not discern the shaking of the transoms in their casings. There was no sight or sound of living creature, until a great bird, driven forth from its roost by the falling of a bough, or evicted by the wind, went screaming overhead. A shrill blast pursued his flight and presumably from the dark distance down the river one could not have distinguished the sounds of the living cry from the skirling of the restless spirit of the air.
“We crossed the river in a dug-out, under the nose of a gunboat,” Captain Treherne began, suddenly.
“Who? When? Where?” interrupted the old man, his face vaguely mowing under his big hat as he sought to compose his features.
“How can I tell where? In forty years who knows any locality in the course of this deceitful old river? All over here,” he pointed to the expanse of waters, “used to be dense cypress woods. You couldn’t find the sign of a tree now, unless some snag gets washed up by the current.”
“For the government snag-boats to pull up,” commented Colonel Kenwynton.
“Victor Ducie had been wounded, it was thought mortally, in a skirmish on the Arkansas side, and his brother, Archie, and I,—we were together in the rangers then,—slipped through the lines one dark midnight to Duciehurst with the news. You remember the Ducies?”
“Indeed, indeed, I do. There is a gentleman of that name—”
But Treherne was going on. “Mrs. Ducie determined to go to her son Victor at once; she had only one of her children at home then, a twelve-year-old boy named Julian, and she could take him with her. The country was full of bands of wandering marauders and bushwhackers, and in leaving the house Archie placed a few of his father’s most important papers, with a lot of specie, and some family jewels, in a strong box, which we wrapped in an old knapsack and hid away.”
He had pushed his hat back from his brow and Colonel Kenwynton felt a pang of blended pity and surprise to note that the head was nearly bald. The years had trafficked with Treherne as well as with himself, hard dealings, it seemed. For they had taken his youth, his spirit, his pervasive cheer; there was something indefinable suggested that savored of deep melancholy. And had these covetous years given him full value in return—learning, in the lessons of life, just judgment, self-control, disciplined purpose, earnest effort, and, last and not least, resignation and calm and restful faith? Colonel Kenwynton was unwittingly shaking his old white head at the thought in his mind. Time had not dealt honestly by Hugh Treherne. Time had exacted usury and had paid no fair equivalent for the ineffable possession of youth. Colonel Kenwynton realized, however, that his own foible was hasty judgment, and he sought to hold his conclusions in suspension while he listened.