“Far be it from me to tempt you, Reuben,” Mr. De Vere said humbly. “You understand that Hernando has leprosy, and that, awake or asleep, you are to have him ready to be moved to Shushan by ten o’clock to-night.”
Not a muscle in that black face moved; and fearing he had not understood, Mr. De Vere repeated—“Leprosy.”
“Yes, Massa, I s’pected it when the doctah was hyah.”
A slight noise in Hernando’s room attracted Reuben’s attention and he quickly entered it, locking the door behind him.
Eletheer came out of the library where Mr. De Vere had been closeted with his family for nearly an hour. No outsider will ever know how the awful truth was told there, but the girl Eletheer came out of that room a woman. She wandered aimlessly downstairs. Not a cloud dimmed the intense blue of the heavens, and all nature seemed quivering with new life. The sunny valley lifted a smiling face but Eletheer saw only—Shushan.
Into this den of venomous serpents only the hardy dared penetrate
This extensive tract of land extended from the Rochester line to the “Low Right.” Portions of it were capable of being converted into average, tillable land but the greater part was rough, hilly and barren. This latter condition especially applied to the eastern portion, which opposed the Shawangunk Mountains: bare, rocky walls rising in successive steps, brokenly dizzy cliffs over which the northeasters swept unobstructed, fit abode for the shades of departed warriors as they had been the scene of many an Indian ambush. True, there were some shady haunts of gigantic pine, hemlock and chestnut, but into this den of venomous serpents only the hardy dared penetrate, and these never more than once.
In the heart of this amphitheater boiled a spring so offensive as to have earned the name “Stinking Spring.” The rocks from which it issued were blackened, denuded of all vegetation, and every living plant within reach of the fumes withered and died, but here was a paradise for reptiles which attained prodigious size and thronged in numbers incredible.
Old settlers claimed that some sort of connection existed between Shushan and “Old Ninety-Nine’s” cave, as, when the mysterious “light” appeared on the mountains, an answering flash rose above Shushan, but no one attempted an explanation.