“The men are searching for him. Just as one of them got hold of you, he fell back—something must have struck him, and the flood swept him off. I tell you, Alice, that man—crazy or not—is a hero. We were on our way down and had camped above the Gap, when the cloud-burst came. We knew you all would be overwhelmed before we could get round here by the trail; so what does Herne do but send us on horseback by land, while he scoots down that cañon in a canoe—little better than an eggshell. Risked his life in that awful place to get here in time. I insisted on going with him at first.”
“Just like you, George,” said the wife fondly, though in her mind’s eye came a vision of Herne the Hunter battling with that Niagara to save and unite the two, through whom his own life had been made a burden. She sighed and clasped her husband’s hand, while he resumed:
“I was a fool, I expect, for the canoe would have swamped under both of us. He knew this, and ordered me off with a look I did not like; there was madness in it. Well, we hurried round by the trail with one lantern; Herne took the other. When we got here, you were apparently dead, Herne and two of the men swept off—the camp gone from below, and so on.”
A cry was now heard. Several men hastened down, and soon lights were seen returning. Four of them bore Herne the Hunter. One arm and a leg were broken, and his skull crushed in; yet the wonderful vitality of the man had kept him alive and sensible.
“We found him clinging to a sapling,” said one. “But he’s about gone—poor fellow!”
Poor fellow, indeed! Mrs. Renfro felt the lumps rise in her throat as she gazed upon that wreck, and thought. Presently Herne opened his eyes—already filling with the death-mist—and his gaze fell upon her face.
“Alice,” he whispered, “my troubles—are over. This”—he tugged at something in his bosom with his uninjured arm, when some one drew forth his Bible, drenched and torn—“ this saved me. I could have killed him—” he glanced at Renfro, who amid his pity now wondered. “I could—but—I saved you. And—now—Jesus—have mercy—”
These were his last words, for in another minute Herne the Hunter was a thing of the past, and a weeping woman bent over him. After that there was silence for a while. Then the wife said to her husband, while the others removed the dead man:
“It was his misfortune, not my fault, that he loved me. Has he not made amends?”