"I was going to say that I think the Lord may let you be as near her there as you were here if you go on caring for her—which was all the distance between heaven and hell," he added within himself.
Before the dawn Durgan was again disturbed. Far off there was hint of a sound, the hoofs of several horses, perhaps—a ring, faint and far, of a bridle chain? Yes, certainly, horsemen were in the valley. Adam heard nothing but the throbs of his own heart-sorrow. Durgan listened. The road in the valley circled the mountain to Deer Cove. The sound of the horsemen was lost again almost before it was clearly heard. They were coming from Hilyard; were they coming further than the village? An hour later he heard them again; they were on the road to the mine.
Adam had fallen into the sleep of exhaustion. Durgan stood out on the road and listened and waited. Had Bertha met with some accident, and was this her escort home? Were the horsemen coming for some purpose quite unknown to him, bearing on the mystery of the summit house? Alas! doubt as he would, he knew of one errand which these sounds might easily betoken. It was widely known that Adam had had quarrels with his wife.
Soon the men appeared. There were three constables, leading an extra horse. Durgan saw the handcuffs held by the foremost.
He ground his teeth in helpless indignation.
All the affection he felt for the home of his forefathers, all the warmth of the sights and sounds of his own joyous youth in the Durgan plantations, intensified his sentiment for the friend who still slept on, childlike, with teardrops on his cheek.
When Adam was taken, Durgan brooded over this wrong. He realized more and more that his certainty of one man's guilt and the other's innocence was based only on his own estimate of their characters. The one was true to the core, the other false; but how to prove it?
About nine o'clock Bertha rode up. Her horse was jaded, her face worn.
"I started from Hilyard at daybreak," she said. "I loped nearly all the way."
"Did you meet the constables?"