"'Twas true. If you'd cracked it, my life would have cracked with it. But now—'tis mine no more. My light's out; my thread's spun. I only ax that I may hold it in this old hand once again; then I'll give it to 'e, an' vanish out of man's sight for ever."
This she said meaning to destroy the vase, to dash it into a thousand fragments at Malherb's feet and take the consequences. He did not guess at her malignant purpose. Her harsh, high voice was now the music of Heaven to his ear; the lizard life in her wrinkled carcase oozed like balm upon his sight and made him young. He feasted his senses upon her, even while he doubted his senses; and in spirit uttered a petition to his Maker that this might be no dream.
"Touch me, Lovey Lee," he commanded. "Hold my hand in yours, press upon it. I must feel your flesh warm; I must put my finger upon your pulse that I may know your heart is beating. You have risen from the dead and lifted me from worse than death. Give me your hand."
She held out to him her gnarled, huge paw. It was wrinkled and bony; each great artery ran like a blue cord under the brown skin; each black nail was sharp as an eagle's claw.
"Heed your going," she said, "else that treasure there will fall under your heel—the amphora."
He saw her eyes burning upon it, and a sudden, mad, Malherb impulse took him.
"You have given me my life once more, shall I rob you of yours again? No! Take up that trash and begone. Bear witness she lives, you men. Now depart, and let that glass—priceless as the world goes—be my payment to you. 'Tis little enough for what I gain this day—light, air, life, Heaven, the right to walk the earth and to look the world in the face. An innocent man! Oh, God of Mercy, I thank Thee!"
With a strange cry, as of some mother-beast that recovers her lost young, the ancient creature fell upon her treasure, hid it away quickly and disappeared, like a shadow, behind the mist. Not a word she spoke of thanks nor of blessing; but she gathered up the amphora and melted away into the morning air, like some fantastic exhalation of dawn that vanishes at sunrise.
Neither did Malherb speak again. He mounted his horse, watched Lovey depart, and then, forgetting, as it seemed, the men behind him, galloped fast upon his way. Exultation marked his movements. His attitude was of a boy that rode to hounds, liven the gravity of the present enterprise was for a time powerless to make him grave.
The men behind him felt that their master was struggling with a full heart. They knew that had he been alone, Malherb had shouted to the sun and wakened the echoes of the ancient hills with thanksgivings. The nature of his joy they failed signally to apprehend. As for Bickford and Putt, their own state was the reverse of gracious.