The dumbness of unutterable astonishment fell on the whole party at these words; but in another second, rallying from the shock; they knelt around the seemingly lifeless woman, trying to arouse her. Presently she opened her eyes, and, seeing Mrs. Randall's face bending above her, said faintly: "It's Stephen! I always knew I should find him somewhere." Then she sank away again into unconsciousness.
The party for the lakes must be postponed; that was evident. Neither would it go out under the guidance of Dandy Steve, nor would Mrs. Wingate go with it; those two things were equally evident.
Which facts, revolving slowly in Old Ben's brain, led him to seat himself on the shore and abide the course of events. When, about noon, Mr. Cravath appeared, coming to look after their hastily abandoned effects, Old Ben touched his hat civilly, and said: "Good-day, sir; I thought maybe I'd get this job o' guidin' now. Leastways, I'd stay by yer truck here till somebody come to look it up."
Old Ben was the guide of all others Mr. Cravath would have chosen, next to Dandy Steve.
"By Jove, Ben," he said, "this is luck! Can you go off with us at once? Steve has got other business on hand. That lady is his wife, from whom he has been separated many years."
"So I heerd him say, sir, when he was a-pickin' her up," answered Ben, composedly, as if such things were a daily occurrence in the Adirondacks.
"Can you go with us at once?" continued Mr. Cravath.
"In an hour, sir," said Ben.
And in an hour they were off, a bewildered but on the whole a relieved and happier party than they had been in the morning. Helen Wingate's long sorrow in the mysterious disappearance of her husband had ennobled and purified her character, and greatly endeared her to her friends; but that which had seemed to them to be explainable only by the fact of his death or his unworthiness she knew was explainable by her own folly and pride.
The end of the story is best told in Old Ben's words. He was never tired of telling it.