An Unpardonable Liar Part 10

"All right."

He prepared to go. At the door Hagar said to him, "Shall I see you again?"

"Probably in the morning. Good-night."

Telford went back to the hotel and found the horse he had ordered at the door. He got up at once. People looked at him curiously, it was peculiar to see a man riding at night for pleasure, and, of course, it could be for no other purpose. "When will you be back, sir?" said the groom.

"I do not know." He slipped a coin into the groom's hand. "Sit up for me.

The beast is a good one?"

"The best we have. Been a hunter, sir."

Telford nodded, stroked the horse's neck and started. He rode down toward the gate. He saw Mildred Margrave coming toward him.

"Oh, Mr. Telford!" she said. "You forsook us to-day, which was unkind.

Mamma says--she has seen you, she tells me--that you are a friend of my stepfather, Mr. Gladney. That's nice, for I like you ever so much, you know." She raised her warm, intelligent eyes to his. "I've felt since you came yesterday that I'd seen you before, but mamma says that's impossible.

You don't remember me?"

"I didn't remember you," he said.

"I wish I were going for a ride, too, in the moonlight. I mean mamma and I and you. You ride as well as you drive, of course."

"I wish you were going with me," he replied.--He suddenly reached down his hand. "Good-night" Her hand was swallowed in his firm clasp for a moment "G.o.d bless you, dear!" he added, then raised his hat quickly and was gone.

"I must have reminded him of some one," the girl said to herself. "He said, 'G.o.d bless you, dear!'"

About that time Mrs. Detlor received a telegram from the doctor of a London hospital. It ran:

Your husband here. Was badly injured in a channel collision last night. Wishes to see you.

There was a train leaving for London a half hour later. She made ready hastily, inclosed the telegram in an envelope addressed to George Hagar, and, when she was starting, sent it over to his rooms. When he received it, he caught up a time table, saw that a train would leave in a few minutes, ran out, but could not get a cab quickly, and arrived at the station only to see the train drawing away. "Perhaps it is better so," he said, "for her sake."

That night the solitary roads about Herridon were traveled by a solitary horseman, riding hard. Mark Telford's first ambition when a child was to ride a horse. As a man he liked horses almost better than men. The cool, stirring rush of wind on his face as he rode was the keenest of delights.

He was enjoying the ride with an iron kind of humor, for there was in his thoughts a picture. "The sequel's sequel for Hagar's brush to-morrow," he said as he paused on the top of a hill to which he had come from the highroad and looked round upon the verdant valleys almost spectrally quiet in the moonlight. He got off his horse and took out a revolver. It clicked in his hand.

"No," he said, putting it up again, "not here. It would be too d.a.m.ned rough on the horse, after riding so hard, to leave him out all night."

He mounted again. He saw before him a fine stretch of moor at an easy ascent. He pushed the horse on, taking a hedge or two as he went. The animal came over the highest point of the hill at full speed. Its blood was up, like its master's. The hill below this point suddenly ended in a quarry. Neither horse nor man knew it until the yielding air cried over their heads like water over a drowning man as they fell to the rocky bed far beneath.

An hour after Telford became conscious. The horse was breathing painfully and groaning beside him. With his unbroken arm he felt for his revolver.

It took him a long time.

"Poor beast!" he said, and pushed the hand out toward the horse's head.

In an instant the animal was dead.

He then drew the revolver to his own temple, but paused. "No, it wasn't to be," he said. "I'm a dead man anyway," and fell back.

Day was breaking when the agony ceased. He felt the gray damp light on his eyes, though he could not see He half raised his head. "G.o.d--bless--you, dear!" he said. And that ended it.

He was found by the workers at the quarry. In Herridon to this day--it all happened years ago--they speak of the Hudson Bay company's man who made that terrible leap, and, broken all to pieces himself, had heart enough to put his horse out of misery. The story went about so quickly, and so much interest was excited because the Hudson Bay company sent an officer down to bury him, and the new formed Aurora company was represented by two or three t.i.tled directors, that Mark Telford's body was followed to its grave by hundreds of people. It was never known to the public that he had contemplated suicide. Only John Gladney and the Hudson Bay company knew that for certain.

The will, found in his pocket, left everything he owned to Mildred Margrave--that is, his interest in the Aurora mines of Lake Superior, which pays a gallant dividend. The girl did not understand why this was, but supposed it was because he was a friend of John Gladney, her stepfather, and perhaps (but this she never said) because she reminded him of some one. Both she and John Gladney when they are in England go once a year to Herridon, and they are constantly sending flowers there.

Alpheus Richmond showed respect for him by wearing a silk sash under his waistcoat, and Baron by purchasing shares in the Aurora company.

When Mark Telford lay dead, George Hagar tried to take from his finger the ring which carried the tale of his life and death inside it, but the hand was clinched so that it could not be opened. Two years afterward, when he had won his fame through two pictures called "The Discovery" and "The Sequel," he told his newly married wife of this. And he also cleared Mark Telford's name of cowardice in her sight, for which she was grateful.

It is possible that John Gladney and George Hagar understood Mark Telford better than the woman who once loved him. At least they think so.