“O my darling! Thank heaven you are found!” and she smothered the bewildered one with kisses and caresses.
Suddenly Doctor Spellman raised his hand and an instant hush fell upon all. He had lifted the limp arm of the man and placed his finger on the wrist. The professional eye saw that which escaped the others. He said in a solemn voice:
“Uncle Elk is dead!”
CHAPTER XXV — And the Last
Enough has been said in the preceding pages to show that Elkanah Sisum was a man of excellent birth and superior culture. He possessed moderate wealth, and when admitted to the bar his prospects could not have been brighter, but misfortune seemed to have marked him for its own. It delivered the first crushing blow by taking away the beloved wife of his young manhood, and leaving him an only child,—Ruth, who was as the apple of his eye. At eighteen she married a worthy young man who was admitted as a partner in the law firm and displayed brilliant ability. Unto the couple was born also a single daughter, named for its mother.
Sisum never remarried, but lavished his affection upon his daughter and especially the grandchild Ruth, whom it may be said he loved more than his own life. Thus things stood until the little one was nearly five years old, when she showed alarming signs of sinking into a decline. Her parents decided to take her on a long sea voyage in the summer time. The understanding was that they were to be gone for several months, but they never returned. Their steamer was not heard of again.
It was years before the grandfather gave up hope. The long brooding over his grief and the final yielding to despair,—slow but final,—produced a strange effect upon his mind. Only his most intimate friends saw that his brain was affected; others met and talked with him daily with never a suspicion of the fact. He had come to the gradual but fixed belief that although his dear ones had left him for the land of shadows, yet somewhere and at some time in this life his grandchild would come to him. She might not remain long, but she would reveal herself unmistakably before Uncle Elk himself passed into the Great Beyond. It was the centering of his thoughts and hopes upon this strange fancy that was actual monomania. Scout Master Hall detected it, though none of the Boy Scouts dreamed of anything of the kind. As the delusion fastened itself upon the old man, he formed a distaste for society, which of itself grew until it made him the hermit we found in the Maine woods during this summer. There he spent his hours in reading, and in studying animal and bird life,—trees and woodcraft. He never lost his gentle affection for his fellow men, and at long intervals visited his former acquaintances; but, though he left his latchstring outside and gave welcome to whoever called, he preferred to make his abiding place far from the haunts of men.
What mind can understand its own mysteries? While the current of life was moving smoothly with the old man, Doctor Spellman put up his summer home on the shore of the lake not very distant from the cabin of Uncle Elk. The latter set out to call upon them almost as soon as he learned of their arrival. While too far for the couple to see him, he caught sight of them sitting in front of their structure, the doctor smoking and the wife engaged in crochet work. Their child was playing with a doll indoors, and Uncle Elk saw nothing of her, nor did he learn of her existence until several days later, when occurred the incident that will be told further on.
It was that sight of the man and woman that gave a curious twist to the delusion of the hermit. He was startled by the woman’s striking resemblance to his own daughter who had been lost at sea years before. He formed a sudden and intense dislike of the man who had presumed to marry a person that resembled his child, and it was painful to look upon the wife who bore such a resemblance. No brain, except one already somewhat askew, could have been the victim of so queer a process. Such, however, was the fact and of itself it explains a number of incidents that otherwise could not be explained.
It will be noted that thus far Uncle Elk had not seen the little child who was the image of her mother, and since the parents quickly learned of his strange antipathy and took care to avoid meeting him, it is unlikely that in the ordinary course of events he ever would have come face to face with the little one.