“All right; you shall have it. Just before the explosion came McNabb had admitted that he was acting for somebody else.”
“But he did not name the person?”
“The judge was trying to make him do so, but he was still refusing. The last thing he said, as I remember it, was something which seemed to implicate Miss Richardia as the one who could tell if she chose. Which was absurd, of course.”
“Quite so,” was the low-voiced reply. “Shall we let the matter rest there—for the present?”
Tregarvon was holding his head in his hands again. The throbbing pain was so intense that he could only grit his teeth and endure. When speech became possible he gave his answer.
“It may rest until I am able to take hold again. Then I shall make somebody pay for this night’s work if it takes every dollar I can dig out of the Ocoee for the next ten years!”
Once more Hartridge bent in apparent agony over the broken leg. But when the paroxysm had passed he looked up with a face that was gray with a deeper suffering than that inflicted by the broken bone.
“If you do; if you strike back in the spirit of reprisal, which seems so justifiable to you now, you will carry the woundings of your own vindictiveness to your grave, Mr. Tregarvon,” he said solemnly.
Tregarvon did not comment upon the sober prophecy. He was heaping more leaves upon the fire and wondering irritably why it was taking the rescuers so long to find them. The hammering agony in his head climaxed now at shorter intervals and the recurrences were blinding, but he contrived to keep the leaf glow alive until a welcome shout from the cliff above announced the presence of the searchers.
The hauling of the two injured men out of the deep cleft proved to be a difficult undertaking, this though there were five in the rescue party, which included the freed McNabb. Once it was done, a stretcher was quickly improvised for Hartridge, with Rucker, Tryon, and McNabb to take turns as bearers; and Tregarvon made shift to help himself a little, with Wilmerding and Carfax to shoulder him on either side.