The Gold Brick Part 44

"Have I not promised? Is it not decided that we go by my Christian name after that?"

"Yes, I remember something was said about it. A good idea. That will be cutting them off root and branch, old folks and all; besides, Mrs.

Nelson has a refined sound."

Thrasher sighed heavily.

"Yes," he said, "we shall be alone in the world then, you and I."

"But we shall go out of our old world and find a new one," she answered, proudly. "Millionaires are never alone."

"How worldly you are getting! But it becomes you."

"Worldly? No, only wise! But we are staying here a long time; Mrs. Prior will wonder what it is all for, and Rose will cry her eyes out, poor thing."

"You wish me to go?" he said, in a mortified tone.

"Why, yes; one must not risk a good name among strangers. It is something a little unusual for me to receive gentlemen."

"I am glad of that, Ellen."

"Oh, I have no desire for visitors of either s.e.x."

"But when may I come for good? I must know that."

"Well, I cannot tell the exact time, but it shall be within a few months; weeks, perhaps, if you are good."

"Then it shall be. You promise that?" he said, kindling with delight.

"Yes, Thrasher, I promise now. Only give me time," and she held out her hand, he kissed it, and went away.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

A DOUBLE GUARD.

It was true the officer had insisted that Katharine should be removed to one of the upper chambers. She was gradually recovering strength, and though he had not the heart to propose her removal to prison, the dangers of escape became more apparent each hour. At last he suggested the only means of safety that presented itself--Katharine must be confined in the upper story, from whence flight would be difficult, unless a.s.sistance should come from without, a thing that he considered more than improbable.

Mrs. Allen made no resistance to these arrangements, for well the poor mother knew that all protest would be in vain. In some respects she preferred the change. It would remove Katharine from the sight of her jailor whenever the door of her room was opened; a presence that had become unspeakably oppressive of late. She seemed afraid of understanding what it meant, but every time his face pa.s.sed by, or his shadow appeared on the wall, a terror came into her eyes, and she would look wistfully out, as you have seen a poor little rabbit peering with his great brown eyes through the trap some cruel boy had baited for him when the snow covered all other food.

Mrs. Allen had seen this with an aching heart. The man who usurped her own high-backed chair, with his feet stretched out stolidly on the hearth, watching the door of her child's room, had become a torment to her, patient and undemonstrative as she was. So the room was prepared, and in gentle silence Katharine took possession of it. She had no courage to question her mother, but shrunk with sensitive pain from the truth, hara.s.sed with fears, yet dreading to have them confirmed.

The mother, too, shrunk from the subject, which was forever lying cold at her heart. What good would it do were she to place all the hideous danger before her child? The law would strike hard enough when its time came; she had no heart to help it by a word.

They were very silent together, those two wretched women, for--with the one subject that filled their existence held in abeyance--what could they talk about? But the mother grew so gentle, so exquisitely loving, that some gleams of joy broke through their misery; still, the tenderness of this affection almost broke her child's heart. It was the offshoot of a great sorrow, which had softened the stern character of the mother, and lifted the young girl into sudden womanhood. The hour of maternity, be it in joy or grief, breaks down all the barriers of age, and, as in this case, the extremes of womanhood meet with some degree of equality.

But a painful apprehension was always at Katharine's heart. No one told her the terrible fate of which that man, sitting forever on her mother's hearth, was the harbinger, but the truth pressed vaguely upon her understanding, and her solitude was a perpetual terror. She grew keen in her observation. She searched even the mournful eyes of little Paul and the grieved features of Jube, in her silent quest after the knowledge she had no courage to claim in words.

Now two men kept guard in the room below. Their prisoner was getting strong, and more vigilance became advisable.

The night that this double guard was set upon her, Katharine could not sleep, for the two men conversed in low voices that penetrated to her chamber, and tortured every nerve in her body. What evil things were they saying in those m.u.f.fled tones? Perhaps talking about her babe? What would they do with her in the end?

Dark ideas of the terrible truth came slowly over her. She was seized with an uncontrollable wish to hear what it was that kept her jailors in such close conversation.

s.h.i.+vering with dread, yet filled with a sort of wild courage, she arose and crept from her room down-stairs. A door opened from the stairway into the kitchen--it was left slightly ajar--and through the crevice came a gleam of light from a candle that stood on the mantlepiece.

Katharine sunk down on the lowest step and listened keenly.

"Yes," said one of the men, "it's a settled thing--they'll take her off in the morning. Tough, though, aint it."

"Does the old woman know it?"

"I reckon not; the constable says he can't find the heart to tell her till the last minute."

"What will they do with her in the end? Have you any idea?"

"Well, law's law, you know, and I calculate they'll hang the poor critter."

"No!"

"Sartin; the constable was saying so at the hill store only yesterday.

The strangling," says he, "might a been got over; but that burying of the poor little critter in the snow was the pint that no lawyer could ixplain."

"Yes; that allus stops a feller's mouth when he sets out to defend her, and yet--"

"What was you a saying?"

"And yet I can't bleave she really did it."

"It's unnatural; but facts are facts."

"Poor critter; I wonder if she's told any thing about its father yet.

The feller ought to be hung fifty times where she had once."

"I reckon not; the old woman said that her daughter was married, at the examination, but she would not name the man, and people were left to guess."

"Was it Nelson Thrasher, do you really think?"

"There's no telling, and maybe it wont come out till court day."

"And when it does, what'll the law do with him?"

"Well, I aint quite sure; but suppose it would be brought in preup terus criminus; that is, 'complice 'fore the act."

"You don't say so. Then it'll be a hanging matter for him, too?"

"Sure as Sunday."