“But I have fully deserved it, and I will take my punishment like a man,” he thought grimly, and ordered the vehicle to be got ready quickly.
“There is a terrible storm raging—it is equinoctial weather, you know. Better wait till it clears up,” they said.
“No, I will not wait, if a man can be found to drive me. That poor mother will be very anxious,” he answered firmly.
In the teeth of the driving storm they set forth, but Charley Bonair never reached his destination.
The driver, a sulky-looking fellow, who had observed Bonair’s display of money at the inn, as well as his diamond ring, assaulted and robbed his passenger on the way to town, and left him for dead upon the highway.
When found the next morning, there was indeed but little life left in him—not enough to recognize any one, or to remember aught that had happened. Life became a blank to him for many days.
The return of his horse to the stable with the fragments of the trap clinging to the harness told what had happened to him, and no one suspected that a beautiful young girl had been his companion on that mad ride.
He could not speak and tell the story, for he lay ill and unconscious many days, and none guessed that the strange and continued disappearance of Berry Vining lay at his door.
The mother herself had found a plausible reason for her daughter’s absence.
She believed that Berry had fled in anger over their quarrel that night, dreading lest she should be coerced into a marriage with the merchant tailor.