"Go home till morning," said the delighted pastor with a tickled laugh that drew from his wife a glance of fond disapproval.
John drove alone to a blacksmith shop and left his buggy there and his horse at a stable. For the blacksmith lay across his doorsill "sick." He had been mending rigs and shoeing critters since dawn, and had drunk from a jug something he had thought was water and found—"it wusn't."
March sauntered off lazily to a corner where the lane led westward like the pike, turned into it and ran at full speed.
With a warm face he came again into the main avenue at a point nearly opposite the Halliday's cottage gate. General Halliday and the Englishman were just going through it.
John turned toward the sun-setting at a dignified walk. "I'm a fool to come out here," he thought. "But I must see at once what Jeff-Jack thinks of my plan. Will he tell me the truth, or will he trick me as they say he did Cornelius? O I must ask him, too, if he did that! I can't help it if he is with her; I must see him. I don't want to see her; at least that's not what I'm out here for. I'm done with her—for a while; Heaven bless her!—but I must see him, so's to know what to propose to mother."
The day was dying in exquisite beauty. Long bands of pale green light widened up from the west. Along the hither slope of a ridge someone was burning off his sedge-grass. The slender red lines of fire, beautiful after passion's sort, but dimming the field's fine gold, were just reaching the crest to die by a road-side. The objects of his search were nowhere to be seen.
A short way off, on the left, lay a dense line of young cedars and pines, nearly parallel with the turnpike. A footpath, much haunted in term-time by Montrose girls, and leading ultimately to the rear of the Academy grounds, lay in the clover-field beyond this thicket. John mounted a fence and gazed far and near. Opposite him in the narrow belt of evergreens was a scarcely noticeable opening, so deeply curved that one would get almost through it before the view opened on the opposite side. He leaped into the field, ran to this gap, burst into the open beyond, and stopped, hat in hand—speechless. His quest was ended.
Not ten steps away stood two lovers who had just said that fearfully sweet "mine" and "thine" that keeps the world a-turning. Ravenel's right arm was curved over Fannie's shoulder and about her waist. His left hand smoothed the hair from her uplifted brow, and his kiss was just lighting upon it.
The blood leaped to his face, but the next instant he sunk his free hand into his pocket and smiled. John's face was half-anger, half-anguish.
"Pleasant evening," said Ravenel.