[CHAPTER LXVIII.]
IN MORTAL PERIL.
Listen to the water-wheel
All the live long day—
How the clinking of the mill
Wears the hours away.
—Old Song.
People always wondered why old Cooper ever built his saw-mill in so wild a place as that lonely glen; but the scene, the crazy old building, and the strange old man, all seemed to chime together, and no one was surprised that when he died he expressed the wish to be buried in the glen, close to the old mill, that his dreamless rest might be soothed by the sound of the grinding wheel day by day. Madame Rumor said that the old man's ghost haunted the wild, forbidding gorge, and Kathleen shuddered with dread as she climbed up the rocky path, with the cascade tumbling wildly beneath, on her rendezvous with her unknown correspondent. She had come within half a mile in a cab, which she left waiting for her while she made the rest of the journey on foot. To escape Helen's kind inquiries, she had said she was going to spend the night with Mrs. Stone, which she really intended doing on her return.
How gloomy the old mill looked in the pallor of the swiftly falling night! All winter the snows had held it bound in an icy thrall, but now the April sun had sent the mass of foaming, dashing water tumbling over the falls, and turned the old saw. What a scene for a crime! thought Kathleen, with a thrill of superstitious dread, as she hurried on in the deepening gloom, casting furtive glances about her, as though she expected to see Cooper's disembodied spirit hovering near. Frightened and nervous, she half regretted that she had come, and at the hooting of an owl in the tree near by, she uttered a frightened scream which rang through the gloomy glen in hollow, reverberating echoes, and fell prostrate on the ground.
An icy fear seemed to clutch her heart. It seemed to her that she had no strength to rise to go on. The gloom, the darkness, coupled with the mystery of the whole affair, began to weigh with crushing force upon her spirits.
She laid her fair golden head down on the rough stones, and prayed piteously:
"Dear God! give me strength to go on, to bear whatever is before me! For, oh! I love him so, I love him so! and I must know if he is worthy of that love! If he is not—if they tell me he is guilty of that sin with which Fedora accused him, dear God, let me die! I can not live and know him false and wicked! I would sooner throw myself over those rocks down into the terrible cascade, and end my wretched young life!"
New courage came with that incoherent prayer, and struggling to her feet, she tottered on, murmuring faintly: