After a moment the man entered. He seemed to himself to have been standing outside that door for a limitless period of time; like those rare, strange sensations we feel of having done the same thing or spoken the same words before in some other and unknown period of existence. He lifted Marion carefully and laid her on a lounge. As he moved her, the locket swung loose against her belt on the long ribbon which was fastened underneath her dress around her throat. It was a clumsy, old-fashioned locket, with an open face, and into its small frame she herself had inserted a photograph of Lawrence Vickery, cut from a carte de visite. Bro saw it: the open face of the locket was toward him, and he could not help seeing. It occurred to him then vaguely that, as she had worn it concealed, it should be again hidden before other eyes saw it—before she could know that even his had rested upon it. With shaking fingers he took out his knife, and, opening its smallest blade, he gently severed the ribbon, took off the locket, and put it into her pocket. It was surprising to see how skillfully his large, rough hands did this. Then, with an afterthought, he found a worn place in the ribbon's end, and severed it again by pulling it apart, taking the cut portion away with him. His idea was, that she would think the ribbon had parted of itself at the worn spot, and she did think so. It was a pretty, slender little ribbon, of bright rose-color. When all was finished, he went to seek assistance. He knew no more what to do for her physically than he would have known what to do for an angel. Although there was not the faintest sign of consciousness, he had carefully refrained from even touching her unnecessarily in the slightest degree: it seemed to him profanation. But there was no one in the house. He went to the gate, and there caught sight of Mrs. Manning hurrying homeward across the sandy waste.
"It is all a mistake," she panted, with the tears still dropping on her crimson cheeks. "It was not Lawrence at all, but young Harding. Lawrence has gone down the road with the superintendent; but poor young Harding is, I fear, fatally injured."
Even then automatic memory brought to Bro's mind only the idea, "He will never twist his feet around chair-legs any more! It was almost the only fault he had, poor fellow!"
"Miss Marion is not quite well, I think," he said. "I heard her crying a little up stairs as I came in."
"Of course," said the mother, "poor child! But it is all over now.—It was not Lawrence at all, Marion," she cried loudly, hurrying up the path to the doorway; "it was only young Harding."
Love has ears, even in semi-death, and it heard that cry. When Mrs. Manning, breathless, reached her daughter's room, she found her on the lounge still, but with recovered consciousness, and even palely smiling. The picture was safely in her pocket; she supposed, when she found it, that she must have placed it there herself. She never had any suspicion of Bro's presence or his action.
The saw-miller had disappeared. Mrs. Manning supposed that he, in his turn, had gone to the dock or to the Harding cottage.
When he came in to tea that night he looked strangely, but was able to account for it.
"Letters from Washington," he said. Then he paused; they looked at him expectantly. "The idea of the register is not a new one," he added slowly; "it has already been patented."
"My inheritance is gone, then," said Marion gayly.