“I do not think Miss Prescott need to feel any alarm,” Tom continued. “The road to Clark’s is perfectly safe. There are not as many rocks and trees to hide behind, and then the country is being thoroughly scoured to find the marauders. There is a larger sum offered for their arrest than ever before.”
“I hope they will be caught and hung,” Inez said energetically. “Some people think they live right around us, and know every foot of ground. I never told you, did I, that Mrs. Smithson said one of them was seen in the woods back of our cottage last summer. You and father were gone, and I was awfully scared. Do you believe they live here in the valley? Just think of talking with them and not knowing it!”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you had seen them hundreds of times,” Tom said laughingly, while Mr. Rayborne arose and went into the house saying it was getting chilly and he was tired.
He had taken but little part in the conversation beyond assuring Fanny that she had nothing to fear. The most of the time he had sat apart from the young people, with a look on his face which troubled Inez, who wondered why he was so silent.
“Are you ill, father dear?” she said, following him to the kitchen and putting her hand on his head.
“No, daughter,” he answered; “there’s nothing the matter;—a little tired, that’s all. Go back to your friend.”
“Isn’t she lovely?” Inez asked, still smoothing his hair. “I wish you could see her mother, she is so grand and handsome and proud looking. She wanted you for a guide, and because she could not have you she didn’t go on a single trail. She had heard you were a gentleman and preferred you to some of the rough guides in the valley. I wish you had been here.”
Mr. Rayborne was not particularly interested in Mrs. Prescott. He was more anxious for Inez to leave him and was glad when, with a goodnight kiss, she went back to the piazza and he was alone with his thoughts. He could not account for the feeling which had come upon him, bringing memories of people and events which had but little in common with what he was now. Through the open door came a breath of wind laden with the perfume of flowers from Anita’s grave, and as he inhaled it he thought of the dead leaves of a rose he had gathered long ago and been foolish enough to keep through all the years of change which had come and gone since he hid them away in the first stage of his youthful passion. Leaving the house he went to Anita’s grave and standing there alone with the dark woods in the background and the moonlight falling around him he talked, sometimes to himself and sometimes to the dead at his feet.
“Little Anita,” he whispered, “I wish I were lying beside you with all the past blotted out. And there is more of that past than you ever suspected. I loved you, Anita, and when your dying eyes looked at me I knew what they said and swore I would do your bidding. But a stronger will than mine has controlled me until now when I am trying to break the bands of steel. What is there in that girl’s face and voice and gestures which makes me struggle to be free. Is there a God, and would he help me if I were to ask him? I used to pray in the old church, miles and miles and miles away across a continent, but I fear it was only a form. God wouldn’t have let me fall so far if he ever had my hand in his. If I were to stretch it out now would he take it and help me?”
He put it out as if appealing to someone for aid; then dropped it hopelessly and said, “No, I’ve sinned too deeply for that. If I am helped at all I must do it myself, and I swear it here by Anita’s grave that not a hair of that girl’s head shall be harmed if I can prevent it, and I think I can. It says somewhere, ‘Resist the devil and he will flee from you,’ but I guess the one who said it didn’t know Tom Hardy!”