Paul Rundel: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

And to-morrow—his thoughts raced madly onward—to-morrow the dawn would break. The land he loved, the hills and vales he adored, would be flooded with the blaze of his first day of actual life. Ethel would be there—little Ethel, who, of course, was now a young woman—there, actually there, in that very house! Would she remember him—the ragged boy whom she had so unselfishly befriended? What must she think of him—if she thought of him at all—for acting as he had? Oh yes, that was it—if she thought of him at all! He had treasured her every word. Her face and voice, in all their virginal sympathy, had been constantly with him during the terrible years through which he had struggled.

The dawn was breaking. Paul lay sleeping; his bearded face held a frown of pain; his lips were drawn downward and twisted awry. He was dreaming. He saw himself seated at his desk in the editorial room of the paper on which he had worked in the West. He seemed to be trying to write an article, but the sheets of paper before him kept fluttering to the floor and disappearing from sight. There was a rap on the door, the latch was turned, and an officer in uniform entered and stood beside him.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but you'll have to come with me. You are wanted back in Georgia. We've been looking for you for years, but we've landed you at last.”

Paul seemed to see and hear the jingle of a pair of steel handcuffs. A dead weight bore down on his brain as the metal clasped his wrists. Dense darkness enveloped him, and he felt himself being jerked along at a mad pace.

“I intended to give myself up,” he heard himself explaining to his captor. “I'm guilty. I did it. Day after day I've told myself that I would go back and own it, but I put it off.”

“That's the old tale.” The officer seemed to laugh out of the darkness. “Your sort are always intending to do right, but never get to it. They are going to hang you back there in the mountains, young man, hang you till you are dead, dead, dead! Ethel Mayfield's there—she is the same beautiful girl—but she will be ashamed to acknowledge she ever knew you. She used to pray for you—silly young thing!—and this is the answer. You'll die like a dog, young man, with a rope around your neck.”

Paul waked slowly; his face was wet with cold perspiration. At first he fancied he was in a prison cell lying on a narrow cot. Such queer sounds were beating into his consciousness—the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the gladsome twittering of birds! Then he seemed to be a boy again, lying in his bed in the farm-house. His father was calling him to get up. The pigs were in the potato-field. But how could Ralph Rundel call to him, for surely he was dead? Yes, he was dead, and Jeff Warren—Jeff Warren—Why, Hoag had said that he had—recovered. Recovered!

Paul opened his eyes and looked about him in a bewildered way. The room, in the gray light which streamed in at the windows, was unfamiliar. He sat up on the edge of his bed and tried to collect his thoughts; then he rose to his feet and sprang to the window.

“Thank God, thank God!” he cried, as he stared out at the widening landscape and the truth gradually fastened itself upon him. “Thank God, I'm free—free—free!”

He told himself that he could not possibly go to sleep again, and hurriedly and excitedly he began to put on his clothes.