She arose and went into the bedroom, followed by Chance, who acted as if he would tear up the floor and ceiling, until I quieted him by the first blow I had ever given him, and which wrung from him a look of intense surprise as he crouched at my feet with his nose on the floor as if scenting something.
“Do you recognize it?” Ursula asked, putting the watch in my hands. “It has a name and date on the lid.”
I knew it was Nicol’s without the name, and the touch of it was like the touch of a vanished hand not dead in reality to my knowledge, but dead to me except so far as memory was concerned, and the sight of it brought Nicol as vividly to mind as when I was the pupil and he the teacher—young, handsome and strong in all that makes a man strong mentally and physically, and I could hear his voice calling me Lucy, as he did once or twice when we were alone, and his soft, brown eyes looked at me as no other eyes since had ever looked. Where was he now, and what the mystery surrounding him? And——
“I thought you would come alone. I am afraid of that dog.”
There came over me a flash of heat which made my blood boil, as I thought: “Could Chance find him from this clew?” Then as quickly I answered: “No. I will get the truth from Michel Seguin when I give him back his property.”
As I turned to go I offered Ursula money for Carl. But with a proud gesture she refused it. “He thought you might do it and said he should not take it. He was not as mean as that,” she said, giving me a box in which to put the watch which was ticking as loudly and evenly as it had done years ago in the schoolhouse in Ridgefield. I wanted to give the woman something to show my gratitude to her, and offered her the stick pin which held my scarf. But she declined it; then, with a wistful look at the knot of red, white and blue ribbon which I always wore, she asked if I had another like it. I had, and at once gave her the knot, which she took with thanks.
“It is the badge of a free country,” she said, “where I once thought to go. It is too late now for me, but if Carl could get there it might make a good man of him. Here he can do nothing but hide—hide—till he is caught again, and then Siberia, or a dungeon!”
I was sorry for the woman, whose dim old eyes were full of tears as she bade me good-by, saying: “You will not betray my boy by telling where he was when you got the watch?”
“Never!” I answered, and kissed the tired, white face which I might never see again.