“Your conclusions seem accurate,” said Major Gordon, “for it is scarcely credible that there can be two men, in all this district, who could commit so mean an outrage. You wish me, I suppose, to put my men on his track. If that is it, I will do it cheerfully. Though how we are to succeed in running him down, if you, who have better woodcraft, failed when he was last here, I don’t see.”
“There’s nothing like trying,” answered Uncle Lawrence, “and there’s the more need of it, because there’s worse mischief a-brewin’, you may depend on’t. This varmint wouldn’t have dared to come back, especially when he knew there were soldiers at the Forks, unless he’d a good many men at his back, or there were other reasons for thinking he could snap his fingers at us. I can’t tell what it is, but there’s something, I’ll stake my life on that.”
“I’ll go out this very hour with my whole force. Will you help?”
“That’s what I came over for. I’m a pretty good guide through these woods, though I say it that should not say it, and can track a man a’most as good as an Ingin can. I’m agin shedding human blood, too, when it can be helped,” added the old man; but slapping his gun, he went on, “yet if I draw sight on Arrison, he’s a dead man, for I’ve loaded her with as many buckshot as she can carry, and I’d no more mind shooting him, than I would a mad dog.”
As he spoke these words he came in sight of the Forks, where we will leave them for the present.
CHAPTER XXI.
AYLESFORD AND MRS. WARREN
For on his brow the throbbing vein
Throbb’d as if back upon his brain
The hot blood ebb’d and flowed again. —Byron.
I am burned up with inflaming wrath;
A rage, whose heat hath this condition,
That nothing can allay, nothing but blood. —Shakespeare.
It would be impossible to convey, in words, an adequate idea of the state of Aylesford’s mind, after his separation from Major Gordon. Rage, shame and jealousy possessed him by turns. But to one sentiment he was constant through all; he was resolved yet to have the life of our hero; to consummate the revenge of which he believed he had been baulked at the very moment of success.
Uncle Lawrence’s description of him had not exaggerated the reality. On the contrary, it had fallen short of the truth in many particulars; for the patriarch was ignorant of some of the worst passages in the young man’s life. Aylesford had long since squandered his entire patrimony, in the wildest excesses, and had now no prospect of retaining his position in life unless by marrying his cousin. Relying on the family understanding to that effect, he had never allowed himself to doubt Kate’s assent; but had looked forward to her return to America as the period which was to set him afloat anew on the tide of fortune.