“They say she’s like a dead lump, and would give the world if she had held her tongue,” Tom replied, feeling more pity for poor little Elithe, white and still and dumb with pain and terror, than for Clarice in screaming hysterics. These would wear themselves out, but Elithe would grow steadily worse with the dread of the trial and the witness stand before her.
“Tell her not to feel so badly, but come and see me. Maybe I can convince her it was not I whom she saw,” Paul said.
He did not say “Tell Clarice to come.” He was as sure of her coming as he was of his mother’s. Both might be there to-morrow, and this thought buoyed him up when he at last said good-night to his father and Tom, and heard the key turn in the lock to let them out and turn again to shut him in. The few touches Tom had given to his room had made a difference in his physical comfort, while his father’s confident words, emphasized by Tom, had given him hope, and his heart was not so heavy when he knelt down by his bed and asked that he might be freed at once, —that God, who knew his innocence, would not suffer him to be brought to trial. When he thought of that he recoiled with a feeling as if pins were piercing every nerve.
“I couldn’t bear that. I couldn’t. A prisoner in the dock, with the people looking at me and Elithe swearing against me. Oh, God! please save me from that!”
For a few moments he was in an agony of excitement, which shook him like a reed. Then he grew very calm. God would save him and all would yet be well. Moving his cot in front of the window he lay down upon it, tired but sleepless. The star which had shone upon him earlier in the evening was still looking at him, with another near it. The higher and brighter, flashing as it shone, he likened to Clarice; the lower and softer, shining with a pure, steady light, was Elithe, whose eyes had often looked at him steadily and quietly as this star shone upon him now, bringing a sensation of rest and indifference to what had happened or might happen in the future. Thoughts of Jack came to him in his loneliness. Poor Jack! Cut off so suddenly. How he wished he hadn’t been angry with him that morning at the hotel, and wished, too, that he had found him in the woods when looking for him. In the confusion which followed Jack’s death he had scarcely had time to think much of John Pennington, the hero of Deep Gulch, but now, with Elithe’s star looking at him, he remembered the scene in Miss Hansford’s rooms when Elithe knelt by the dying man, whose last thoughts were for her,—whose last word was her name, spoken as he, Paul, might speak Clarice’s, if he knew he were dying. Elithe had disclaimed all love for Jack, saying he had only been her friend.
“But Jack loved her, and this must influence her in her opinion of me. I wish I could see her and talk with her about it,” he thought, still watching the two stars.
That of Elithe was a little dim, with a fleecy cloud over it, but that of Clarice was bright as ever.
“Poor Clarice, who was to have been a bride last week! I am so sorry for her,” he said, forgetting Elithe at last and thinking only of Clarice until he heard a clock strike one.
He had not slept. He didn’t feel as if he could ever sleep again, but after an hour of tossing on his hard bed, which grew harder every minute, he fell into a heavy slumber, from which he did not waken until the sun was shining through the window, where the starry eyes of Clarice and Elithe had looked at him the night before.