The Eye of Dread Part 56

Then Amalia dressed her in the black silk Larry had brought her, and they carried her down the trail and laid her in a grave beside that of her husband, and there Larry read the prayers of the English church over the two lonely graves, while Amalia knelt at his side. When they went down the trail to take the train, after receiving Betty's letter, they marked the place with a cross which Larry had made.

Truth to tell, as they sat in the car, facing each other, Larry himself was sad, although he tried to keep Amalia's thoughts cheerful.

At last she woke to the thought that it was only for her he maintained that forced light-heartedness, and the realization came to her that he also had cause for sorrow on leaving the spot where he had so long lived in peace, to go to a friend in trouble. The thought helped her, and she began to converse with Larry instead of sitting silently, wrapped in her own griefs. Because her heart was with Harry King,--filled with anxiety for him,--she talked mostly of him, and that pleased Larry well; for he, too, had need to speak of Harry.

"Now there is a character for you, as fine and sweet as a woman and strong, too! I've seen enough of men to know the best of them when I find them. I saw it in him the moment I got him up to my cabin and laid him in my bunk. He--he--minded me of one that's gone." His voice dropped to the undertone of reminiscence. "Of one that's long gone--long gone."

"Could you tell me about it, a little--just a very little?" Amalia leaned toward him pleadingly. It was the first time she had ever asked of Larry Kildene or Harry King a question that might seem like seeking to know a thing purposely kept from her. But her intuitive nature told her the time had now come when Larry longed to speak of himself, and the loneliness of his soul pleaded for him.

"It's little indeed I can tell you, for it's little he ever told me,--but it came to me--more than once--more than once--that he might be my own son."

Amalia recoiled with a shock of surprise. She drew in her breath and looked in his eyes eloquently. "Oh! Oh! And you never asked him? No?"

"Not in so many words, no. But I--I--came near enough to give him the chance to tell the truth, if he would, but he had reasons of his own, and he would not."

"Then--where we go now--to him--you have been to that place before?

Not?"

"I have."

"And he--he knows it? Not?"

"He knows it well. I told him it was there I left my son--my little son--but he would say nothing. I was not even sure he knew the place until these letters came to me. He has as yet written me no word, only the message he sent me in his letter to you--that he will some time write me." Then Larry took Betty's letter from his pocket and turned it over and over, sadly. "This letter tells me more than all else, but it sets me strangely adrift in my thoughts. It's not at all like what I had thought it might be."

Amalia leaned forward eagerly. "Oh, tell me more--a little, what you thought might be."

"This letter has added more to the heartache than all else that could be. Either Harry King is my son--Richard Kildene--or he is the son of the man who hated me and brought me sorrow. There you see the reason he would tell me nothing. He could not."

"But how is it that you do not know your own son? It is so strange."

Larry's eyes filled as he looked off over the arid plains. "It's a long story--that. I told it to him once to try to stir his heart toward me, but it was of no use, and I'll not tell it now--but this.

I'd never looked on my boy since I held him in my arms--a heartbroken man--until he came to me there--that is, if he were he. But if Harry King is my son, then he is all the more a liar and a coward--if the claim against him is true. I can't have it so."

"It is not so. He is no liar and no coward." Amalia spoke with finality.

"I tell you if he is not my son, then he is the son of the man who hated me--but even that man will not own him as his son. The little girl who wrote this letter to me--she pleads with me to come on and set them all right: but even she who loved him--who has loved him, can urge no proof beyond her own consciousness, as to his ident.i.ty; it is beyond my understanding."

"The little girl--she--she has loved your son--she has loved Harry--Harry King? Whom has she loved?" Amalia only breathed the question.

"She has not said. I only read between the lines."

"How is it so--you read between lines? What is it you read?"

Larry saw he was making a mistake and resumed hurriedly: "I'll tell you what little I know later, and we will go there and find out the rest, but it may be more to my sorrow than my joy. Perhaps that's why I'm taking you there--to be a help to me--I don't know. I have a friend there who will take us both in, and who will understand as no one else."

"I go to neither my joy nor my sorrow. They are of the world. I will be no more of the world--but I will live only in love--to the Christ.

So may I find in my heart peace--as the sweet sisters who guarded me in my childhood away from danger when that my father and mother were in fear and sorrow living--they told me there only may one find peace from sorrow. I will go to them--perhaps--perhaps--they will take me--again--I do not know. But I will go first with you, Sir Kildene, wherever you wish me to go. For you are my friend--now, as no one else. But for you, I am on earth forever alone."

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE TRIAL

After Mr. Ballard's visit to the jail, he took upon himself to do what he could for the young man, out of sympathy and friends.h.i.+p toward both parties, and in the cause of simple justice. He consulted the only available counsel left him in Leauvite, a young lawyer named Nathan Goodbody, whom he knew but slightly.

He told him as much of the case as he thought proper, and then gave him a note to the prisoner, addressing him as Harry King. Armed with this letter the young lawyer was soon in close consultation with his new client. Despite Nathan Goodbody's youth Harry was favorably impressed. The young man was so interested, so alert, so confident that all would be well. He seemed to believe so completely the story Harry told him, and took careful notes of it, saying he would prepare a brief of the facts and the law, and that Harry might safely leave everything to him.

"You were wounded in the hip, you say," Nathan Goodbody questioned him. "We must not neglect the smallest item that may help you, for your case needs strengthening. You say you were lamed by it--but you seem to have recovered from that. Is there no scar?"

"That will not help me. My cousin was wounded also, but his was only a flesh wound from which he quickly recovered and of which he thought nothing. I doubt if any one here in Leauvite ever heard of it, but it's the irony of fate that he was more badly scarred by it than I. He was struck by a spent bullet that tore the flesh only, while the one that hit me went cleanly to the bone, and splintered it. Mine laid me up for a year before I could even walk with crutches, while he was back at his post in a week."

"And both wounds were in the same place--on the same side, for instance?"

"On the same side, yes; but his was lower down. Mine entered the hip here, while he was struck about here." Harry indicated the places with a touch of his finger. "I think it would be best to say nothing about the scars, unless forced to do so, for I walk as well now as I ever did, and that will be against me."

"That's a pity, now, isn't it? Suppose you try to get back a little of the old limp."

Harry laughed. "No, I'll walk straight. Besides they've seen me on the street, and even in my father's bank."

"Too bad, too bad. Why did you do it?"

"How could I guess there would be such an impossible development?

Until I saw Miss Ballard here in this cell I thought my cousin dead.

Why, my reason for coming here was to confess my crime, but they won't give me the chance. They arrest me first of all for killing myself.

Now that I know my cousin lives I don't seem to care what happens to me, except for--others."

"But man! You must put up a fight. Suppose your cousin is no longer living; you don't want to spend the rest of your life in the penitentiary because he can't be found."

"I see. If he is living, this whole trial is a farce, and if he is not, it's a tragedy."

"We'll never let it become a tragedy, I'll promise you that." The young man spoke with smiling confidence, but when he reached his office again and had closed the door behind him, his manner changed quickly to seriousness and doubt.

"I don't know," he said to himself, "I don't know if this story can be made to satisfy a jury or not. A little shady. Too much coincidence to suit me." He sat drumming with his fingers on his desk for a while, and then rose and turned to his books. "I'll have a little law on this case,--some point upon which we can go to the Supreme Court," and for the rest of that day and long into the night Nathan Goodbody consulted with his library.

In antic.i.p.ation of the unusual public interest the District Attorney directed the summoning of twenty-five jurors in addition to the twenty-five of the regular panel. On the day set for the trial the court room was packed to the doors. Inside the bar were the lawyers and the officers of the court. Elder Craigmile sat by Milton Hibbard.

In the front seats just outside the bar were the fifty jurors and back of them were the ladies who had come early, or who had been given the seats of their gentlemen friends who had come early, and whose gallantry had momentarily gotten the better of their judgment.

The stillness of the court room, like that of a church, was suddenly broken by the entrance of the judge, a tall, spare man, with gray hair and a serious outlook upon life. As he walked toward his seat, the lawyers and officers of the court rose and stood until he was seated.

The clerk of the court read from a large book the journal of the court of the previous day and then handed the book to the judge to be signed. When this ceremony was completed, the judge took up the court calender and said,--

"The State _v._ Richard Kildene," and turning to the lawyers engaged in the case added, "Gentlemen, are you ready?"

"We are ready," answered the District Attorney.

"Bring in the prisoner."

When Harry entered the court room in charge of the sheriff, he looked neither to the right nor to the left, and saw no one before him but his own counsel, who arose and extended a friendly hand, and led him to a seat beside himself within the bar.