Mrs. Le Breton shook her head.
“He would find us. He would kill us,” she said, fear distorting her face. “And if you go alone, he will take vengeance on me! Oh! Eweretta! remember the rough life he has led! He has been where there is no law, where taking human life was just no more than killing a wolf!”
Eweretta recognized the truth of her companion’s statement. Awful stories had reached her from time to time, when she was at home, of murder unredressed among the lawless lot her uncle had at one time been with. She remembered her father saying after one of these tragedies, “I only hope your Uncle Thomas has not murder on his soul!” An Englishman whom Thomas Alvin had induced to take up land with him had mysteriously disappeared. The two men lived together during one summer in a shack they had built in the prairie twenty miles from Broadview. There was no other habitation within nine miles.
The Englishman disappeared. Thomas Alvin sold the land and the stock and went to Chicago for a year afterwards.
“Our only hope is that your uncle may die, Eweretta,” said Mrs. Le Breton, “then I would speak and tell the truth, and you would come into your own.”
“But must we wait till then!” gasped poor Eweretta. “Am I to go on here a prisoner for years, within reach of my dear Philip! Ah, Mrs. Le Breton, Philip might marry someone else—while I—oh! surely we need not wait for Uncle Thomas to die! He may live for years and years!”
“He won’t,” answered Mrs. Le Breton enigmatically.
“But he is so strong and well,” persisted Eweretta. “He will go on living.”
“He won’t,” repeated Mrs. Le Breton, and the wicked look came back to her face. “He has begun to drink.”
The candle had burnt down unobserved and now, with one leap of brighter light, sank and went out.