"But what you can't see," broke in Aunt Tillie with spirit, "is that the poor child ain't fit to answer any more questions to-night. And she shan't."
"Er—no—of course," said McGuire, and went out.
If it had been an eventful day for Peter and Beth, the night was to prove eventful for McGuire, for not content to wait the arrival of Shad Wells, he took his courage in his hands and with Brierly drove at once to the scene of the disaster. The wind had died and a gentle rain began to fall, but the fire was burning fiercely.
The other matter in McGuire's thoughts was so much the more important to him that he had given little thought to the damage to his property. His forests might all be burned down for all that he cared.
At the spot to which Beth and Peter had been carried he met Shad and the party of men that had been looking for Hawk Kennedy, but the place where the fight had taken place was still a mass of fallen trees and branches all flaming hotly and it was impossible for any one to get within several hundred yards of it.
There seemed little doubt as to the fate of his enemy. Jonathan K. McGuire stood at the edge of the burned area, peering into the glowing embers. His look was grim but there was no smile of triumph at his lips. In his moments of madness he had often wished Hawk Kennedy dead, but never had he wished him such a death as this. He questioned Shad sharply as to his share in the adventure, satisfying himself at last that the man had told a true story, and then, noting his wounded arm, sent him back with Brierly in the car to Black Rock House for medical treatment with orders to send the chauffeur with the limousine.
The rain was now falling fast, but Jonathan K. McGuire did not seem to be aware of it. His gaze was on the forest, on that of the burning area nearest him where the fire still flamed the hottest, beneath the embers of which lay the one dreadful secret of his life. Even where he stood the heat was intense, but he did not seem to be aware of it, nor did he follow the others when they retreated to a more comfortable spot. No one knew why he waited or of what he was thinking, unless of the damage to the Reserve and what the loss in money meant to him. They could not guess that pity and fear waged their war in his heart—pity that any man should die such a death—fear that the man he thought of should not die it.
But as the hours lengthened and there was no report brought to him of any injured man, being found in the forest near by, he seemed to know that Peter Nichols had not struck for Beth in vain.
When the limousine came, he sent the other watchers home, and got into it, sitting in solitary grandeur in his wet clothing, peering out of the window. The glow of the flames grew dimmer and died at last with the first pale light to the eastward which announced the coming of the dawn. A light drizzle was still falling when it grew light enough to see. McGuire got down and without awakening the sleeping chauffeur went forth into the spectral woods. He knew where the old tool cabin had stood and, from the description Wells had given him, had gained a general idea of where the fight had taken place—two hundred yards from the edge of the swamp where Nichols and the Cameron girl had been found, and nearly in a line with the biggest of the swamp-maples, the trunk of which still stood, a melancholy skeleton of its former grandeur.
The ground was still hot under the mud and cinders, but not painfully so, and he was not aware of any discomfort. Clouds of steam rose and among them he moved like the ghost of a sin, bent, eager, searching with heavy eyes for what he hoped and what he feared to find. The old tool house had disappeared, but he saw a heap of ashes and among them the shapes of saws and iron picks and shovels. But he passed them by, making a straight line to the eastward and keeping his gaze upon the charred and blackened earth, missing nothing to right and left, fallen branches, heaps of rubbish, mounds of earth.