The Gold Brick Part 64

"Be calm--be still!" answered Thrasher, in a voice that carried soothing in its very tones. "She is innocent as a lamb."

"Innocent, and there?"

"Yes, I say it again, in spite of her trial--in spite of her sentence, just now commenced. Your sister is innocent of the murder."

"The murder! G.o.d help us!"

"The murder of her child!"

"Her child! My little sister's child!"

"Wait--wait till you see her. She has bound me by a promise, but you are her brother, and have rights. I am glad you have come. With your knowledge of sea-life he may be found. My son, Nelson Thrasher, I mean."

"Nelson Thrasher! And what has he to do with her and this?"

"Nothing with this. It would distress him as it does us, but he is away--knows nothing about it, and she----But, hus.h.!.+ the time is up. The sheriff tells her to come down."

The two men moved closer to the scaffold. At the voice of the sheriff Katharine lifted her head slowly, and cast a frightened look at the crowd, which became more and more riotous as the hour closed. For the first time that day a faint flush stole to her forehead, and her eyes quailed with affright from all the eager faces uplifted toward her. The sheriff spoke again before she attempted to arise. Then a voice followed his, saying:

"Take courage, Katharine, we are here!"

She knew the voice well, arose, unsteadily, to her feet, and staggered, in a blind way, across the scaffold, with her arms held out. The changeable mob began to pity her then, for the sight of her face might have moved the very stones to compa.s.sion. More kindly murmurs reached her; you could see it by the quiver of her features and the pathetic helplessness with which she looked toward the spot whence the voices came.

David Rice could bear the scene no longer; he rushed by the sheriff, sprang upon the scaffold, and took the unhappy girl in his arms, crying out:

"Katy, Katy! G.o.d forgive them, for they are killing you! My sister, my little sister!"

She may have heard his voice, and the name by which he called her; if so, it smote the remaining strength from her frame, for she fell away in his arms, limp and dead, like a lily broken at the stalk.

The sheriff would have taken her from those strong arms, but Rice waved him back.

"Don't be afeared, don't be afeared," he said, hoa.r.s.e with grief; "I shan't run away with the poor lamb; but she's dead, and no one but her brother shall touch her. Keep as close as you like. Show me the way to her prison. I aint a going to break any law; but she's my sister, and that poor old soul there is my mother. Help her along, if you've got a heart, and leave this poor lamb to me."

The sheriff had no heart to separate the prisoner from her newly-found brother; he would even have aided old Mrs. Allen, as Rice had desired, but Mr. Thrasher and his good wife were by her side, supporting her with such kindly help that any offers of a.s.sistance would have been intrusive. Thus surrounded by constables, the little group gathered in a close knot, carrying Katharine Allen from her place of shame.

The crowd fell back reverently before Rice, who followed the sheriff with the tread of a lion, while that white face rested on his shoulder.

This last anguish had left her like a corpse before the crowd had changed all its impatient revilings into compa.s.sion. The children looked frightened or began to cry when they saw terror or tears upon their mother's cheeks. The men grew pale, and looked at each other upbraidingly, as the Jews must have done when the great sacrifice was urged forward by their hands.

Thus the little group pa.s.sed away from the crowd and into the dark shadows of a prison, which seemed like heaven to this poor girl when she came to life, with the remembrance of all those glaring eyes and scowling faces turning their hate upon her.

CHAPTER LIX.

THE EMPTY HOUSE.

When David Rice left the jail that night, he had the certificate of his sister's marriage in his bosom, and under it was a stern resolve to find out the man who had left her to the chance of all this suffering, and bring him to a stern account.

There was no need of his going further now; all the bright hopes of the morning were swept away. The broken household around that prison was all he could find of his old home. But the gloom of this place was too oppressive; fresh from the broad sweep of the ocean, he could not breathe in all this close misery.

The next day, Rice escaped from the contemplation of all this ruin, and took a long walk into the country, bending his way toward Hotchkistown.

The rapid exercise cooled the fever of his blood, while it deepened the profound compa.s.sion excited by his sister's wrongs. As he was pa.s.sing under the shadows of the East Rock, a traveller, coming from an opposite direction, appeared in the distance. Rice instantly knew the little valise and the upright figure of the man. It was the companion from whom he had parted only the day before. But why had he returned so soon? What was the meaning of that quick, almost fierce, walk?

The two men drew close to each other, and, pre-occupied as they were, stopped abruptly in mutual surprise, each astonished by the change that had come upon the other.

"Rice, my poor friend!"

"Captain, what is the matter? I know that you have heard; but my troubles can't have done this."

The stranger wrung the hand which Rice held out, but he did not speak--the encounter had come upon him suddenly.

"You found all well at home, I hope," said Rice. "Don't tell me that any thing has gone wrong there, I couldn't stand it."

The stranger wrung his friend's hand again. "Rice, I found the house empty."

"Empty! What, moved?"

"Gone, both of them; G.o.d only knows where."

"Gone!"

"No one can tell me where. The house was shut up. The gra.s.s had grown high around the gate. The bucket from long disuse had dropped to pieces on the well-pole. This is all that I can gather of a certainty."

"And did the neighbors know nothing?"

"They told me a great deal, but it led to nothing; my wife really gave no one an idea of what she intended to do. I see how it is; she was very proud, and thinking herself compelled to work for a living went off into some strange place. It was like her, but where can I go, how search her out? She left no trace. Surely she might have waited a few months longer!"

The proud anguish in his friend's voice drew Rice from his own troubles.

"Come," he said, "I will turn back, and we will talk this over. Some way will be found. 'Never give up the s.h.i.+p.' That has been our motto for many a day, captain. The storm has burst on me, and it may reach you, but we'll sail in the same boat anyhow."

"But this suspense is terrible, Rice. Does it seem possible that a man should be made so wretched in a single day? But for this hard walk I should have gone crazy."

"I know what it is, captain; all my timbers are shaking now with what happened yesterday, but I've seen many a wreck come up s.h.i.+pshape again.

Let's keep afore the breeze, if it does blow a gale. I feel sartin that our course lies the same way, somehow. Here, give us hold of your valise. You look clean tuckered out."

The man surrendered his valise with a faint smile, saying:

"I only intended to go on a little till the stage overtook me, but forgot all about it, or that I was walking fast, till ten minutes' rest convinced me how tired I was." That moment the heavy stage-coach came swinging round a corner of the turnpike, its four horses galloping forward in a cloud of dust, through which a bright, boyish face was seen leaning out of the window.

"Hallo, there, I say, you driver, let me out--hurry--can't you hear a fellow? What are you thinking on?"

The driver heard this energetic shout above the tramp of his horses, and drew up, covering the travellers by the way-side with a storm of dust.

The lad opened the heavy stage door for himself and sprang out, telling the driver, with a magnificent flourish of the hand, that he could treat himself with the extra fare, paid in advance, from Hotchkistown to New Haven. Then he began advising two old ladies in the back seat to take a little more room and make themselves comfortable, a piece of consideration that was cut short by a sharp crash of the door, and a lurch of the stage, which set the establishment in motion again.